Learning Musical Multitasking
Jeff Kaufman
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Learning Musical Multitasking
July 19th, 2026
music, tech
I like to play multiple instruments at once, and really enjoy how this<br>lets me create a fuller musical picture. Sometimes this looks like<br>mandolin + foot drums + bass whistle:
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Or guitar + foot bass + singing:
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Or piano + foot drums + talkbox:
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People often hear what I'm doing with Kingfisher and ask how it<br>works, but when I show them<br>they say they couldn't do it because they're not good enough at<br>multitasking. But I didn't start off being able to do this either,<br>and it's a skill you can learn.
If you're not convinced of that, consider organ. There are maybe<br>a million people who have learned how to play separate keyboards<br>with both hands, and a third keyboard with their feet, all while<br>moving between settings ("stops"). And piano, where the left hand and<br>right hand do very different things, probably<br>has tens of millions of players. So if you're interested in<br>learning how to do this, you probably can: this is within the general<br>capabilities of humans.
This kind of multitasking is all something I taught myself, so there<br>may be better paths, but here's what I do. The core of it is that I<br>have much more physical ability to do things than conscious attention<br>to coordinate them with. So I need to get aspects of my playing out of<br>my conscious attention, to where I can control them as larger chunks<br>that I can combine it with other uses of my conscious mind. When I<br>have something I want to push down to my body like this I use three<br>steps. I play it:
In isolation, until it's solid. I start with something very<br>simple, because recovering from errors<br>would require moving back to conscious attention.
While distracting myself with something non-musical.<br>This forces my body to figure out how to continue the physical action<br>with minimal demands on my conscious attention. And if I fail at that<br>the music will audibly stumble.
In combination with other musical actions. There seem to be<br>parts of my brain that are only for music, and in this step I'm<br>forcing these actions to learn to share.
For example, when I was trying to learn how to play left-hand rocking<br>octaves on piano at the same time as right-hand chords, I started<br>by just doing the left hand. Initially I wasn't very good at it, and<br>it took my full mental capacity to keep it going. As I got better, I<br>started intentionally distracting myself. I'd typically read:<br>the goal was to move the action down a level, the way walking is, so I<br>could free up my conscious attention for something else. Then, once I<br>could continue a solid left hand while reading, I'd start combining it<br>with right hand playing. This was harder, since both draw on the<br>musical parts of my brain, but still less work than if I'd skipped the<br>distraction stage.
It's critical to break each of these steps across multiple sessions.<br>Learning doesn't just happen while practicing: there's a consolidation<br>that happens between sessions, where something that was just out of<br>reach at the end of the last session often comes easily the next<br>time. If you try and push rapidly through the stages before there's<br>been time for that consolidation, you'll probably get frustrated.
A related kind of multitasking I've worked on is talking while<br>playing. It feels like I've just always been able to do this, but Julia reminded me I used to practice<br>playing chords on mandolin while trying to have a conversation with<br>her. I'd play a very simple pattern, one that was so simple it used<br>as little conscious capacity as possible, and try to talk. Initially,<br>as soon as the rhythm of the speech conflicted with the rhythm of the<br>instrument I'd mess up one or both, but over time I got smoother at<br>both. I'd always prioritize keeping the mandolin steady, since in all<br>the circumstances where I planned to use this it was much more<br>important for the music to be consistent. Over time I got to where I<br>could fluently call<br>chords, and even discuss more complex musical plans (usually with<br>Amy).
Overall, I'm much worse at multitasking when playing melody. I used<br>to think that this was because I've always been a much stronger rhythm<br>player, but this is also a pattern I see in others: seeing fiddlers<br>struggle to get a single word out while playing can be pretty funny.<br>Testing just now with my fiddle and playing an easy tune, I can talk<br>about anything but there are small gaps in my speech. On a tune<br>that's closer to the edge of my ability I can feel that my concious<br>mind is needed to keep it all going, and if I try to talk anyway the<br>tune falls apart. When I'm calling<br>while playing at parties I do a mix of simple tunes and<br>falling back to rhythmic shuffles while getting words out. It helps<br>that I'm doing easy<br>dances and don't need many words. When I think about my model of<br>multitasking it makes sense that melody would be harder: it's going to<br>be easier to offload something to my fingers if...