Optimally, the conductor's attentive consciousness is focused on the sounds: all the sounds, all the time. This means allowing all the sounds occurring at a given moment to register fully in the consciousness. And it means maintaining the entire continuum of sounds of the entire movement in the same conscious act; in other words, opening the consciousness to allow the already sounded tones and the tones not yet sounded to give meaning to the presently experienced ones. In short, the conductor is most effective who can free the mind from thoughts of any kind extraneous to the sounds and, with a freed mind, hear everything.

Tempo

Our ability to hear everything—to encompass all the simultaneously sounding tones as well as the entire continuum of sounded tones in a single act of consciousness—is very much affected by the tempo. Tempo, not the speed but the quality of motion, is an essential condition under which we experience the sounds. The quality (essential nature) of the motion is a function of the quantity of information processed in a given amount of time: the more information, the faster the quality of motion; the less information, the slower the quality of motion.

Note that tempo is closely related to—but fundamentally different from—speed. Speed is a quantifiable element of the physical world; tempo—quality of motion—is perceived. Consider riding a bicycle at thirty-five miles per hour over a bumpy road and driving a luxury car with the windows closed at sixty-five miles per hour on a highway. The bike ride is quantifiably slower than the drive, yet it feels faster. Consider a passage performed soft ly by a string quartet outdoors at a speed of seventy-two quarter notes per minute and the same passage played forcefully by a trombone choir in a small, resonant room at sixty-nine quarter notes per minute. The sounds from the string quartet dissipate; they are not loud to begin with, and they strike our ears a limited number of times as the sound waves continue out with limited or no reflection. The louder sounds from the trombones reach our ears numerous times as they bounce back and forth off the walls.