[HN Gopher] Eye contact between musicians
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Eye contact between musicians
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-05-31 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.classical-music.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.classical-music.com)
| klelatti wrote:
| The Bernstein clip is fun but for an example of how much a
| conductor can communicate with their eyes (as well as with
| supremely expressive physical gestures) there is no better
| example than Carlos Kleiber. From ecstatic climaxes to sections
| of extreme relaxation it's a remarkable example of the art of
| conducting.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d3-jlAamGCE
| chenxi9649 wrote:
| We feel more awkwardness in audio calls than video calls and more
| awk in video calls than physical meetings because at each medium
| we're losing important contextual cues that act as lubricants to
| our conversation.
|
| A gentle "slap on knee" while sitting can signal to the other
| person that you're ready to leave the conversation.
|
| Starring elsewhere while listening can be a sign of "thinking" or
| "distraction" depending on how your eyes are moving.
|
| In a text-dominant world, where all of these contextual cues are
| lacking, we tend to interpret people's messages in the most
| negative way possible. (Snapchat solves this w/ images, teens
| abuse emojis to solve this, voice msg are becoming more of a
| thing)
|
| I do think we can incorporate a large chunk of these contextual
| cues digitally to make digital interactions smoother! Even
| without VR.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Visual interactions offer increased bandwidth in communication,
| but in a work exchange I find that bandwidth useless to harmful
| compared to, say, the intricate process of playing musical
| instruments in more than perfect sync.
|
| Video calls are additionally worse, the extra input is almost
| pure noise and cannot even help you read the room to show if a
| person is distracted when their "listen attentively", "glance
| on their watch" and "just do something else entirely" are
| exactly the same. I find it much easier to distinguish with
| pure audio and no distractions.
|
| Having to use video for work makes me feel as if I was in
| webcam business, though I admit it is useful in more sensitive
| meetings where you want to visually confirm participants.
| alecst wrote:
| I feel most awkward in video calls for what it's worth. I find
| audio really natural.
| saghm wrote:
| Audio calls mostly just feel like phone calls to me, except
| without having to hold a phone up to my ear. Even if I'm
| using Discord or Slack or some company-specific thing, audio
| calls trigger "muscle memory" that I've built up my whole
| life. Video calls are much more novel to me; I rarely ever
| did it before covid, and although it now is a bit more
| natural, it'll be a long time until it feels as "normal" as
| audio calls for me.
| dang wrote:
| Gram Parsons talks about eye contact at the end of this classic
| clip about how he met Emmylou Harris:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BentUYX_OyA
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| "... maybe that makes eye contact the very essence of music."
| ...tell that to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder!
| Fellshard wrote:
| It's definitely too far a stretch to place it at the center -
| but for those who have experienced it, it is definitely a part
| of musical performance /for them/, and a not-insignificant
| part.
|
| There might also be some unexplored areas in this article, with
| regards to the role of eye contact in /improv/, especially jazz
| improv and the like. There's a lot more communication that
| occurs both through instruments and non-verbal cues in that
| setting.
|
| When I've played keyboard in a group setting, I've noticed I'll
| use eye contact to let someone know that we're feeling out-of-
| sync - perhaps in tempo, for less experienced groups, or to
| mark a chord transition or harmonic opportunity they're
| missing, or to encourage them to push a bit more in a section
| where they're withdrawing too much.
| Splendor wrote:
| Maybe this is just a sign of working in a technical field for
| too long, but my mind always jumps to counterexamples first. So
| I was surprised they didn't even acknowledge the existence of
| blind musicians.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| In a tight band the bassist and drummer are really one creature
| with four arms and legs. Try putting the drummer in a drum room
| and the bassist in the control room so the glass is between them,
| and hear it all go to crap.
| zwieback wrote:
| Is it eye contact or seeing the drummer, though? Or maybe even
| feeling the bass drum, not sure. I'm going to guess that seeing
| the drum sticks would be helpful too.
|
| Probably a separate skill set, I'm sure a good studio musician
| knows how to do great with headphones on their head. I'm a bass
| player myself but rarely do any recording so I'm crap at it but
| I'm sure I could learn.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There are a lot of channels of communication, but a lot of it
| is driven by the drummer. Had fun irritating the band
| director in high school sometimes by pushing silly tempos
| getting everyone to follow a few drummers, you get the sense
| of how much you can push and then everybody just follows you.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| When people talk about conductors and what they do, it's almost
| always "what do they do in the concert?" They'll say,
| disparagingly, "hey, the musicians know how to keep time."
|
| Not _quite_ true, but anyway, what that ignores is that they give
| the orchestra (and chorus, which was where I was) directions _in
| rehearsal_ , and the eye and hand gestures during the concert are
| references to that.
|
| So in rehearsal they stop and point to the horns and say "I want
| you to crescendo / decrescendo here" and have them do it until
| good. The horns mark it in their scores.
|
| Then in the concert, the conductor just points, and the horns see
| the pencil marks on their scores and do it.
| zwieback wrote:
| Definitely true in the (school) orchestras I played in.
| However, a friend who plays in a orchestra where they bring in
| high-end soloists told me that they don't really rehearse
| together more than an hour or two. In those cases I imagine the
| conductor has to do a bit more to coordinate in real time.
| Maybe a little glaring when the trumpets play too loud or
| something.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The musicians can't easily keep time. Not because they're bad
| at their jobs, but because sound travels so slowly there's an
| appreciable delay between the different sections of the
| orchestra. (50 ms for a smaller hall, up to 100 ms for a giant
| Mahlerian monster orchestra in a large space.)
|
| Those are not small delays. The speed of light is slightly
| faster, so having someone at the front indicating time keeps
| everything together.
|
| The pointing and gesticulating aren't limited to prepared
| rehearsal notes. Rehearsal notes certainly happen, but apart
| from keeping time, the conductor's job is to define the mood
| and emotional valence, moment to moment. This may be somewhat
| improvised, within limits.
|
| Orchestras typically play somewhat behind the indicated beat
| because it allows for more expression.
|
| There's also a lot of business-related admin - dealing with
| absences, holding auditions for new members, contributing to
| program scheduling, reading and possibly writing feedback notes
| to/from various interested parties, and so on.
|
| Every once in a while a smaller orchestra will try to manage
| without a conductor. While the results are usually workable -
| professional musicians are very good at their jobs - they're
| not _great._
| exabrial wrote:
| Hah, I found playing in my band with a mask on made us really
| suck on improv sections. I never realized how much we relied upon
| it.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Huh... that makes me thing... how do Ghost do it?
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