Generally speaking, music is created by these folks:
· Composers/Lyricists/Songwriters write the music
· Arrangers arrange the music
· Musicians play the music
· Engineers record the music
· Producers make decisions about the music (who also can show up during the whole process)
· Mixers make all the instruments blend nicely together
· Mastering Engineers get the final product to meet the standards for distribution
· Then the Distributors get the music out to you.
How many hats is that? Often, one of them will be wearing two hats, or three, or more.
I do everything myself, except for distribution unless you count YouTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or BandLab. But, even then, they’re doing the work. I’m just handing it off to them.
Well, since I’ve lately been doing orchestral pieces (or a sort), there’s one more hat for me to wear:
The Conductor
That’s not an easy job. It’s not just waving your arms until the music stops, then taking a bow. The conductor is also making musical decisions, mainly about tempo and volume. Generally, one hand sets the tempo (the one with the baton in it), and the other controls the volume, focusing the direction on one set of musicians or another (point to the violin section, for instance, and raise or lower that hand to adjust the volume).
Meanwhile, the baton-wielding tempo hand can get into the act as well and set the overall volume of the piece, or even just another section of musicians.
That’s a lot of work. Conductors sweat, flailing around up there in front of the orchestra. It’s not just being dramatic — it’s hard work.
Well. Sitting in my little “studio”, producing an orchestral piece, I have to take on the rôle of Conductor, too.
It’s not a matter of me standing in my room waving my arms around. The computer would completely ignore me doing that, and who could blame it?
Instead, I have to manually set the tempo and volume changes, essentially drawing them in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). If there are many changes, it can get to be a real pain in the butt.
I mean, look at this:
Those are all tempo changes, ‘drawn’ by hand.
And for loudness, there’s this sort of thing:
Those are “expression” changes, also ‘drawn’. Technically, because of their shape in a musical staff, they’re called ‘hairpins’ because of what they look like in a score:
But that doesn’t work when doing it digitally. In a DAW, you have to do what the first image shows. With those, I don’t see a ‘hairpin’. I won’t say what they look like to me. 😉
But, also, ‘expression’ is not just loudness. With many instruments, changing the ‘expression’ also changes the tone of the instrument. Blowing gently in a saxophone does not sound the same as blowing hard into it. So, in actuality, you could have a hard-sounding saxophone played very softly using ‘expression’ and ‘volume’ controls at the same time. Or vice-versa, a very strong sound presented quietly.
I think someone needs to invent a device to control tempo and expression/volume by waving your arms around, conducting. I imagine it as something like how a theremin is controlled, two sensors aware of the positions of your hands, which the values into your DAW.
Yes, you can do it with volume and expression pedals, but it’s more natural to pretend you’re a von Karajan or a Rattle than it is looking like you’re on a stair-stepper.
Go ahead, take my idea and run with it. All I’d want in return is the device, free to me. You can make everyone else pay for it. 😁