Comment by estimator7292

Conducting an orchestra is not a mechanical activity. In many/most cases, the conductor is doing a live mix of the piece. They control the tempo of the whole orchestea, the volume and accent of different sections and players. They cue in percussion and embellishments. A conductor must know and fully understand the entire score being played. That's upward of a dozen musical threads peing played by 20, 30 people all at once. A conductor's job is to hear each one of these threads individually and simultaneously to shape the music into the final performance they want.

If a conductor's job can be reduced to a metronome, why hasn't it? I've had a credit card sized metronome in my instrument case for 15 years. Most professional musicians carry metronomes. We've had perfectly accurate metronomes for something like 500 years, so why is "conductor" a profession at all?