Ideas and Quotes from Carolyn Barber:

• For program notes: Why are the pieces in this order? How do they inform each other?
Connect the pieces. Make sure to have a conversational flow even when citing sources.

• An ensemble is a “complex adaptive system” more like a flock of birds than a plane.
They move in “non-chaotic, non-static patterns.” They follow these three rules:

• Separation (maintain individual point of view)

• Alignment (stay within pulse and texture)

• Cohesion (adjust intonation)

• 4 essential skills for conductors:

• 1: perceive the intentional set of energies

• 2: understand the relationships of those energies

• 3: imbue those relationships with meaning

• 4: intentionally convey that meaning to an audience

• The Love-Fear continuum (love at the top, fear at the bottom):

• Peace

• Acceptance

• Reason

• Willingness

• Courage

• Pride

• Anger
• Grief

• Guilt

• Shame

• “Be the beachball” in the love-fear continuum—continually rise to the top, no matter
how much someone may try to push you under into the water.

• “First you see, then you do.” Therefore, let your ensemble see good.
• Mirror neurons help explain why conducting works—when people see things, they
respond and relate to them in a degree as if they were happening to themselves, both

physically and emotionally.

• Scientific Method:Sciences::Creative Process:Arts

• Culture comes from imitation. “What are we sending out?” It will come back at us.

• If you are a mechanic and the ensemble is a car, then you are not trying to fix the car, you
are trying to build a car that fixes itself.

• Ensemble Game: Leader, Imitator:

• 1. Person A says 5 letters of the alphabet in any way

• 2. Person B imitates Person A.

• 3. The ensemble critiques person B’s imitation.

• 4. Repeat steps 1-3.

• 5. Expand to musical activities.

• It is better to play great music poorly than crappy music well.

• The selection of repertoire creates an atmosphere of expectations.

• Find a partnership between conductor and ensemble.

• People respond to your humanness before your conductorness.

• “Who are you? Who are they [the ensemble]? Find each other.”

• Working with an ensemble:

• Know yourself.

• Guess at the goals of the ensemble.

• At the beginning: what is the ensemble hearing? If good, move forward. If not, go back.
• What you do first with an ensemble presents a set of expectations.

• Get group feeling early—we can do things differently as a group.

• “Trying to do what the best musicians I’ve heard and know…I’m trying to do what they
do all the time” (artistry)

• Expression before technique.

• When placing blame, “It’s not the ensemble, it’s you.”

• Knowing each other is not the same thing as trust.
• Sonic cheerleading encourages less experienced players to hide in the bigger sound of
others.

• It is ok to sacrifice short-term sound quality for long-term ensemble interconnectedness.

• Disagreement is healthy—trust each other not to be offended.

• Eye contact between ensemble members can indicate ensemble trust.

• “What you are doing is what you are doing when you are doing it.”

• Accept things (like nervousness) instead of fighting them or working against them. “Hey
nervous! You’re here! We’re gonna do something exciting!”

• “Find you best self and cultivate that.”

• You don’t earn trust: if you want someone to trust you, you have to go first.

• Commissioning:
• Be reciprocal and friendly; open

• Talk to people who have commissioned a piece by the composer in the past.

• Price

• Difficulty

• Instrumentation

• Consortiums are a thing

• Funding sources—multiple (e.g., UNL Band Fund, Alumni Association Fund, Grant
Fund)

• Eye contact through preps—before, during, AND after

• Neutral—ready to convey a point of view but not yet doing it.

• Don’t use the “elephant tusk” 2 pattern—instead use a jagged “check mark” pattern.
• Each beat on the focal plane with a clear ictus (which is at the tip of the baton)

• A dead beat has no rebound.

• Strategies for articulations: corners, face, left hand.

• Change your own energy with the understanding that the ensemble’s energy change will
lag.

• Socio-musical ensemble diagnosis:

• Trees—rooted to their spot; be gentle and apply consistent pressure (they’ll start to
bend over time. Transplanting is another option)
 • Puppies—tons of energy; no focus; give them a ball to play with—a constant,
interesting goal to work toward

• Sheep—shy, self-conscious

• Cows—in a herd, inquisitive, not as scared. There is usually a leader cow.

• Bees—workers and queen (conductor); work independently; conductor gives

directions, members follow them.

• Birds—work together, shared leadership, intuitive decision-making.

• Clurman questions:

• 1. Who are you (your character)?: basic sense (e.g., bassoon), individual sense
(individual characteristics), general role, piece-specific role

• 2. What do you want (or need)?

• 3. How are you going to get it?

• Plant question in the ensemble OR redirect to ensemble members (encourages self-

repairing)

• If actors in a play only think about their own issues, it’s a boring performance.
Interactions create the excitement.

• “Guessing is good” and can lead to “spectacular wipeouts” for the ensemble.

• Prep the first rehearsal to direct the overarching scheme of the semester plan—what is
the ensemble like? what are the technical-musical goals for the semester? How do you

deal with those ideas at the same time?

• “If you can play one note, play it really well.”

• Brass dynamic control:

• speed of air

• volume of air

• size of aperture

• Percussion dynamic control:

• location of strike on head

• velocity of the stick

• focus with the hand (piano—fulcrum; forte—whole hand)

• Woodwind dynamic control:

 • Double reeds: speed of air, oral cavity, loud/soft fingerings

• Clarinet and sax: speed of air, temperature of air: altissimo—colder, lower—warmer

• Flute: aperture size

• Helping instrumentalists to sing:

• Don’t give them time to get worried about it

• Imagery: stick through the head left-right and front-back

• Move away from chest resonance

• Move the sound forward (with focus)

• Feeling vibrations to encourage tone production:

• What’s vibrating? (air, lips, reed, head, membrane, string)

• How can you change that vibration? (vowel shape, bow technique, resonance points,
location of percussion contact)

• “We all have a protection zone” -David Maslanka


“Can we make it permeable so we can step through it?” -Dr. Barber

• Composers write in various styles (novel, short story, textbook, instruction manual).
Even if you’re conducting a “textbook” style piece of music, the job remains the same,

and part of that job is to bring the piece to life. It can be done.

• “Start with bad sounds, and you’ll make them into good sounds eventually.”

• Formula for movement (from Schwiebert):

• Intention (in the present)

• Joints available

• Body follows weight shifts

• Self-consciousness blocks our ability to perform. Self-awareness frees us up to perform.

• We cannot control our microexpressions, so the only way for us to effectively

communicate emotions and characters is to actually feel them (like great actors).

• The face follows. It does not lead. The face is a byproduct of the expression.

• Gradations of response to undesirable sounds:

• Did you hear that, too?

• Make connection early and give information.

• “Could you change that please?”

 • “No.”

• Cues are not communicating an expression, they’re provoking a response.

• Cause the music to sound like it sounds, don’t look like the music sounds—it’s already
too late for that.

• Sound is motion. Looking at the score (which is fixed), takes you out of that.

• If you’re being drawn into first or third circle by something, soften your focus. “Waist-
deep in a pool filled with beach balls.”

• Be aware of what you’re doing, but you can’t do anything about it in the moment. Our
responsibility in the moment is to the sound.

• Practice finding options to mitigate the “should.”

• Don’t look like a conductor. Look like yourself in the context of the piece.
• Larry Livingston: Conducting Philosophies

• Conductors need:

• Conviction

• Absolute knowledge of the score

• To be the music!

• “Gestures ought to be the birthchildren of the music, not the other way around.”

• “Technique is secondary, and primary is to inflect the music.”

• “Invest in loss.” Understand that often times we have to lose many times to figure out
why we are losing, and then we can win. You become a more efficient learner when

you invest in loss.