Conducting Video Lesson: Ultimate Beat Patterns

Hello everyone, my name is Adrian Casas. I'm a violinist and conductor from Regina Canada, and we are here today to talk about the ultimate beat patterns. So when you study music probably very early on in your musical studies, you are given these graphics and they are supposed to mean 4/4, 3/4, or 2/4 and you will see some arrows going down and up, and going left and right. They are supposed to mean that each direction of the arrows is supposed to be one of the beats. Right. Now, there is nothing wrong with that graphic. However, it's very meaty. You will only get one kind of sonority with that graphic. If you look at one of my previous videos where I talk about the beat, it would probably give you an idea how adding acceleration and deceleration into the beat point can actually give you better control of the kind of sonority that you will have in a beat pattern.

So therefore by adding a saturation and these iteration into the beat pattern, you will have better control of this sonority that you would want from your ensemble. Let's take for example, a 4/4 pattern so rather than sticking to a linear motion you can add acceleration and deceleration. So acceleration, culminate into the beat, into the conducting plane decelerate after you come out of the beat point. Now, the smoother the motion, and the more even your speed, the smoother is going to be the quality of the sound that you're going to get.

On the other hand the sharper the motion, the harsher, or the faster, or the stronger the attack you're going to get on each beat. Same idea will apply for a 3/4 or a 3 weak pattern and not 2 weak pattern. One more thing I want to invite you to consider is the 3/4 pattern. Usually you get beat 1 going down beat 2 going out and beat 3 coming back up. Now, there is nothing wrong with that big pattern, except that it will give you a very hierarchal beat 1. So the strongest speed would be on beat 1. However, if you want to have a smoother motion, perhaps you're trying to conduct a compartment line where you want the metal of the acompanying line to be as smooth as possible. You're welcome to come inside of your voice. So rather than going 1, 2, 3 will give you a strong one.

You can go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, a similar idea will apply for the 2/4 beat. So usually you get out one very strong 1 beat, and then a weaker beat 2. And again, there is nothing wrong with that idea, but if you want those two weaks to be a little bit more you're welcome to have them a bit more symmetrical so the after point can be exactly at the same level.

So if you like these ideas, you can go ahead and try it with your ensemble and see how it respond. Thank you very much for watching, stay safe.

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