Undergraduate Choral Conducting Blog

I wanted to get my thoughts down while they are still fresh. In terms of my own conducting, I feel like I made definite progress. I took Andrew's advice and decided to concentrate on a few areas rather than trying to incorporate too many details too early. I am finding (and others agreed) that when I really concentrate on one aspect of conducting (my right-hand legato pattern for example), other aspects of my conducting suffer (breathing, cues, eye contact, etc.). I imagine that conducting is like learning an instrument in many ways. That is, practice is the only way to make parts of conducting automatic. I felt that a bit today in that I found that as I practiced my right hand pattern more, it became more embedded in my muscle memory and I didn't have to think about it quite as much. This freed me up to pay more attention to the cues.
A few practical things that I tried to incorporate that I think went a long way were: 1) I really studied the score and felt very comfortable with the interaction of the parts. Instead of relying on the score as I did last time (at the expense of eye contact), I didn't use the score. I felt the connection to the choir was much stronger without the "barrier". Psychologically, I suppose, it may have conveyed confidence in the score as well. 2) I tried to focus more on eye contact for the entrances, using my left hand only a little. This also made me more connected to the choir and that they were really following me. 3) I tried to make my pattern smaller. I was able to keep control much better this way. Andrew had a very good point today about saving gestures "outside the box" for special moments. It's hard to impart emphasis if the pattern is so large that there is nowhere to go!

I was impressed by the progress of my classmates as well. It's obvious that everyone really practiced and took the feedback to heart. I was also encouraged that some of us are making the same mistakes! I didn't feel so alone knowing that I'm not the only one to have too much motion in my wrist.

From this exercise, I have some great areas to work on. I'm going to work on keeping my wrist more flat so as not to obscure the beat, keeping my pattern more horizontal, and breathing! I think as I become more relaxed, that will come more easily. I still feel pretty tensed up!