Written by:Rob Archibald
10/13/2008 7:42 AM

If I had to describe my goals for myself over the next year as a conductor it would be to improve my level of preparation for each and every rehearsal which, of course, leads to being better prepared at performance for both me and the ensemble.  Perhaps it is self-evident to everyone reading this why preparation is important, but it has been such a battle to actually accomplish for a very long time.  In addition to my job as a conductor, I also am a a father of 5 very active little boys, software engineer at Intel, Sunday School teacher at church, was working on my Masters in Music and tried for about a year to start a new business.  It's been an uphill battle for years, but I hope I've finally arrived at a point where I can focus a lot more time on my preparation.  My Masters is finally almost done and I've given up on the new business idea for a number of reasons.  Needless to say, I feel really good about the change.  For the last few weeks I've been able to devote probably 5 times the number of hours that I was devoting to preparation as before.  It's much more fun.

For me, the ultimate goals I have in mind as I'm preparing for rehearsals is to bring a new level of perfection to the ensemble.  When I really know the music and have developed gesture and pedagogy to elicit the musical response I'm looking for, I have to spend far less time talking to explain what I'm looking for.  Everything from warm-ups to rehearsal pacing to cementing a picture in the musician's minds of what the finished product will be like goes better.  So, for me at least, it is the most practical aspects of preparation that will directly affect the ensemble that are the most important.  

To me, being fully prepared before even the first rehearsal is to:

1. Know the music you're conducting. 
   1. How the music fits together including the form and function of the piece and its respective sections
   2. Tough spots for the musicians in the ensemble to balance, tune, execute technically or otherwise (can vary greatly depending on the makeup of the ensemble)
   3. Understand which voice or instrument has what role throughout the piece.  Are sopranos carrying the melody throughout?  Is the music that the violas play at square A an accompaniment or foreground?
   4. Historical context... particularly as it pertains to the performance
2. Mark the score as needed to ensure that you'll remember what you learned in #1
   1. Make important pieces of information (including cues, dynamics, tempo changes, etc) visible at 5 feet or it's nearly worthless.  Because the conductor has their eyes and ears on so many things during rehearsal and performance, only the stuff that jumps off the page will be visible.  Be careful not to mark too much or it just looks like a mess.
   2. Use colors, and be consistent with whatever you use.  My colors are a summation of several ideas from different teachers over the years.  Blue and red for me represent dynamics.  Blue (or cold) is for everything mp and softer.  Red (or hot) is for everything mf and louder.  Yellow represents tempo changes (such as a rit.) and green is for structural changes.  I've been toying with the idea of another color for entrances and other cues, but I haven't started that yet.
3. Practice conducting the score based on #2 and #1
   1. Take time to experiment with or think of gestures that match the type of sound that you want to achieve in each measure of the piece.  Seek out gestures that naturally invite the musician to sing or play in exactly the way that you are seeking without saying a word
   2. Practice conducting the piece without any ensemble.  Be comfortable air conducting.  Practice cueing, breathing, looking, etc. in the location of where each musician is in relation to you so that muscle memory rather than cognitive thinking can be called upon for gestures in rehearsal & performance (the less cognitive thinking that you can use for gesture production, the more you'll have available to respond to what you're getting from the musicians during rehearsal & performance).

While in many ways this is an over-simplification of the preparation of the conductor, these are the areas of preparation that I'm excited to work on over the next year or so.  I look forward to having a lot more fun at rehearsal and being able to help the ensembles I direct make much better music.

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