That’s because the conductor plays an instrument, not a function, lad: a short, thin stick. You can hear it tapping if the music calls for it, for example it’s likely to be used when a flutist has dozed off and missed their entrance.

If everyone is positioned close together, and they do all their practicing in the same location where they will eventually perform, and they are very well used to each other, and the piece/movement both starts out and ends with just one instrument or voice, and the piece is continuous without any pauses longer than one bar, and there are no fermatas or accelerandos or removedandos, then maybe you can go without a conductor.

Every time you need to start, stop, speed up, slow down, sometimes time change, sometimes volume change, and sometimes for solos, there is a need for coordination.

When I had parts in an orchestra, there were parts where i was supposed to just be quiet for a hundred bars or whatever. Far too long to count, and when youre sitting in your section you only hear the people next to you so i never knew what part of the song we were in. The conductor usually gives a signal when its time to start playing again, even If its just a nod or a look.

they conduct heat and electricity, mostly

As a gamer I can assure you that the conductor can change the direction of the wind

Random info: batons - that stick that conductors wave around - are much more common with orchestras and much less common with choirs. When you’re conducting singers you can also send signals about consonant timing, vowel shapes, and other lyrical aspects that might have more natural representations in hand shapes than baton movements.

Personal style is a huge factor in how you conduct too. Some people are up there yanking their entire body around to every beat and others find that excessive and showy.

Ok think of it this way.

Let’s say that you’re a musician on the furthest left of the orchestra in the hall.

You keep rhythm by listening to the musician next to you.

They listen to the musician next to them.

That musician listens to the musician next to them.

This occurs for 50 to 100 other musicians, all the way to the other side of the hall.

You might be in time with the musician next to you but due to micro differences across each of those musicians listening to the musician next to them, you and the musician on the other side of the hall are totally out of sync with one another.

By looking at a conductor, the entire orchestra has 1 single point of reference for timing, instead of hundreds of different points of reference that lead to different sides of the hall being out of time.

They point at who can fart and not be heard while playing the song

Conductors are for playing music DAWless

the waving stick (called a batonne conduttori) works like a hypnotist’s swinging watch and makes the people holding instruments play the notes. the people holding the instruments (often incorrectly called “musicians” or “performers” due to the vague similarity to members of rock bands or jazz ensembles) don’t know how to play, they’re just sitting there until the conductor waves the thing, and their muscles then enter a fugue state and do the playing.

Timing is the most important job (I was a drummer), especially if there are tempo changes. But another important thing they do is signal for solos and control the different sections’ volumes. They are there to ensure everything goes smoothly and the audience gets the best performance possible.

Props to you for admitting it rather than simply claiming they have no purpose which I see all the time.

The baton is called the baton of the wind, amd it’s an instrument, and you can play music with it that will teleport you to different parts of the world. It’s pretty cool. The conductor magiks away the entire orchestra to the next venue for their next gig

They pull on the little rope that makes the train go CHOO CHOO

electrons flow through the conductor to different instruments of the orchestra