tai chi 2

When I wrote the interest session proposal, this is the first paragraph of the session description:

Conducting and Tai Chi both use energy and intention to produce gesture that is complex, beautiful, and meaningful.  In master practitioners, the purposefulness of each is a result of conscious and unconscious awareness and will.  Both are inexorably connected to breath. This foundation of similarities means the study of Tai Chi can reinforce the best kinesthetic habits in conducting.

All that is true, of course, but vague enough that I wonder if it actually means anything.  Now the session as sort of been accepted--it's not going to be included in the regular rotation of sessions, it'll just be a one-off Friday morning session at 7:00, before the official concert and interest sessions start at 8 a.m..  They're sort of squeezing me in because they like it.  Which is great: first thing in the morning is a perfect time to do Tai Chi.  And this all means that I have an opportunity to write a new description for participants, if I want to.  To that end, I came up with this:

Tai Chi for Conductors

In this session, participants will follow a Tai Chi practice session, including a set of movements derived from Tai Chi forms designed to maximize the benefit for conductors.  Each slow movement will provide an opportunity to move energy and examine its effect on the body.  This examination has the potential to create an immediate sense of buoyancy and balance, leaving participants calm and vibrant at the end of the session.  Beyond the convention, regular practice naturally guides towards centering, grounding, and freeing.   The slow, easy movements can be performed in any attire, and participants will be invited to remove their shoes.

And the general response to that is that, yeah, conducting and tai chi seem to be related.  But I'll tell you what I told Roger Jahnke when he asked me if I had figured out the connection.


Both practices derive their movement from intention, which is communicated through the center out to the extremities.  When I taught the undergrad conducting class last semester, and when I wrote about Singing Redefined, I was thinking of the imagination being communicated through gesture as it is through the voice.  But, since I've worked intensively in Tai Chi some more, I see that it's wrong.  The voice is not like gesture.  The voice really is linked directly to the imagination.  Whole-body movement is not.  There's a lot that can interfere between the brain and the body.  When your whole body moves, that movement must come from the center--ask any dancer or martial arts teacher.  


So the discussion I must have with myself, and consequently the interweb, is this: intention communicates with the center and is expressed through the whole body.    More on that to follow when I start getting my head around it in a communicable way.

resonant leadership

My sister gave me an audiobook of Resonant Leadership.  It's funny that I was glad to have it as an audiobook so I didn't have to spend time sitting and reading it, feeling guilty that I wasn't doing real work, which is just the sort of thing the book says I needn't feel.  Anyway, I got to listen while I did laundry and the dishes, so it felt doubly productive.

I wanted to write about the book before I write about emotional intelligence on Multiple Intelligence Monday, so that I can refer back to this information.

For those of you without time even to listen to the audiobook version, here's a bit of summary:

Leading is inherently stressful.  Good leadership requires the kind of giving of self that may not seem physically demanding the way manual labor does, but actually costs us physiological harm through wear and tear on the endocrine and nervous systems.  

I'll say that again.

Good leadership is hard on your body.  It physically, literally, bodily wears you out.  And that leaves you incapable of giving of yourself--leaves you incapable of being a good leader.  Yes, good leadership can cause bad leadership.  

They call it "power stress" in the book, and it leads to what they call the "sacrifice syndrome," which is the set of symptoms that result from the on-going, long term stress of giving of yourself which builds on itself; and, not only will in make you incapable of leading well, it will kill you.  Not just feel bad, but kill you.  

Arright, I'm being more dramatic than the book is, but the fact is high blood pressure, as one example, isn't likely to kill you right away, but it will shorten your life.

Therefore, to be a good leader you must give of yourself, but in order to sustain good leadership you must allow yourself to be renewed through mindfulness, hope, and compassion.

I'll let you go read the book for it's real-life examples, exercises, and explanations of the physiology.  I'll also confess now that mindfulness and hope are part of why I write this blog.  I remind myself with every post what my responsibilities are--the big picture responsibilities, as well as the straight-up fun ones.  And I remind myself of the fun there is to be had.  Writing about conducting makes me look forward to my next rehearsal.  And anytime you guys e-mail me or post comments here or on Facebook, I get a little charge out of the connection with musicians and amateurs.  So, thanks!  My choirs thank you, too.

So, Resonant Leadership is a book I think every conductor should read.

And now for some of my conductor-flavored insight.

They call good leadership "resonant."  I particularly like this term for its musical quality.  In singing, resonance takes place when the vibration produced by the vocal folds moves up the vocal tract, pharynx, mouth, and sinuses, causing sympathetic vibrations that shape the tone into the sound everyone hears.  Resonance is the creation of efficient, effective sympathetic vibrations.  A singer controls resonance through minute adjustments to the anatomy--lift the soft palate, round the lips--and also the imagination.  The control of acoustical sensations, like sending tone forward focusing it, is purely a result of imagination.  Resonant leadership is the creation of sympathetic actions that lead to a common goal, both by arranging the physical necessities and by imaging the possibilities.

As a matter of fact, in the production of tone there are four parts: initiator (breath), vibrator (vocal folds), resonator (vocal tract), articulator (lips, teeth, tongue, palate, etc.).  I posit that if a good leader is like a good singer, he can create resonance with action and imagination, but it all begins with breath.  The quality of the breath--warm and open, deep and intense--colors the tone that results.  It's called "inspiration" for a reason, folks.

singing redefined

 Anyone can sing.  I've made this statement any number of times and amateurs roll their eyes at it, thinking of bad karaoke.  I don't say anyone can do it without any training at all--in most cultures, people take for granted that singing is a part of every day life, so "training" is constant from the time you're born.  But, for us in the Western world, where singing has become a competition, only trained singers are regarded as singers.  It's bullshit and it's unfortunate, so I literally would like to teach the world to sing, but I can't do everything.  


Anyone can sing.  Anyone.  I guarantee.  It's not only possible, but really good for you.  I highly recommend it.  Join a choir if you haven't already.  I bet you'll love it.


But I am going to talk for a moment about trained singing.  Opera-ish, art songy, bel canto, classical style singing.  That list is contradictory, according to some, but you can go find those singers to tell you why.  


There is a book, published a dozen years ago, called Singing Redefined, by Walter C. Foster.  It was one of my undergraduate vocal pedagogy text books, so it has clearly influenced the way I work.  It is not uncontroversial, but I just don't have time to present the controversy here.  I'm just going to tell you Walter's side of the story and if you'd like to point out the flaws in the approach, feel free.  


Arright, so Walter C. Foster wrote that singing is controlled by the imagination.  Of course, this makes sense. I mean, when you're talking to someone, telling a story of an interesting thing that happened to you, the expression in your voice comes from your own unconscious intentions.  Intensity, focus, warmth, resonance, etc. are controlled by your expressive intent.  The same thing happens to singers, but generally this is only addressed with expert singers.  After a singer studies for years and years to develop healthy technique, then she learns to be expressive.


Walter C. Foster says that, when we teach singers, we should have them engage their imaginations from the very beginning.  Yes, before we teach them about breath support and adduction of the muscles of the vocalis, we teach them to imagine.  When they sing [u] on a five note scale whilst imagining it's their response to a fireworks display, they sing with greater clarity and focus than if they're just focusing on the technical aspects of singing with clarity and focus.  


Cool, right?  I've done it with ensembles and it has worked.  I work on technical stuff, too.  Conductors of amateur and student groups, like me, use warm-ups to teach vocal technique.  I have often used warm-ups with stories and words that engage the imagination at the same time as they develop good habits and establish healthy tone.  It not only makes the tone better in the moment that they are singing it, but it promotes the practice of singing with expressive intention.  So when we do repertoire, it's not just a new thing I throw at them: "Okay, that sounds good.  Now do it with feeling."  Whatever that means.


I also suspect that teaching conducting could work the same way.  The physical skills must come, but if those skills come without intention, then we're just teaching them to be traffic cops.  We want students to have the physical skills, but we want them to use them for a purpose.  I posit that the physical skills can come as a result of the purpose.  I mean, we already move with purpose--throwing a ball, ironing a shirt, shaking out a picnic blanket--without thinking of what the movement is, just thinking of the purpose.  Can't that work for conducting?  


I think so.


And on the other side of that coin is the motion perception I've posted about before.  Clearly, the mind perceives intention from motion in a holistic way.  Can it not be taught that way?  Might it not be taught better that way?

practice

When a singer or instrumentalist practices, she goes into a room and plays scales and arpeggios and other exercises to warm up physically and work on technique.  Then she plays repertoire, applying the technique to the music and also examining musical, expressive content and using the technique to realize it.

What do conductors do when they practice?

Dr. Renshaw lays out a three step process of "read, analyze, interpret."  That works for any score, but the details of what each of those steps precisely means is flexible.

To read, I was taught "sing and play."  Sing one line (yes, even instrumental lines and, yes, out loud) and play any other.  Be able to do this in every possible combination.  This mandates repetition, which means you can't help  but learn it.  It also explicates relationships and lays bare the relationships, which means it gives you questions to ask.  "Why did he do that?  Why is that so hard to hear?"

And then you answer the questions, which is where analysis comes in.  "Ohhhh, it's hard to hear that interval because this line introduces the new key." And eventually interpretation follows.  "Ohhhh, that crazy chord is there because it's the word pain" and "ohhhh, the tenors and basses are in unison there because it's the theme and the women are in a really high tessitura..."

"Practice," for me, also involves research.  I look into the text, the poet, the language, its IPA, often I have to learn more about instruments since my instrumental background isn't strong, and finding out where in the conductor's life the composition was written.  For whom on what occasion?  What else did he write around the same time? And then I can judge whether this piece is representative of that work or exceptional.

And then there is practicing the actual physical act of conducting.  Once I'm pretty well familiar with the music, I can start actually waving my arms around, seeing what works, what the music would look like in my body.  But unrelated to any specific piece of music, I admit that I don't do exercises that keep my conducting "in shape."  I do Tai Chi, and I like to think that it's physically related enough that it applies itself to my conducting gesture when the time comes.  I don't have any evidence, except that I know learning in one field can be transferred automatically to others.

It's all about, as I have said before, spending time.

zen in the art of archery

I already wrote that I taught the undergraduate choral conducting class at UConn last spring by using the tools and resources which I had found most useful for myself as a student.  So, I required the undergrads to read Zen in the Art of Archery.

People often ask if it's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It's not, really, except that both are philosophical and recount a learning journey in the first person.

Zen in the Art of Archery is a true story of a German man, Eugen Herrigel, who was working in Japan and decided, while he was there, to study archery.  So the value of the book is its insight by a Westerner into a very foreign Eastern philosophy.  Eugen does and thinks what we would think, and he described how his teacher taught him to see his (the teacher's) approach instead.  

The process, so far as I've picked it up, has taught me certain values.  Trust in my teachers is one.  When I am studying with a teacher, I tend to hand myself over to him or her and do what I am told.  I can't help but try to figure out why I've been told to do it, but I let myself just do it before I understand why, trusting that understanding will follow.  This is not what some of my teachers have expected of me, so it has not been universally successful, but I prefer it to constantly challenging them while we wait for our approaches to become clear to each other.  Rarely, there will be a teacher who just doesn't know what to do with me because I'm not making any demands or asking any questions.  Even then, it works out.  I just accept that I don't understand their approach yet, and allow them to explain it to me in whatever way seems best to them.  If my own approach is standing in the way of my understanding, it's my responsibility to be aware of that and fix it.  I'll probably let the teacher know that that's happening, but not to argue that mine is better or right, just to say "I'm having trouble with X because I've always thought Y, and I'm working through letting that go so I can get inside of X."

But then again, it makes me think every time I pick it up, makes me examine the work I do.  I think everyone should read it.  It's only eighty-one pages long.  But if you don't mind a spoiler, here's the main thing I get from it every time I read it:

Preparation.

Yes, I suggested Monday that preparation is a way to compensate for the skills towards which one lacks a natural inclination.  Preparation is a way to get good at anything, really.

Talent with practice is the best combination.  But if you've got to pick one or the other, practice without talent trumps talent without practice every day of the week.  Ten thousand hours, they say, equals expertise.  Spend ten thousand hours working on anything, and you will be an expert at it.  And maybe that only can be called expert because so few people will dedicate that much time to any single endeavor that those few will be the high water mark for expertise.  Because the more you work on something, the more you realize just how much there is to it, and how little you really know about it, right?

Anyway, the Zen in the Art of Archery perspective seems to me to suggest that preparation results in learning not to do.  You learn to get out of the way and let "it" do through you.  You don't practice aiming so you get good at aiming, you practice shooting so that "it" shoots through you.

Dr. Buck told me that studies have shown that experts use different parts of their brains when they work than novices.  Maybe this is a scientific insight into the sensation of "it" doing through us.  We aren't doing anymore, because we're nothing thinking "now I have to cut off the T on the and of four, and then I have to breathe on beat two..."  Instead, we just live the music and the cutoffs and breaths just happen.

That is my experience of preparation.  And I remember it when I read Zen in the Art of Archery.  I remember to trust my teachers, the composers, the time I spend with the score.  Everything new I learn about how to prepare represents, to me, just one more way to spend time, to get to know it.  Just like getting to know a person, the way you get to know it depends on what's in it, what its characteristics are, what its requirements are.  The important thing is to spend the time.  And to trust that understanding will come.

conducting journal

I taught the undergraduate choral conducting class at UConn last spring and it was a hoot.  I assisted the basic and instrumental conducting classes under Dr. Renshaw, and I've taught conducting to high school students in a smaller way, so at least I wasn't going in absolutely cold.  Still, I took two semesters of vocal pedagogy before I taught anyone singing; I got a degree in music education before they let me into a classroom to teach music.  But conducting pedagogy is not a topic that is directly addressed very often.  So I fell back on the thing that most teachers eventually do: how I was taught.

I have the benefit of not being a very good musician (musical intelligence will be addressed a couple of Mondays from now, followed shortly by Gordon and aptitude testing).  When you're mediocre at something but love it, you work very hard to learn and get better, you try everything you can to improve.  And that made me learn how to learn.  In planning my syllabus for the undergrad course, I picked the things that helped me the most, and assigned those tasks to my students

In my master's program, we were loosely required to write a conducting journal.  It was a suggestion, really, more than a requirement, but I'm a woman who follows instructions so I diligently kept a conducting journal.  I also happen to be a woman who loves to write about things I love, so it was easy and pleasant for me.

When I was writing a conducting journal, I wrote about scores I was preparing, other conducting students, conducting class, lessons, conductors I performed under, teachers, performances, recordings, and even non-musical life experiences that related to conducting.  Sort of like this blog now, though I also try to write about research and more big-picture sorts of things.

I assigned a conducting journal to my undergrads.  It was worth five percent of their grade, graded on "thoroughness." Basically, the more they wrote about, and the more accurate information it contained, the higher the grade.  Not a big deal, but it could make the difference between and B+ and an A-, you know?   Those who wrote really thorough journals made the most improvements in the actual conducting.  My whole point with the class was that conducting was about preparation, so the more preparation you did, the better you would conduct.  A journal was really just a place to track and organize your preparation.

I find that I conduct better when I keep a journal, just like my students.  I don't know how many other conductors use journaling as a tool for preparation.  I love it, but of course, it does speak to some of my strongest learning styles: verbal and intrapersonal (as my sister puts it, "strong opinions and a big vocabulary").  One of the many projects for this summer is the preparation of scores for the fall.  Among them is the Caesar Franck Mass in A, the source of the famous "Panis Anglicus."



Mmmhhh... Renee Fleming...

Anyway, I'm going to try posting at least some of the things that I'd ordinarily journal about in preparing a piece like that.  There are a few reasons.

First, it will give me a chance to demonstrate specific examples and further explicate ideas that are relatively esoteric.

Second, this is the first multi-movement work I've prepared for a real performance, in its entirety, from scratch.  Other pieces I've done as exercises in conducting lessons with no actual performing, performed only excerpts, or had already sung the piece and was therefore familiar with it to some degree.  So I'm rather excited to be applying all that theoretical training to practical use and quite keen to do it right.  I feel some responsibility to post true and accurate things on the blog, so perhaps having it out here will be even more incentive to do it well.

Third, posting online has the possibility of reaching other conductors who have performed the work and can let me know if they found the same things I did.  That would be nice.

metronomes

I have a metronome that cost $100.  I bought it in 2005, in the last semester of my master's degree.  It's a Seiko SQ 100-88 digital quartz metronome.  I bought it because it's loud.

I'm sure you all know what metronomes are, but I won't let it be said I talked over anyone's head, so in case you don't: a metronome is a device that clicks at a stead speed which you set.  We measure speed in beats per minute.  60 means one beat each second.  120 means two beats each second.  40 means really slow.

(Imagine the father from My Big, Fat Greek Wedding now.)  It come... from the Greek!  Metro, it mean "measure."  Nome, it mean "little guy who sits in your yard clicking loudly."

Metronomes are a basic musician tool, but perhaps more important for conductors than other musicians.  Others set tempos for practicing, to hear the tick to help force them to stay in time.  Conductors also use it to experiment with tempi, so that we can choose one and hopefully be consistent with performing at the right one.  (I have problems with that--I tend to go faster in performance than I do in rehearsal.  Nerves and things make the heart beat faster, endocrine system go nuts, tends to make people move faster.  Gotta get over that.)

So, my metronome is damn fancy.  You can set the beat speed, then select if you want it to click subdivisions: none, dupets, only the second duplet (the "ands" of beats), triplets, triplets with the middle one missing ("1 rest uh" instead of "one and uh", quadruplets, or quadruplets with the middle two missing ("one rest rest uh" instead of  "one i and uh").  Then you can set how many beats in the meter, and it will click a higher pitch for beat 1 of every measure.

In addition to all those options, it has a whole second metronome built in! There is a button you can push to get to a second group of settings.  So if a piece changes tempo or meter, you can store both and get from one to the other with just a single button.   Or, in rehearsal, I am using the metronome for two different pieces,  I can set it beforehand and not waste time fiddling with it on the podium.  FANCY!

It also has a built-in tuner set automatically to A 440, but you can play any pitch from C2 to B6, tuned to A 415 (a common early music tuning) or 438-446 (in case you're tuning to an instrument like a piano or organ that is tuned slightly sharp or flat).  I never use this feature--if I need a pitch, I use a tuning fork because acoustical pitch is easier to hear than an electronic one--but it does lead me to the volume.

It's loud.

My metronome has a port for a 1/4 inch phone jack.  I could use headphones or even plug in speakers.  But the speaker on my metronome is pretty dang loud.  Which is, as I said, why I bought it.

Robert Shaw used to hang a pendulum in rehearsal in order to maximize entrainment among the singers.  I wrote about entrainment in the "Thoughtful Gestures" article upon which most of this blog is based, and I will write about it here separately soon (which is one of the reasons I'm writing this metronome post now).  Suffice it to say, I sometimes play my metronome at my choir.  They don't like it because it's a loud electronic beep and/or click, but it works.

Other conductors have metronome apps on their iPhones.  You can also find metronomes online for free, in case you have your laptop in the practice room.  I have a loud, Greek, clicking gnome.  A little clunky, but I'm fond of it.

Did I mention it had a kick stand in the back so you can stand it up?

tax deductible massages

It's Mother's Day, and one of the many things my mother taught me was to do my own taxes, and--if I itemize--to deduct professional expenses.  Thanks, Mom!

Making music as a conductor, singer, or instrumentalist, is inescapably physical.  After I started having neck/shoulder pain that interfered with my work, a massage therapist who happens to sing in my community choir suggested that a massage might help me.  Boy, was she right.  I'm working on Alexander Technique and yoga and Tai Chi in hopes that I can learn to use my body as efficiently as possible so that I don't build up to the the kind of tension and pain that is possible; but, my lifestyle of doctoral-student-with-multiple-jobs isn't conducive to the kind of holistic realignment I really need.  So I get a massage every four to six months, just to straighten me out.  It makes all the difference in the world.  

I find that massage provides physical improvements as well as psychological ones.  The muscles get untightened to free up my gesture, and my mind gets a chance to detox as well.  I just had a massage on Thursday, and my church choir can attest to the difference it makes.  Last week, I was a grump (which I almost never am!) and this week I was just about back to normal.  They put up with me last week, thankfully, but they really do sing better when I can be in a worshipful place with them.  The end of the semester at school helps with that, too, but I can tell you that the massage, and the fact that I took time for it, put my brain back into more regular rhythm.

I haven't had the gumption to claim massages as a professional expenses on my taxes, but honestly, I couldn't do my work nearly so well without them.  

the beauty, the wonder: the International Phonetic Alphabet

There's so much to write about, but I'm dying to talk about this.

My tenth grade biology teacher assigned the entire class to write a paper.  The title of the paper was to be "The Beauty, The Wonder: The Menstrual Cycle."  So now that phrase is stuck in my head and I apply it to anything whose beauty and wonder is under-appreciated.

I love the International Phonetic Alphabet.

I love it.

Its friends call it IPA.

Yes, like India Pale Ale.  I even prefer ordering India Pale Ales over other beers, though I'm generally fond of darker beers, because when I ask the bartender for one, I get to say, "I'd like an IPA."  And in my mind I'm thinking "International Phonetic Alphabet!"

For those who have not yet had the fortune of experiencing the beauty and the wonder of IPA, here's why it's so great.  In the following sentence, there is an O in every word:

Do you know John does nothing good on the Borough Board of Hounds?

I don't know what a Board of Hounds is, but I'm dismayed at John's lack of initiative in the affairs of the Borough.  Sad.  Anyway, I can't IPA on Blogger, but suffice it to say that there are fifteen O's in that sentence, pronounced ten different ways.

Ten!

And all of those ways can be spelled with O in different combinations or without O at all.  Also, each of those spellings can be pronounced differently.

1.  do, you  (like blue but not so, possibly like dew but not sew or even sow)
2.  know, bo-ROUGH (actual O sound!  Also spelled no, doe, sew, and sow but not how, and certainly not like rough)
3. John (like FAther)
4. does, nothing, of (like gun, but not goes, not, or offer)
5. good (should, but not food)
6. on (faun, but not ton)
7. our (are? hour?)
8. BO-rough (giraffe? earth?)
9. board (like lord, but not hoax)
10. hounds (gowns, not you or Housatonic)

Because the Romans conquered the British Isles and said "whatever language they're speaking, we need to write it in our alphabet.  Our alphabet was designed to represent our language, Latin, which we speak in Rome, and why it's called the Roman Alphabet, even though the first letters are neither Alpha nor Beta and that was the Greeks, who have a different alphabet..."

They didn't say any of that, actually.  But the Romans, and then the French with their Romance language, imposed the Roman alphabet on Germanic English.  They tried to write down, for example, "th" as best they could, but there was no symbol for that sound.  So English is confusing to pronounce.  It doesn't look like it sounds.  (French, funnily enough, had the opposite track, where it used to be pronounced more like it's spelled, but now they just don't bother saying half the letters.)

It answers every question about singing--especially ensemble singing!  You don't have to worry about what the native language of a singer is, or what regional accent they have.  One symbol, one sound.

When you see [o], it means the pure part of the sound in "no," the way Mid-westerners say it. Or Canadians.
When you see [u], it's the same pure "ooo" sound as a Minnesotan might say "new shoes."
[i] is like "neat."
[I] is like "knit."

Beautiful, right?  None of that "open" or "closed," "long" or "short" confusing garbage.  One symbol, one sound.  We all agree, we all know what it means, we all sing it the same.

And that's why I love the International Phonetic Alphabet.

I hope you do, too.

batons

In the public consciousness, a baton is part of the definition of a conductor, along with crazy grey hair, white tie and tails, and wild arm flailing.  A description of a performance might say that an ensemble played "under the baton of so-and-so."  In reality, some conductors use batons, some don't, some do both.  Certain pieces, or movements of pieces, may call for a baton and others for hands.  In case you can't imagine conducting without a baton, here's me in a short clip I created for the "Thoughtful Gesture" paper presentation on campus (which is the reason for the odd annotations).




It seems to me that longer batons were standard about fifty years ago, as used by this satirical jerk who flails, but you don't see these crazy long batons much any more.  This one seems to be about twenty-four unnecessary inches long.



I have been a non-baton person for most of my career, but recently I've taken it up again and I must say I prefer it.  The major benefit for me is that it creates an additional hinge, requiring less work for my shoulder.  I object to the potential phallic power symbolism of a baton, but the ease and flexibility it offers is really quite nice.  For example, it allows me more possibilities in subdividing beats because tiny gestures can be perfectly clear at the tip of a long, slender baton, when they might be more difficult to see in my short, soft hands.

I should talk about subdivision some day.

The baton I use most is a small, twelve-inch natural wood one.  It's an unusual baton.  Most batons are white--convenient because they show up in a dark performance space.  I have a sixteen inch white baton that I used back when I was conducting musical theater more often.  But for my usual gig on a well-lit stage, I like the near flesh color of the wood.  It seems more organic, less stick-ish.  It's also shorter than average: fourteen inches is closer to average, and sixteen is common.  When my conductor friend Matt rolled his eyes at my twelve-incher, I said, "What?!  It's cute!"  He said "sure, for you, but I'd look downright silly holding that."  He's right.  He's six-foot-five, and proportion matters.

I should talk about proportion some day.

Back to some baton basic facts: wood is the most common baton material, though it's often painted white.  Most baton handles are wood, though you can get them in a lightweight metal from some companies, and others make a cork handle, which is also good for preventing oxidation in that bottle of wine you didn't finish.  A good quality, expensive baton will be balanced like a knife, where the handle weighs about the same as the blade (shaft), so that you don't feel the weight of it in your hand.  It won't warp quickly, though eventually it will probably develop a curve that's weird and distracting and you'll have to replace it.  So some batons are fiberglass.

So, should a conductor use a baton?

Maybe.

Last week, I attended the performance of the University of Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, directed by Dr. Jeffrey Renshaw.  About a hundred measures from the end of the final movement of the Chaikovsky Fifth Symphony, the tip of Dr. Renshaw's baton caught in the binding of his score, sending the baton end over end onto the floor in front of the second violins.  He shook his head to himself (probably the only people in the audience who noticed this were the other conductors) and finished the piece with his hands.

My musicologist friend Heather came to my office to read me Arturo's Baton, a children's book in which the brilliant conductor Arturo loses his baton and doesn't know what to do.  (SPOILER ALERT!)  Somehow, it doesn't even occur to him until the last three pages that the baton isn't the conductor, he is, and that he'll do fine without it.  Which he does.  Then he finds the baton in his sock drawer or something.

Should a conductor use a baton?  Yes.  Except when he shouldn't.  Or doesn't want to.  Or loses it.  Or flings it across the stage by accident.

The point is, the baton doesn't matter.  But it's a nice option.

anatomy of a conductor: arms

Anatomy is a big deal for a conductor.  Because we're athletes, dontcha know.  Which parts of your body go where, and having a sense of how they move, how big they are, how much they weigh, how they are perceived by others when still and in motion... we need to know these things.

Arms and arm-waving are the things most readily associated with conducting, so I'll talk about arms first.  But before that, let's get one thing straight: there are joints and there are bones, places that move and places that don't.  Ideas about areas of the body sometimes get confused with actual anatomy, and we need to be clear about this.  The concept of a "shoulder," for example, is vague.  A "broad shouldered" individual might be thought to have a wide expanse between his neck and his arm, but that expanse is, itself, not shoulder.  The shoulder is the point where the clavicle and scapula come together at the humerus, where the sleeve is attached to the shirt.  The expanse in between shoulder and neck, as far as a conductor is concerned, is still arm.  A public domain image from our good friend Wikipedia...

So, your arm starts where the clavicle meets the sternum in the front of the body, and in the back at the scapula.  Then the scapula and clavicle come together at the shoulder, where they meet the humerus.

The shoulder is a ball and socket joint, very simple and limited in its flexibility only by muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

The humerus is a thick, heavy bone.

The elbow is the joint between the humerus and radius/ulna (the two bones in the forearm). It is a hinge joint that also allows for the rotation of the forearm.

 If you stick your hand out in front you, palm down, the ulna is the bone on the outside of your forearm, and the radius moves when you turn your hand.  The ulna is heavier and straighter while the radius is slightly more delicate.

The bones of the forearm meet the bones of your hand at the wrist.  The wrist is a complicated joint which allows your forearm to rotate, your hand to hinge up and down, and also lateral motion.

The hand itself is made up of many bones, but the important part for conductors the joints in your fingers.

Each joint is a place where movement can occur, and movement from each joint is perceived differently because of the size, scope, and weight inherent in movement from that joint.  Fingers only: delicate, light.  Elbow only: heavier, stiffer.  Shoulder only: very weird and Nazi-ish.

In general, people know that big gestures are for loud sounds and small gestures are for quiet sounds.  This isn't just an arbitrary decision.  To move your whole arm very quickly requires a lot of energy, so an ensemble will respond to a large, fast-moving gesture by playing with more energy.  Putting lots of energy into a small motion is trickier, just like playing softly but intensely doesn't come easily to beginning musicians.  But it can be done.

Hand position is somewhat controversial.  I know one conductor who insists that a conductor should always keep his hand sideways, palm in.  But most conductors want flexibility, and hand position has a lot of influence on tone.  A flat, wide hand suggests breadth.  A rounded hand suggests space and warmth.  A pointed shape (just one finger out, or a sort of "okay" sign) suggests focus.  

When you put a baton in your hand, it removes some of those options from your dominant hand, but gives you another possible joint and another way of moving.  A baton has no muscle of its own, and learning to include it in your arm takes some practice.  But batons are a whole other post.