Klarinet Archive - Posting 000637.txt from 2005/03

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Conducting without a baton
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:45:06 -0500

On 22 Mar, Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net> wrote:

> The problem I see is that it would be difficult to extend it beyond
> being simply an expensive and cumbersome click-track, for reasons you
> have already identified---that the conductor interacts with players in
> real time, whereas this system would interact only with a programmed
> version of the music.

I think this isn't so. I think that that interaction is important only at a
very high level -- much higher than, for example, the production of a movie
soundtrack. And when you say, "simply an expensive and cumbersome
clicktrack", I think you show that you don't have any experience of what
playing to a clicktrack is like.

It's the *clicktrack* that is cumbersome, because it represents only a very
crude aspect of the music.

You can't effectively change the speed of a clicktrack, for example. If you
do, you just confuse the players until they have learnt, over many trials,
both to play the music and to remember what it's about to do. And nobody in
the film industry ever bothers, because it's too difficult.

The idea of the machine would be to produce something that is much more
closely connected to the music and its expression, and that allows a player
to trust their instincts as they view it instead of being constantly
surprised by the next clout in the ear.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd tony.p@-----.org
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
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... Beware of quantum ducks. Quark! Quark!

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