Closer look at the Score

I wrote in my blog Kuki no Sukima – Starting the performance:

“This has also led to the conclusion that I have to change the order of the button so that the index finger (button 2) is not used for metronome setting but rather for start/stop messages. The middle finger (button 3) will be used for jumping forward messages and ring finger (button 4) for the metronome setting. That should give a bit more natural finger combination since most of the indications are start/stop (2nd button), jump forward (3rd button) and metronome setting (4th button)”.

These changes did not work mainly since the conductor did not like to change settings that she already had realized. Hence back to the original layout.

The volume problem that I did write about in the same blog, i.e. how to set the volume to a sudden value at the beginning of the piece was solved by giving the conductor two measures to activate the volume control  as 

This solution seemed to work very well since it:

  1. gave the conductor more confidence adjusting the electronic volume
  2. gave the opening a bit more breath or space to open up
  3. showed clearly the use of ConDiS
  4. aesthetically more graceful opening

The other changes that were made from the first performance were that now the conductor gives a start playing sign by clicking 3rd button on the first downbeat before clicking the 2nd button four times to set the metronome.

This solution worked very well and seemed to be almost foolproof since there was no problem starting the performance with synchronization right at the beginning but unfortunately there were few instances that the metronome gave a wrong message that had to be corrected manually. What causes this failure is still a mystery but did happen several times when the conductor had to indicate tempo changes. Something that has to be corrected and might be a loose wire contact with the 2nd button.

When the electronic volume value has been set the conductor deactivates her control by open up her fist as shown in next example: 

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