Klarinet Archive - Posting 000644.txt from 2005/03

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Conducting without a baton
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 11:11:06 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:

> 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.

Aaahhh, now I see what you're getting at. Visual information is
obviously vastly superior in this regard. Your system would obviously
be more *physically* cumbersome to carry around than a click-track, but
much less cumbersome for a player to get information from.

Anyway, I would start by doing some motion capture of conductors, the
capture points being the shoulder, elbow, hand, fingers and baton tip,
and letting a computer system "learn" by itself some of the patterns
(this will probably be faster than trying to program in directly where
each point should be). It would be relatively easy from this to
construct a 3D motion picture which can then be further expanded with
dynamics (larger and smaller motions).

(A further advantage of such a system is that one could build in
multiple conductor arms for given moments where it might be convenient,
e.g. in Ives.)

The tricky part of course will be making the link between (an electronic
copy of) the score and the motions. But a nice first approximation
might be to simply use it as an "advanced click track" with beats,
speeds and "dynamics" programmed in by hand. At least, that would be a
good start simply to see if musicians can work with the system.

Anyway, motion capture and analysis would seem to be a good first step.

On a completely different note: can you advise on some good teachers in
or near Turin? I'm moving there next month. :-)

-- Joe

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org