Teaching specific motor skills for conducting to young music students

This report describes a specific technique which enables young music students to acquire basic motor skills essential for conducting. 18 adolescents ranging in age from 10 to 17 yr. were trained for one school year (about 9 months) to improve their manual motor performance. The systematic training, entitled preconducting, consisted of performing various repetitive combinations of certain continuous and punctuated, circular and linear movements, with the aim of making these skills as automatic as possible. The motor achievements were analyzed qualitatively and success depended more on motivation and daily practice than on age, sex, or handedness.