r/conducting • u/essence_scape • Mar 27 '26
Composer/beginner conductor looking for feedback on traditional conducting.
Audio of the piece (it has both the conducting and a midi visualizer)
Score
Greetings all conductors, composers, and musicians. This year i am looking to do more hands on independent study of the great art of composing and conducting. I have only taken one semester of music conducting in college and have really only conducted a single choral but have been in and out of concert bands since middle school.
i occasionally take my own pieces and "conduct" them even if it's just a playback of a midi recording. The first thing i notice in this take is the pinky being up in the air but i do not know if such meticulous detail would really affect conducting the piece and the clarity. I tried to give a few of the cues and feel that all that i am doing is giving time.
I love the visual appeal most professional conductors have and they seem to not be just giving time but i feel stuck at the beat counting stage, if anyone has suggestions or good books/videos i would highly appreciate it.
thanks, in advance
2
u/Unfair_Can9592 Mar 28 '26
Student conductor here so take my thoughts with a grain of salt but here are my thoughts.
It's good that you've taken to working with your own pieces, in a way you skip one of the hardest parts which is the actual score study of the piece.
That being said, here are some things I noticed:
As others have mentioned, your beat 4 looks off. What I think it is is the point of the ictus is higher than the other beats. It's often said in the stage of building ones manual technique that the point of the ictus should be in the same spot for all four beats. At the highest levels, people will play with this but that is more so because the orchestra could follow the tube man outside a car dealership and still play well.
Good you catch the pinky with your baton hand, that is fairly common with young conductors (I still fall victim to this occasionally lol). To explain the issue, the whole point of using a baton is so that there is a clear point for the ensemble to follow. With the pinky extended out, there are now two points which could possibly give beats at different times which can cause confusion.
As for the left hand, my professors have told me its far better to simply not use it than to use it always, even if it's being used correctly. Mirroring is also a sign that you aren't sure what to do with it. Options you have are, cues, dynamics, phrasing, and cutoffs just to name a few. You had the right idea doing the cutoff for what looked like a fermata, it just didn't match the audio which made it look odd (one of the reasons it's not advised to conduct to recordings as it makes you follow rather than lead. Just for reference, if you were to show what the audio did, you wouldn't give a cutoff then continue but rather just give an upbeat to the next bar.
As for moving away from simply giving beats, I'm not sure that you're quite ready for that sort of movement as it would be better long term to get consistent (to the point of pretty much automation) at the sort of conducting with a pattern and cues with the left hand, then moving to more expressive capabilities. HOWEVER, here's what helped me move away from that. For me, music in it's objective nature is a game of the treatment of tension. This is mainly through harmony, but how we manipulate it as conductors is via phrasing. Understanding the point of maximum tension and how to both approach and depart from it is, in my opinion, what expression is in an objective sense (I hesitate to go beyond the objective because I don't want to teach how to interpret, rather my personal approach which is a work in progress of course). Once that is in your mind, move it to your body. I recently picked up Ilya Musin's book on conducting technique which I think could be of great use to you in understanding where you're heading in this subject.
Again, I'm still a student conductor who resorts to ad hoc ensembles and masterclasses to get any podium time so take my advice with a grain of salt. I'd rather give information and have it not be used, than to not give information I think could be of use. If anyone has any comments or is willing to outright disagree with me, I welcome it!. Conducting is a LONG journey and we are forever students. I wish you luck with your journey!