Learning Musical Multitasking(jefftk.com) |
Learning Musical Multitasking(jefftk.com) |
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.
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).
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.
Maybe in 20 years I'll get something working. (sooner if anyone wants to fund my mid-life crisis)
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.
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)?
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).
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.
If you do end up making a technique demonstration video I'd love to see it!