h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK - a bad workman (woman) blames his/her tools. And I am quite useless at conducting, possibly because I am extremely uncoordinated and have absolutely no control over my limbs. Dancing is quite out of the question; sometimes I ask myself how I even manage to walk any distance without tripping over my feet. Come to think of it, I do continually trip over my feet.

I can do country dancing where you have set steps to do, albeit without much style or elegance.

So, with practice, getting the actual basic movements for conducting can be mastered. Due to a change of teachers, and their both using completely different methods, I have suffered a setback here, too, but I'm not going to let that beat me.

Now I have the problem with reading the score. The stand has to be quite low so that the choir can see the conductor, so the page is a good three feet from my eyes. I wear bifocals and can see the score at that distance without glasses at all, but then I can't see the choir properly and it takes a while to focus each time.

In the learning situation, we work on a single piece for a few weeks at a time, so there is time to learn the music by rote - although with a polyphonic piece (Palestrina, Tallis, Telemann), it's not easy to remember all the individual parts.

I take a copy and mark the bars which are going to present problems, and all the entries, in different coloured highlighters to help me keep my place on the page, but, quite honestly, with or without glasses, I really can't see the music well enough to read it.

What would be ideal would be a pair of glasses where the music is running directly in front of your eyes so you are at least already looking in the right direction, and the choir think you're looking at them!

Or projecting the page on the wall behind the singers.

Oh well. Back to learning it off by heart.

Would Google Glass help in this case? I don't know much about it, but worth looking into?

This is hard, but on the face of it it would seem more important to see the score than the choir; you know which general direction the sections are in.

You're right, in polyphonic music the leads are the important thing. You practise by reading the score and singing nothing but the leads to yourself. (Singing is better than hitting them on a keyboard.) And thick markers on the score are terrific help.

Beyond that, don't worry about your moves. Look at Peter Phillips, the conductor of one of the world's best polyphonic choirs, the Tallis Scholars. I went to one of his workshops and he began by apologising for his extraordinary beat, and it was the most extraordinary I've ever seen. He beat four in the normal pattern (almost) but his first beat resembled most people's second beat, and so on. Truly. We got used to it in the first hour and all went well.

It doesn't matter at all what you look like. What matters is knowing what you want to hear. And you will persuade the singers to do it for you if it is clear to them that it matters to you.

Thanks Recumbentman. I'll remember that the score is more important, and I do realise that a fuzzy view of the choir is not really a serious matter- they will still think I'm looking at them!

I have to get the beat right until October. Then I should hopefully have finished and am on my own to do my own thing. My signals are getting better (I get to practise with the choir I sing in, and they always give feedback).

The teacher says I have good ideas on interpretation and understand the music; the only thing holding me back is the motoric capability. Maybe my problem with co-ordination may be reduced by keeping movements small.

Teachers differ. The best conducting teacher I ever had was the late Frantisek Vajnar from Prague. He started the week with a lot of us looking very strange, not to say tortured. He made no comment whatever on our appearance, only on what signals we were sending to the players, and what signals we needed to send. Within a few days all the writhing dropped away.

It's not about how you move, it's about what you convey.

But don't keep your movements small! They will think you want constant pianissimo! Vajnar's slogan was 'Preparation is the most important gesture'. He showed us that the upbeat you give determines not only tempo but attack, volume, brightness, all the things that constitute the mood of the piece.

My most recent experience of conducting was yesterday afternoon. I was disconnecting a USB device while standing on a nylon carpet.

Ouch!

I've conducted an orchestra once in my life. Scariest thing I've ever done!

You have my admiration and respect

I don't think they'd let me loose on an orchestra. My son has been doing work with school orchestras lately and really loves it.

I understand your problem, I keep 3 pairs of glasses on my desk, my prescription pair for driving and distance, a pair of medium reading glasses for reading small drawings and a powerful pair at about 3.5x for details. I spend most of the day without wearing any of them!

Have you considered getting a pair of bifocals with plain glass in the bottom frame? Might solve your problem nicely.

I have never been able to get the hang of multiple lenses myself



F S

I think I would prefer wearing no glasses at all - I'll have to try that but make sure I focus better on the notes on the page. This morning's lesson went rather well.

She still hasn't asked me to play the accompaniment yet, though - I wish I could have a go at that.

Great!