[HN Gopher] Eye contact between musicians ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-31 23:00 UTC)