Testing a symphony orchestra

2013-02-03
2 min read

I recently went to hear the LSO perform at their residence within the Barbican centre. The full complement of 91 people performed 3 classical pieces and 3 more “movie soundtrack” kind of pieces as a friend called them.
Half way into the first piece I started thinking of an analogy between the musical system that was the orchestra and a run of the mill system. First question that came to mind was how would you go about testing something as complex as this.
Now you experts out there would probably say in an instant, that the musicality matters the most i.e. if it’s easy on the ear then probably the system is working well. Since I’m no expert and don’t possess such finely tuned measurement tool I took a different approach.
My first idea was to grab a pen and write every idea that comes to mind. The programme got quite a beating. The intention was to then bring all those random ideas under the umbrella of a mind map. Enter mindmup, a tool that a colleague suggested some time a go. It’s free and, as any other self respecting projects out there, it’s online. And just to top it all up it’s now open source.
So here’s what I gathered while listening to the LSO performing Enescu’s Rhapsody No. 1

Strategy for testing a symphony orchestra