Third freelance project after going solo in July 2023, I built the exact same accordion component from scratch again. Third time that month, slightly different each time because I was rebuilding instead of reusing.
That project took two extra days I didn't have, redoing spacing...
A conductor almost never keeps perfectly even time.
Rubato, "robbed time," lets a phrase stretch a beat longer on the way up and compress on the way down, so the music breathes instead of ticking like a metronome. The catch: by the end of the phrase, the orchestra has to land...