A conducting pattern is a pattern that the orchestra conductor follows with their dominant hand, in order to establish the beats of each measure by conferring a dynamic function on them. One can thus distinguish between a strong beat, a weak beat, and an anacrusis.

Here are these patterns:

Setting beats apart according to their name can be musically motivated and structure the phrasing. Strong beats can thus be stressed or even be played a little longer than weak beats (mazurkas…). However, there are no general rules that apply to all pieces of music: it depends on each piece's aesthetics and time period. Some interpretations or historical reproductions may therefore contradict this organization of strong and weak beats, materialised by the conducting beat patterns. For instance, in a three-beat measure, the first beat is usually considered to be the strong beat. However, during the Baroque era, in many pieces with three-beat measures, the strong beat is the second beat!