Are you a sassy motherfucker @discobot fortune
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Better not tell you now
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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
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All very useful and interesting, thanks.
Just a question on this bit.
Does it mean there is no ‘correct’ way to play a piece of orchestral music? Is it all open to interpretation? Is this because there was no recording device around for a lot of the times when these pieces were composed – i.e. it requires interpretation as there is no definitive record from the composer?
If you want a perfect example of discobot’s sass, look no further than the first dozen or so posts here
The bastard is solidly refusing to let on what he knows.
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Yep. At university I lived with the lad who was conductor of the university orchestra and got a lot of conductor bants in with him. Really interesting the job of a conductor actually. And for complex pieces it’s a hell of a lot of work.
In our final year the university orchestra’s recital was Gustav Holst’s The Planets in its entirety. I think anyway, might be wrong on it being ALL of them. But yeah in any case him doing that + his finals at the same time practically destroyed him.
yeah and even if there’s recordings like there are with more modern composers like stravinsky you can still do what you want, just like a faithful cover version in pop music will be different in certain ways
also across music history music has increasingly been written with more specific directions - a lot of baroque music is literally just the notes so no markings for dynamics, tempo, articulation etc.
and even with all that included on paper, there’s a lot of possible variation, if it says a piece should be played slowly, without a specific metronome marking two conductors will play the passage at very different speeds
as @GEOFF says it’s a lot of work
if you know anyone that studied music to a high level, ask if they’ve ever tried conducting an orchestra, even for a super good musician, the first time anyone tries it it’s pretty much impossible
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Yeah you have to know a piece you are conducting inside out as well. That’s a lot of work in itself.
Also you’ve got to have a pretty strong character to reach the highest level. Imagine being alone on the podium with the Royal Philharmonic bearing down in front of you.
To understand what conductors do my mate sat me down and made me listen to 2 recordings of Barber’s Adagio for Strings. One conducted by Leonard Bernstein and one by someone else. Pretty clear difference.
there was a reality show a while back where various celebs tried to become conductors, hadn’t realised how difficult it was until I saw them all suck at it. goldie was really good at it iirc
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This is what I need to do too
Is there a particular meaning behind the upside down smiley 
? Does it just mean a sad face, or maybe a sort of sarcastic lol?
It’s for when Theo is happy.
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Haven’t seen him for ages 
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The violinists are not happy, it’s all gonna kick off!
A while back I tried to find the perfect version of the first part of Thus Spake Zarathustra (i.e. the bit that’s in 2001), must have listened to about ten different versions, none of them sound the same and most annoyingly none of them sound like the version I have in my head. I must have got it from somewhere!
Some versions are too fast, and some the BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM of the timpani drum is not loud enough in comparison to the other parts. It’s only about two minutes and it’s amazing how different each version sounds.
the recording will also effect this, some orchestral recordings will be done in a concert hall, some in a studio, some will be pro recordings with lots of microphones some might be a single mic… but whereas for pop tunes there’s normally one defining version that’s easily found for classical pieces there’s gonna loads of recordings of differing quality even from the same orchestra and/or same conductor!
if you’re trying to find something from a film or advert, it’s always best to google to find the specific recording, for famous film music it’ll normally be fairly easy to find from wiki or whatever
I think I did, but the version they used in 2001 still doesn’t sound like the version I have in my head. I would have heard it other places as well, or maybe the version in my head is an amalgamation of all the ones I’ve heard.
Similar I suppose to how you can be very familiar with a studio recording and then hear a demo and it sounds absolutely awful even though it is essentially the same song.
yeah small changes can feel massive
like remember how the new Metallica tunes in Guitar Hero were less compressed than on the official album and people actually noticed?