Learning Musical Multitasking

I like to play multiple instruments at once, and really enjoy how this
lets me create a fuller musical picture. Sometimes this looks like
mandolin + foot drums + bass whistle: youtube Or guitar + foot bass + singing: youtube Or piano + foot drums + talkbox: youtube People often hear what I'm doing with Kingfisher and ask how it
works, but when I show them they say they couldn't do it because they're not good enough at
multitasking. But I didn't start off being able to do this either,
and it's a skill you can learn. If you're not convinced of that, consider organ. There are maybe
a million people who have learned how to play separate keyboards
with both hands, and a third keyboard with their feet, all while
moving between settings ("stops"). And piano, where the left hand and
right hand do very different things, probably
has tens of millions of players . So if you're interested in
learning how to do this, you probably can: this is within the general
capabilities of humans. This kind of multitasking is all something I taught myself, so there
may be better paths, but here's what I do. The core of it is that I
have much more physical ability to do things than conscious attention
to coordinate them with. So I need to get aspects of my playing out of
my conscious attention, to where I can control them as larger chunks
that I can combine it with other uses of my conscious mind. When I
have something I want to push down to my body like this I use three
steps. I play it: In isolation, until it's solid. I start with something very
simple, because recovering from errors
would require moving back to conscious attention. While distracting myself with something non-musical.
This forces my body to figure out how to continue the physical action
with minimal demands on my conscious attention. And if I fail at that
the music will audibly stumble. In combination with other musical actions. There seem to be
parts of my brain that are only for music, and in this step I'm
forcing these actions to learn to share. For example, when I was trying to learn how to play left-hand rocking
octaves on piano at the same time as right-hand chords, I started
by just doing the left hand. Initially I wasn't very good at it, and
it took my full mental capacity to keep it going. As I got better, I
started intentionally distracting myself. I'd typically read:
the goal was to move the action down a level, the way walking is, so I
could free up my conscious attention for something else. Then, once I
could continue a solid left hand while reading, I'd start combining it
with right hand playing. This was harder, since both draw on the
musical parts of my brain, but still less work than if I'd skipped the
distraction stage. It's critical to break each of these steps across multiple sessions.
Learning doesn't just happen while practicing: there's a consolidation
that happens between sessions, where something that was just out of
reach at the end of the last session often comes easily the next
time. If you try and push rapidly through the stages before there's
been time for that consolidation, you'll probably get frustrated. A related kind of multitasking I've worked on is talking while
playing. It feels like I've just always been able to do this, but Julia reminded me I used to practice
playing chords on mandolin while trying to have a conversation with
her. I'd play a very simple pattern, one that was so simple it used
as little conscious capacity as possible, and try to talk. Initially,
as soon as the rhythm of the speech conflicted with the rhythm of the
instrument I'd mess up one or both, but over time I got smoother at
both. I'd always prioritize keeping the mandolin steady, since in all
the circumstances where I planned to use this it was much more
important for the music to be consistent. Over time I got to where I
could fluently call
chords , and even discuss more complex musical plans (usually with Amy ). Overall, I'm much worse at multitasking when playing melody. I used
to think that this was because I've always been a much stronger rhythm
player, but this is also a pattern I see in others: seeing fiddlers
struggle to get a single word out while playing can be pretty funny.
Testing just now with my fiddle and playing an easy tune, I can talk
about anything but there are small gaps in my speech. On a tune
that's closer to the edge of my ability I can feel that my concious
mind is needed to keep it all going, and if I try to talk anyway the
tune falls apart. When I'm calling
while playing at parties I do a mix of simple tunes and
falling back to rhythmic shuffles while getting words out. It helps
that I'm doing easy
dances and don't need many words. When I think about my model of
multitasking it makes sense that melody would be harder: it's going to
be easier to offload something to my fingers if it's simpler and
repetitive, and that's usually not what you want in a melody! So I'd
recommend starting with offloading accompaniment. If all of this sounds too hard, the simplest accompaniment of all is
stomping your foot in time with the music. It's moderately musical on
its own, a gateway to various forms of
percussive accompaniment , and helps you avoid mental patterns
where you produce syncopated rhythms by stretching your sense of time
instead of playing with where the notes land. Comment via: facebook , lesswrong , mastodon , bluesky , substack