Learning Musical Multitasking | Hacker News Reader

Learning Musical Multitasking

jefftk.com

35 pointssurprisetalk22 comments

Whenever I think of a true musical multitasker, I picture Dick Van Dyke’s character in Mary Poppins.

There's an element of multitasking that is (while not exclusively) inherent to piano definitely is an important focus.

For instance, I play a lot of stride and blues piano. One of the hallmarks of those styles is having a rock-solid left hand that can maintain ornate but very consistent patterns. Once that’s locked in, your right hand is pretty much free to do whatever it wants. You'll find that your right hand can literally be almost totally independent.

It can sing out the melody, feed yourself grapes, or turn the pages of a book while your left hand just keeps on going - honestly fatigue is the biggest factor particlarly at higher tempos.

OTOH, musical multitasking where the left and right hands (or different parts of the body) are genuinely playing new, independent lines is tremendously more difficult.

Mad respect for Johann Sebastian Bach, who by all accounts could extemporize contrapuntal music essentially inventing fresh, independent patterns in both hands at the same time. I know that’s not multiple instruments in the literal sense, but in effect it kind of is, especially when you factor in the foot pedals of an organ.

Re: Bach, also factor in that an organ player’s two hands would often be playing on two separate manuals (keyboards) that produced different sounds from each other and from the footboard. The player could activate a different set of stops (groups of pipes that provide a consistent sound for each note playable in the range of the keyboards) for each keyboard or footboard, and could also vary those selections to some extent during a piece’s performance.

If you look past conventional terminology, an organ really a single instrument in a similar way as a multi-input and multi-output synthesizer is a single instrument today — the difference is more that even a modern organ generally encodes most of the technology limitations of Bach’s time, whereas a computer-based synthesizer’s additional sound flexibility reflects the broader technology capabilities of our current times.

One nitpick: changing registration and playing on different manuals was not common in Bach's time; some scholars have gone as far as saying it was not done, even some pieces contain explicit instructions. But it's more of a Romance thing.

Many keyboard players will play stacked keyboards today - I've got a big Nord plus a bunch of little Reface keyboards, and they often each have their own pedals attached to control sustain, rotary speaker, etc. This is basically the same situation as what you're describing (except I'm not playing notes with my feet).

For that matter, a kit drummer is essentially playing (up to) four instruments at once since each limb could be doing something unique (granted for many (most?) drummers, they’re just using the high-hat pedal as a footrest, beating quarter or half notes on the bass drum and their hands will be focused on a single instrument, but a truly talented drummer might have four unique rhythms going at once). Add in the fact that some drummers sing backup and it can be quite impressive.

I had the pleasure of working with an amazing organist in my time at Holy Name Cathedral (he’s apparently since become semi-retired, just doing occasional fill-in work). Watching him do a Messiaen organ piece as a postlude after Mass it was like seeing video of Keith Moon on the drums. Limbs moving in a seemingly chaotic manner and yet music came out the other end (on top of crazy multi-manual keyboarding and pedalwork, he was also frequently changing the stops on the organ as he played).

As a fan of drumming, you're probably one of the millions who have seen this. But for anybody who hasn't, here's a fun video showing how complicated drumming can be with a live performance by someone whose nickname is "The Octopus".

While the entire video is fun, the link is cued up to a place where there's a lot going on, but it's slow enough that you can kind of see what he's doing. Watch his knees to see what he's doing with pedals. Notice that his hands seem to be going in cycles, but there are subtle variations in the cycles.

At 8:54, strobe lights start up - that can't make it simpler to keep this focus. What he's doing looks essentially impossible to me, but I'm well aware that I don't know enough to understand just how insanely difficult it really is.

https://youtu.be/FssULNGSZIA?t=465

Nice. Oh yeah for sure that makes sense. I also think of the locking in a limb to play a preset "pattern loop" is also really similar to juggling which is something I enjoy. Just a lot of overlap in general!

Is HN showing post and comment times as recent when they really aren't? I see an exchange between Rochus and jefftk "1 hour ago", ending with a "thanks, posted" and that blogpost is from July 25. Today is July 29.

Oddly enough, they do show July 25 on mouseover. The post itself shows as July 24 from two hours ago, and vunderba’s (top) comment shows as July 24 from 1 hour ago. I wonder if an old post got promoted or two posts merged and HN automatically updates comment dates in that case? Or maybe it’s a bug?

The relevant issue is independent or coordinated control of concurrent musical parts, not whether those parts happen to use different instruments. Piano, Organ (with bass pedal) and drum-kit playing are canonical examples of the same underlying challenge. Skilled performance can require separately controlled fingers, hands, and feet, while the player experiences them as an integrated whole.

I started to play the drums with my feed on a bass pedal sixteen years ago and do the bass with my left hand. This worked naturally from day one (though I got better with more exercise). There is just not enough time to think about it, as the author suggests. Here is a recording where you can see it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJV0I7KgsJc, left guy). And here is a more recent solo recording: https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1317, just one guy, all live, no overdupps.

[author]

This is fantastic! Do you have more videos of your foot-drumming? Or could you say more about how you do it? Are the pedals velocity-sensitive?

This is my setup: https://www.jefftk.com/p/making-a-pedalboard Four beaterless kick drum pedals. Another example in use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQLBfuaNqs

Not having tried it, I'd guess your setup is much more flexible, but requires much more work to provide a really steady beat on? And so would be a bit less well-suited to playing dance music (the main thing I do)?

Thanks. I have mostly audio recordings (and even MIDI files from all devices connected to the computer). There are a couple of videos and one short on my youtube account (https://www.youtube.com/@RochusKeller/videos) but thei're more than ten years old. In 2022 I switched to a Mac M1 mini with MainStage and the plugins I still use. This post includes information about the equipment: https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1268. The bass pedal uses essentially the original drum assignment besides that I doubled the snare (on D and D#, to make rolls), and reorganized the toms to three and used the remaining upper keys for cymbals. The assignment never changes, just the kit. I have little idea about "how I do it"; it just works; and I think it got better over time by just playing. Just contact me via email if you have more questions ;-)

So cool! The YouTube short is helpful, though it's still a bit hard to see your full technique. If at some point you recorded another video focused on the feet I'd really enjoy being able to get a better sense of how your technique works in practice.

Changing the kit without the assignment seems very much the right way to do it. No need to confuse your muscle memory.

Would it be ok if I wrote a blog post about your approach here, based on what you've written and shown? The general idea of playing drums with the feet is massively unexplored, and while I'd considered using bass pedals this way I didn't anticipate it was possible to get them working this well (which is part of why I went in a different direction).

I should indeed make a video which shows the sound assignments on the bass pedal and how my feet operate on them. Let me see what I can do (video is not my medium).

The "muscle memory" is extremely important, since the feet are working "blindly"; I don't even see them when I'm sitting at the keyboard.

You're free to write a blog post; I will read it with interest ;-)

A few years ago I announced what I'm doing on a few Subreddits, HN, Facebook and some other places, hoping to find people with similar interests. But that wasn't successful. I found an American company building and selling physical/accoustical foot drums, but no one so far using a bass pedal.

I have been using bass pedals just for playing the bass since the nineties, so the step to using them "polyphonically" for the drums was natural, but it took quite some time until the idea manifested and I really tried. Here are my first recordings after a few weeks of practice: http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=317

EDIT: Here is another recording from 2014 where I play together with a very talented sax player. This might be interesting for you because I overlayed a whole big band over the piano and even the bass sound and was able to fade it in and out by key pressure (what you seem to do with the breath controller): http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=962 Depending on the music I use a "bite switch" to operate the sustain pedal. I also made experiments with singing (http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=828) and voice to midi conversion, but that doesn't work good enough yet.

Thanks! Posted: https://www.jefftk.com/p/organ-pedals-for-drumming

If you do end up making a technique demonstration video I'd love to see it!

Here is my first attempt: https://youtu.be/u4RSlO9nS50

Bear with me, video is not my medium. I used my photo camera with a tripod and a light I had around. To avoid the need of cutting I just used the microphones built into the camera, which I agree is suboptimal. But I hope you get the idea. The video demonstrates both the key assignments and how I use them for the music. I didn't play for a few weeks, so I'm a bit out of practice, but it's all live and improvised.

If you wonder what I wear: these are padded socks, three layers, to avoid hematomas.

That is super impressive, thanks for sharing! Really interesting to see the layout and technique.

Rochus, a huge thanks for the comment and discovering your fascinating site. I was blown away by how musical the recent Suno covers of your funk songs are. I would not have been able to guess that they were AI generated. Please post more videos in the future---I am convinced there is a large audience that would be interested in learning more about your setup and seeing you improvise.

Here is a video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135412

Very kind, thanks. Suno is indeed a great technology and opens interesting possibilities for musicians. I consider posting more videos. Stay tuned.

I've been trying to do something like this for a long time. There are lots of different options, but not many are easially available, and there are no instructions. The big lesson is always "I need a lot more practice". Harmonica has a hands-free brace from multiple manufactures, so that is the most approachable option to combine with a stringed instrument (and I sound terrible when I try it).

Maybe in 20 years I'll get something working. (sooner if anyone wants to fund my mid-life crisis)

Thanks for sharing this, OP!

I’m a bluegrass jam player and am at the stage where I want to improve my singing/playing and my ‘first time I heard that song’ breaks. Both of those require a fair amount of judicious use of ‘autopilot’ while the brain caches lyrics and chord progressions. The article gave me some ideas, I’ll try to work them into my practice.

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