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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

I think eye contact is probably more important in most non-classical genres. Everything in a (modern) classical performance is very rehearsed. Deviating from the score is unheard of. Interpretation is one thing, but never do they decide to throw in a bass solo.

In pop/rock/funk/blues/jazz/country/folk/metal/everything, it's common for a band's instructions to be "sit on this 2-bar vamp until i give a signal". And that signal needs eye contact to acknowledge the receipt.

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I play classical and jazz (which extends to every other genre), and while I think eye contact is somewhat overrated, it is so vastly more important to establish communication "out of the page" in classical music due to the many many more ritardandos, accelerandos, tempo changes, subdivision changes, meter changes, cessuras, fermatas, and the list goes on, all not uncommonly happening in the same movement of a larger work. The only genre that could exceeds what classical music requires would have to be the many more rhythmically complex world music traditions. What I see on a daily basis in popular music or even jazz doesn't hold a candle to any of those.

> Interpretation is one thing, but never do they decide to throw in a bass solo.

I'm now imagining the conductor in the middle of a Bach concerto calling out "Take me to the bridge" and pointing to the 1st trumpet player for a solo.

Not quite classical, but I was in a community band once where one of the trombones forgot about a repeat, and was loud and confident enough that everyone else just followed. (playing Sousa)

Not far from the truth: IIRC, Baroque concerto cadenzas were often improvised.

Great example of it when Mogwai perform 'Mogwai Fear Satan'. There's a point in the song where it gets extremely quiet before bursting into a wall of noise.

If you watch the video https://youtu.be/FEwnhjItTSs?t=477 from 7m57s you can see them all start to signal to each other to get ready and then 20 seconds later it happens.

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