How Conductors Improve Orchestra Performance

Video Transcript

In this clip, we'll be talking about the more advanced ways of rehearsing an orchestra for concert. So, in the other clip that we talked about this, the players were rehearsing with each other and separate situations by themselves. So when you bring them back together, there are going to be things that aren't you know necessarily perfect. As more of a broader section, they need to work on. So we're going to go over a couple of things percussion wise. Sometimes your percussionists may not be playing the right levels. Percussionists are always being yelled at for playing too loud. Percussion can be a hard, hard situation to be a percussionist in an orchestral situation because you need to be heard and you need to be perfect when you're heard, but also you don't want to be yelled at for being too loud. So, you might have your percussionists play by themselves in front of the orchestra. The orchestra will hear them; they will get the parts in their head. So, everyone is in the room, you have the percussionists run a certain part where they all have something. Let them hear each other, let the orchestra hear what they are doing. Tell them any tips or comments you have. Tell them to work on certain things or whatever and practice at home and such. Woodwinds you want to make sure they are breathing together and they are articulating the same styles, depending on the style of music you're playing, the time period, different breathing techniques and articulations will be appropriate for different situations. You want to make sure they sound good as a section and you want the whole orchestra to hear what they are doing. A lot of times, string players will drown out the woodwinds, because they don't know that there is something important going on in the woodwinds section. There might be a little flute solo for four bars or a moving line that's important. So you really want the orchestra to know what the woodwinds and the brass and each section is doing by themselves. You want the whole orchestra to be present when they play it by themselves. So, then you will move onto the brass and a lot of times you want balance. You want to work on balancing issues with the brass because a lot of times you'll have the trumpets really loud and then the tuba isn't quite loud enough and you want all that stuff. You will work on balancing and yet again you'll have the rest of the orchestra understand what the brass is playing. As far as strings, bowing is an important thing. An orchestra that is an amateur orchestra, that is kind of sloppy. The first thing you'll notice is that the violin players are probably not bowing correctly. Hopefully they will be because it's not that hard of a thing, but you want your first chair concert master to tell the violins at least. You want the leader of each string section to advise all of the string players whether it should be a down bow, which would be like that or an up bow which would be like that. As a conductor you have to know these things. You have to know the whole orchestra so that you can tell the concert master or the person sitting in a certain chair in the violin section; you're doing a down bow, where it should be an up bow. So, you want to get all the bowings correct and make your orchestra look as professional as possible because that is the first thing you will notice in an amateur orchestra is that the bowing is not together. Yet again, everyone in the whole orchestra will understand what the string players are doing and the string section what their part is.

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