The use of conducting patterns is a convention for a orchestra and concert band conductor. They used to form the stating for conductor courses. Today, there is less emphasis in maintaining the shapes in favour of more expressive gestures.

The conducting patterns have standard designs for one in a bar, duple, triple, quadruple, pentuple, sextuple, septuple, octuple metres. Each will have variations as determined by the style, tempo and rhythmic grouping of the music.

There are several animated graphics that illustrate the shape of conducting patterns. The following are apps and website locations with animated graphics.

Maestro – an app for iPhone, iPad, Mac by Patrick Q. Kelly from iTunes or the author Patrick Kelley’s website

Animated conducting gestures for duple, triple, quadruple and sextuple metres were created by the Department of Media and Technology, University of Saskatchewan located on Wayne Toews’ website

Animated graphics are being developed to give more exact description of the motion of acceleration and deceleration between beats, and allow the user to change the amount of acceleration, tempo,  positions of beat points and the shapes of path between beats. Click on the Animated Graphics of Conducting patterns and Gestures page to see more.