What's the conductor doing? Getting ahead of the clock (7,4)

'what's the conductor' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether this works.

'doing? getting ahead of the clock' is the wordplay.
'doing? getting' becomes 'beating' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ahead of' means one lot of letters go next to another (some letters go in front of others).
'the clock' becomes 'time' (time clock is a kind of clock).
'beating'+'time'='BEATING TIME'

Can you help me to learn more?