As a kid, I just assumed it was aesthetic. Like, someone for an audience of non-musicians to project themselves on to.
As an adult, I recognize that this is almost certainly not the case. Presumably the conductor plays a role that is necessary and helpful to the rest of the orchestra... but I'll be damned if I can't quite figure out what that is. Surely its not just timing? Can't the players just... listen to one another to work that out?
the waving stick (called a batonne conduttori) works like a hypnotist's swinging watch and makes the people holding instruments play the notes. the people holding the instruments (often incorrectly called "musicians" or "performers" due to the vague similarity to members of rock bands or jazz ensembles) don't know how to play, they're just sitting there until the conductor waves the thing, and their muscles then enter a fugue state and do the playing.
It used to be that conductors gave rhythm by banging a staff on the ground. Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully killed himself this way, by impaling his foot with the staff and developing gangrene.
i was wondering how sharp that rod must've been... for anyone else curious, wiki-p clarified he smashed one of his toes and subsequently refused to have it amputated
Ok think of it this way.
Let's say that you're a musician on the furthest left of the orchestra in the hall.
You keep rhythm by listening to the musician next to you.
They listen to the musician next to them.
That musician listens to the musician next to them.
This occurs for 50 to 100 other musicians, all the way to the other side of the hall.
You might be in time with the musician next to you but due to micro differences across each of those musicians listening to the musician next to them, you and the musician on the other side of the hall are totally out of sync with one another.
By looking at a conductor, the entire orchestra has 1 single point of reference for timing, instead of hundreds of different points of reference that lead to different sides of the hall being out of time.
Timing is the most important job (I was a drummer), especially if there are tempo changes. But another important thing they do is signal for solos and control the different sections' volumes. They are there to ensure everything goes smoothly and the audience gets the best performance possible.
electrons flow through the conductor to different instruments of the orchestra
not a musician. but as far as i know they provide timing and some more information during performance. plus they act like a director for the concert, planning and working out how the composition should sound, what it got to say ...
They point at who can fart and not be heard while playing the song
When I had parts in an orchestra, there were parts where i was supposed to just be quiet for a hundred bars or whatever. Far too long to count, and when youre sitting in your section you only hear the people next to you so i never knew what part of the song we were in. The conductor usually gives a signal when its time to start playing again, even If its just a nod or a look.
Props to you for admitting it rather than simply claiming they have no purpose which I see all the time.
they conduct heat and electricity, mostly
Bo Burnham's early work sucks but that does remind me of one of the few non-problematic jokes he had:
And if there's a metal train that's a mile long,
and at the very back end a lightning bolt struck her,
how long 'til it reaches and kills the driver,
provided that he's a good conductor?
The baton is called the baton of the wind, amd it's an instrument, and you can play music with it that will teleport you to different parts of the world. It's pretty cool. The conductor magiks away the entire orchestra to the next venue for their next gig
As a gamer I can assure you that the conductor can change the direction of the wind
Why haven't you watched Cate Blanchett in Tar
I never hear about new movies anymore, they just seem to spawn into the recent past.
It was critically acclaimed but I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it; it was overshadowed that year by the extremely lib Everything Everywhere All at Once. Cate Blanchett got robbed she should have won Best Actress. Tar should have won Best Picture. Should have been nominated for Best Sound, still can't fucking believe Top Gun and The Batman were nominated for that category but not Tar.
...Should have been nominated for Best Writing too, the only reason I can imagine why EEAO won that is the lib voting committee who doesn't watch any of the nominated films saw an image of that cringe ass tumblr-coded "In another timeline I would have loved doing laundry and taxes with you" scene and went 
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Random info: batons - that stick that conductors wave around - are much more common with orchestras and much less common with choirs. When you're conducting singers you can also send signals about consonant timing, vowel shapes, and other lyrical aspects that might have more natural representations in hand shapes than baton movements.
Personal style is a huge factor in how you conduct too. Some people are up there yanking their entire body around to every beat and others find that excessive and showy.
When you're conducting singers you can also send signals about consonant timing, vowel shapes, and other lyrical aspects that might have more natural representations in hand shapes than baton movements.
If everyone is positioned close together, and they do all their practicing in the same location where they will eventually perform, and they are very well used to each other, and the piece/movement both starts out and ends with just one instrument or voice, and the piece is continuous without any pauses longer than one bar, and there are no fermatas or accelerandos or removedandos, then maybe you can go without a conductor.
Every time you need to start, stop, speed up, slow down, sometimes time change, sometimes volume change, and sometimes for solos, there is a need for coordination.
removedandos
Reversed accelerandos
Conductors are for playing music DAWless
waving my baton at my digitakt but my drums are still trash
They mark the beat, make cues and decide how the band/orchestra should play/sound, which is worked on in rehearsals, it's not made up on the spot. In professional bands the musicians may already know the tempo and how to play a certain piece making the conductor a bit redundant
I think even in professional settings anything might happen when the performance starts, so it becomes valuable to have someone at the front who can hear everything in context and signal for corrections if something is too loud or quiet, or out of time.
This is it, conductors hear every single goddamn note you're playing even if you can hardly hear it yourself, and if there's a problem they're gonna let you know about it right there on the spot during the performance even while keeping track of all the other shit at the same time
I don't know how they do it and can only assume they're some kinda wizard
I think for a lot of bands there's a default leader, either for each song or for all their work as a whole.
That's because the conductor plays an instrument, not a function, lad: a short, thin stick. You can hear it tapping if the music calls for it, for example it's likely to be used when a flutist has dozed off and missed their entrance.
You should check out the movie Tár if you're interested in this topic.
hell yeah i knew someone would say the same thing 
I've been patiently waiting for Monster Hunter Wilds to have a Tar cross-over event but no. They have the damn Diva doing concerts every sunrise at the community hub, they could let Lydia conduct an orchestra for Arkveld and call a Palico a slur or something!!!
They pull on the little rope that makes the train go 
CHOO CHOO
badposting is a comm where you post badly
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Ever had a really shitty bit idea? Joke you want to take way past the point of where it was funny? Want to feel like a stand-up comedy guy who's been bombing a set for the past 30 minutes straight and at this point is just saying shit to see if people react to it? Really bad pun? A homemade cringe concoction? A cognitohazard that you have birthed into this world and have an urge to spread like chain mail?
Code of Conduct applies just as much here as it does everywhere else. Technically, CoC violations are bad posts. On the other hand: L + ratio + get ~~better~~ worse material bozo