As a conductor you have a lot of challenges when it comes to the use of arms, eyes and in general, the use of body language. Conducting Anatomy is a system that describes the use of your hands and arms in accordance with the actual music you are conducting. On one side you can beat through all the bars in a score, or on the other hand, you can reduce the number of beats to what is necessary in accordance with what happens in the music and dependent on what the musicians really need from you.  Conducting Anatomy helps you to immediately identify what beats are necessary and what you can leave out. Through these exercises, you will obtain a thorough conducting technique, which will help both you and your musicians to obtain common musical goals.  By having an excellent conducting technique, the musicians will have the pleasure of playing during a rehearsal instead of listening to a conductor, having to stop and talk because he or she is unable to show the music with gestures, eyes, and body language. Your rehearsal will be much more efficient, and the musicians will be more satisfied with their working situation. Of course, sometimes you would have to give oral instructions, but the aim would be to reduce the talking in order make music!  Conducting Anatomy rests on three fundamental aspects. The first is the aspect of aesthetical gestures. String players, and largely both wind players and choral singers will prefer responding to sideway movements instead of movements that mostly go up and down. There are various reasons for this:  1. Sideways movements support and initiate a good string sound, due to the similarity to down- and upbows.  2. It is easier for the musicians to identify the various beats in the bar when the conductor is beating sideways, especially for those sitting on the sides and those in the back.  3. Sideways movements emphasize the horizontal lines and support the phrasing of the music.  4. Sideways movements help the conductor in keeping low shoulders, which again helps the musicians keeping low shoulders!  5. Finally, sideways movements draw the attention to the energy between the beats, which is helpful for projecting the inner pulse of the music.  The second aspect is the use of” heavy/light arms”. Using the gravity is an aspect well known to pianists and string players among others and is an important element in obtaining an efficient conducting technique.   Through a set of” falling arms”- exercises, the arms will gradually become an integrated part of the conducting instrument, which in this context refers to the whole body, or everything you are in the moment The third aspect is the number of beats that has to be beaten, or the disposition of beating according to the progression of the musical events in a piece.  The anatomical system opens up for an instinctive understanding of what beats, or I would rather say entries, are necessary to give on one side and on the other side, where in the music the musicians would prefer to play on their own, without interference from the conductor’s beating. At the same time, the "side effect" of the "non-beating performance" implies an even clearer presence from the conductor. I will also get back to this in the description of the anatomical exercises.

This exercise in 4/4 shows two of the main principal elements mentioned earlier, the use of sideways movements and the stopbeats. Referring to the YouTube link above, one can observe that the use of sideways movements is visually clear, and the stop beats occur at the arrival points of the halfnotes (minims). As demonstrated, the sideways movement is a lift away from the previous (inner) pulse station and this lift is clearly apparent from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3. The exercise presents stop beats on either 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th beat during the exercise, and with both hands, mirror wise. The stopbeat “swallows” the visual length of the beat, and the consequence is that the following upbeat starts exactly at the point where the stopbeat arrived. This execution will clarify for the next necessary upbeat.   Note that, when stopping on the 4th beat in the second last bar, the next movement will be an upbeat to the second beat in the last bar. In order to maintain a good sideways movement in the upbeat, it is necessary to straighten the arms from the elbow before going into the second beat in the last bar. Therefore, the arms will move away from each other before coming together in a lifting movement in the upbeat. This movement also helps keeping the shoulders low.