2026-07-19 21:00:00
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:
Or guitar + foot bass + singing:
Or piano + foot drums + talkbox:
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.
2026-07-15 21:00:00
I've been reading a lot of older writing, trying to understand how and why contra dance ended up with a strong and near-exclusive live music tradition when many other dance forms switched over to recorded music. One of the more interesting ones I came across is a series of three letters (1985, 1988, 1992) from Enid Cocke, President of the Lloyd Shaw Foundation, tracing the evolution in her attitude towards this question.
Lloyd Shaw was the superintendent of the Cheyenne Mountain School in Colorado Springs, who documented traditional Western square dancing in his book Cowboy Dances and kicked off what became Modern Western Square Dancing. This is a branch of the tradition that has gone in a very different direction from traditional contras and squares: instead of a simple form danced to live music with 10-25 regionally varying calls that welcomes people who've never danced before, MWSD has 100-400+ (depending on level) highly standardized and formalized calls, with classes, and is nearly always danced to recorded music. I have several friends that love it, especially at the high levels where they say it's a lot like collaborative physical puzzle solving.
Shaw died in 1958, however, after the introduction and spread of recorded music but before most of these other changes. I do suspect he wouldn't have been a fan: he'd say "keep it simple, keep it folk."
His wife, Dorothy Shaw, continued organizing dances, and in 1964 she and others founded the Lloyd Shaw Foundation to continue this work. The Foundation ended up in an interesting position between the worlds of MWSD and traditional contras and squares. They used recordings, going back to the early days of the western square dancing revival, but at the same time they were attempting to carry on a folk tradition. Since 1979 they've been publishing a quarterly magazine, American Dance Circle, and looking through the archives, there was clearly a significant debate happening in the Foundation's community in the late 1980s and early 1990s on how to approach live music.
I was especially interested to see three articles by Foundation president, and the Shaws' granddaughter, Enid Cocke. The first, in November 1985, is a strong defense of recorded music (The American Dance Circle Vol 6 No 4):
...Another issue that stimulates endless debate is whether to use live or recorded music. It is certainly the most wonderful situation if you have expert musicians who can play any tune you want and do it at the tempo you want. But I have been to dances where the musicians were inexpert and had a limited repertoire, and this clearly detracted from the quality of the evening. Because the music is so important to the dance, I just cannot accept the view that any live music is better than recorded music.
Rather than turning our backs on modern technology, I would make creative use of it. Thus at our dance weeks we can dance to the best New England and French Canadian contra dance music and the finest Scottish and English dance orchestras. Thanks to Bill Johnston's efforts we have available to us tapes of all the music recorded by the great Harry Davidson orchestra. With records we can do any round dance and singing call; in my experience it is often the rounds that get neglected when a live band is playing. And of course folk dances often require special instrumentation and musical styles that cannot be reproduced by a band that is used to playing only hoedowns, jigs, and reels.
Last weekend some of us from this area who had been together at Granby gathered for a dance reunion in our hostess's basement. We had an elegant time doing our favorite dances, all of which had beautiful music. We should be grateful for the technology that makes such an evening possible. And we should resolve as leaders to make even better use of our treasure trove of recorded music.
Three years later, in September 1988, she wrote another letter. After a great experience with Glen and Judi Morningstar's mentoring, she's now much more positive on live music (American Dance Circle, Vol 9 No 3):
...In the past few years we have tried to respond to suggestions that we provide some live music. We began first with volunteers and without adequate amplification, but this year we took a quantum leap forward. We had better equipment, but much more important, we had Glen and Judi Morningstar from Pontiac, Michigan. What talented musicians and gracious people they are! They made an enormous contribution by educating musicians, dancers, and leaders about the uses of live music.
Those of us who played in the band--Randy and Carol Barnes, Dale Sullivan, Holly Baker, Don Armstrong, and the Cockes and Litchmans--appreciated the Morningstars' musicianship and tact. I for one learned a lot about the making of good dance music. Another dance leader commented that he had received an education in working with musicians. Many of us are called upon to call with live music. Now we know of steps we can take to insure that the band will have an adequate repertoire and to establish a danceable tempo.
In the continuing debate about live music versus recorded music, Glen Morningstar presented a very reasonable response: The Lloyd Shaw Foundation should be the organization that combines the two. Recordings provide variety of sound and style while live music can provide spontaneity and flexibility. Why not combine the best of both?
....
Four years later, in December 1992, she wrote a third letter. Here she talks about how happy she is that the dance community now has so many great musicians who can play for dancing ( American Dance Circle, Vol 13 No 4):
...We all know quality when we see it. In dance it is that wonderful experience when music, choreography, calling, and dancing come together and make something that is more than the sum of its parts. In a single word, it is joy.
Unfortunately, we sometimes are more aware of quality by its absence. It is possible for people to embrace everything that seems "folksy" and to forget about what constitutes quality. I have encountered people who contra dance a few times and then write down a few contras on 3 x 5 cards and feel equipped to call a contra dance. They have no sense of the musical phrase, and soon the dance and the melody part company. The caller is ready to call the beginning of the dance sequence, but the band hit the beginning of the music a dozen bars ago. It is a punishing experience for anyone who has experienced a well-timed contra.
Ten years ago I felt that the missing element in the quality equation was often the music. In insisting on live music, people were inclined to think that any live music was better than recorded music even if the band couldn't play up to speed and knew only ten tunes. Now we seem to have a wealth of competent, experienced dance musicians. In some cases a band may be the starting point for a contra group. The musicians want to play for dancers, so they draft a caller or become callers themselves so that they can play for dancers.
...
Looking over this progression, and the rest of the folk revival, it seems likely to me that the music Cocke dismisses as low-quality was a necessary prerequisite of the thriving live music tradition she's now glad to see. I suspect the people in the community who pushed hard for live music, including accepting tradeoffs like small repertoires and amateur musicianship, set up the conditions to restore live dance music as a core component of the living tradition. The "wealth of competent, experienced dance musicians" she celebrates in 1992 grew out of communities that had been willing to dance to bands that couldn't play hard stuff up to speed and played the same ten tunes every time. I'm sure this wasn't all of it: folks working hard to become better musicians, and better dance musicians, must also have been critical. To become good at playing for dancers, however, you have to play for dancers, and that means a community that is accepting of people at a range of stages along their musical journey.
2026-07-11 21:00:00
I've lately ended up calling a bunch of parties and I've been happy with calling mostly longways whole-set dances. These are ones that are shaped like a contra dance in terms of having two lines facing each other, each person across from their partner, but your role doesn't matter and you're not grouped into hands-fours ("minor sets"). I want to be able to teach it in a single fast-paced walkthrough, match it tightly to the musical phrase, and be able to drop out after a few times through. This means I need most of the figures to be very simple, and a low piece count.
On the other hand, if I build every dance out of the same small number of building blocks (ex: reshuffles of Galopede), dancers will start to feel "haven't we done this one before"? So I also like dances that have a "hook": an interesting figure that we don't do in the other dances. Some examples:
Other hooks I like include lines weaving between arches and the whole set casting to the bottom ("peel the banana").
I was looking for more dances like this, especially ones that fit in small spaces (no down the hall) and aren't too picky about the number of couples (5 - 8). I asked the Trad Callers mailing list for ideas, and got back a bunch. After looking through them I added two to my repertoire:
Of the ones I didn't add, I think the zig-zag poussette figure in Wee Willie II would be fun to adapt, but the dance as written takes more space than I often have. I'll probably look for another dance with that figure (or write one).
I also saved two simple duple minors where roles don't matter, for when the crowd is ready for something slightly more complex:
2026-07-10 21:00:00
In 1992 Tony Parkes, one of the best-known New England contra dance callers, wrote a book: Contra Dance Calling: a Basic Text. In 2010 he published an updated second edition. I found used copies of each and read through them, interested in both what he thought, and what he thought to change.
I read the whole 1992 first edition, then skimmed the 2010 second edition with the older one open at the same time, looking for changes. My notes:
I'm mostly interested in it for what it tells us about the community and practice over time, but as what it intends to be—a thorough introduction to the practice of contra dance calling—it succeeds very well.
I'm sad I didn't read it a few years earlier so I could ask him questions about it!
Parkes' tempos are high: "[120bpm] is the tempo adopted by the army for comfortable long-term marching, and it has been standard in contra dancing for several generations. The tempo can be varied during an evening, to provide contrasts in energy or excitement level, but should probably not be altered by more than about eight beats per minute either way (down to 112 or up to 128)." Parkes was a piano player in addition to a caller, very into musical theater, and knew what he was talking about, so I would take his numbers literally.
I usually tell people (ex) 108-122, and I expect if I played even 126 today I'd have some people pretty grumpy with me. I know several bands that like to hang out at 110, and I've had folks tell me never to play over 120bpm. I don't know if this represents a change over the years (though he keeps the same numbers in the 2010 edition) or was somewhat idiosyncratic all along?
Parkes preferred dances on the longer end: "My feeling is that ten minutes is about right for experienced dancers. For beginners or people beyond retirement age, you may want to reduce your sets to five or six minutes. Most square and contra dance records run between three and four minutes; if you're calling contras to recorded music, you can play a record twice or use two different records for each dance. Traditionally, contras were danced "all the way down and all the way back"; that is, until the original head couple had worked their way to the foot of the line and then up to the head again. This was necessary to ensure everyone received an equal amount of dancing, because prior to the 1950s, most contra routines resulted in at least half the couples standing still for significant portions of the time" I think of 8-9 minutes as typical. This does feed into a theory of mine that part of what contra dance kept live music might have been that recordings (and 45s) were too short for everyone to get a turn to be actives.
Parkes doesn't describe a "four potato" start: "Most bands prefer to start each number with a four-beat introduction. This typically takes one of two forms: a shuffle on the fiddle ('dah-didi-dah-didi-dah-didi-dah') or a piano vamp consisting of four 'oom-pahs'." I think of this as something that had mostly ended by 1992 in favor of four potatoes, though he did keep this in the 2010 revision.
He has a bit on recordings vs live music:
Someone once said "Good records are better than a bad band." This is a half-truth at best. The finest records available, chosen with care to fit each dance and played through a top-quality sound system, are better in some ways than an unsteady or indifferent band. Some, but not all. With even the worst live band there is still that sense of immediacy that no record can match.Even so, recorded music can be a lifesaver in certain situations. A dance group newly formed, in an area where no one seems to know any dance musicians, will rejoice in the availability of good square and contra dance music on records and tapes. Some groups, such as small churches and parent-teacher organizations, that would love to try square dancing but whose budgets genuinely will not allow for live music, may have to hire a caller with records or forgo the activity altogether. Often such groups enjoy their initial taste of dancing so much that they hire the same caller again, this time with a live band!
The key to using records successfully is to take advantage of their strong points. I hesitate to term them "advantages," but recorded music does have certain strengths:...
I'd describe this as overall in favor of live music, but in a way that's more "pragmatic" than "principled".
Here's another bit that's pragmatic, and with building up beginner musicians to play for dancing as a clear goal:
The talent of the musicians you find will range from outstanding to minimal. If everyone you find seems to be at one extreme or the other, don't panic. Expert instrumentalists may welcome a steady local job. If you hold your series on a weeknight, you may be able to hire top-drawer talent for less money than they'd ask for a Saturday concert. Beginning or casual musicians, on the other hand, may be happy to play for the experience and exposure (and a little gas money). Even total beginners may be an asset to your dance: they can play for one or two numbers in an evening while you use recorded music for the rest, and work their way up to a full evening.
Comparing the two editions, the most common changes are technological: "recordings" instead of "records" or "tapes", updated listings of recommended sound equipment manufacturers. The 2010 edition predates the gypsy discourse and the mainstream shift to gender-free calling, but it does add discussion of the early days of this shift and calling gender-free for LGBT groups:
This leads to the third approach, inventing new names for the sex roles. In the past twenty years or so, this has become the prevailing method of dealing with the issue. Many different names have been tried: A few leaders have used "ones" and "twos" (in squares and contras, of course, those terms have other meanings). More common are names like "reds" and "blues," "lions" and "tigers," and "moons" and "stars." With such neutral names, it can be a challenge to remember which name refers to which role. To the dancers, it doesn't matter, but the caller must keep track of who is on the right side in each couple, and of who must do what in an adapted traditional routine. My wife Beth often uses "birdie" for "lady" and "crow" for "gent," from the traditional square dance Birdie in the Cage. This has two advantages: it's easy for the caller to remember which role is which, and the new names have the same number of syllables as the old ones and can be readily substituted when calling in rhythm.In addition to new names, dancers can be distinguished by articles of clothing such as armbands, vests, or loose cloth yokes. Typically, only one member of each couple is so equipped. In a single-sex group, it will be the person playing the "opposite" role, and in a gender-free group, it is likely to be the person playing the "lead" or "gent". Chris Ricciotti, a pioneer in the LGBT contra dance field, refers to the roles as "armbands" and "bare-arms," or "bands" and "bares" for short—although his dancers now wear short clip-on ribbons rather than full armbands. Hats are less practical than armbands or yokes because they come off easily, can muss the hair, and are sometimes suspected of carrying head lice.
The 1992 book is printed on significantly higher quality paper, and with better print quality.
2026-07-04 21:00:00
EDIT 2026-07-08: Gizmohub, despite the announcements, did not stop working on the 7th. Instead, a Verizon tech called me, and told me that they were not going to take Gizmohub down until they'd resolved these issues. They also walked me through getting set up, including getting me the 2FA code that was not coming through. Apparently delivery of 2FA codes to Google Fi has been an issue for them. After our call I saw that this 2FA code (but not the earlier codes) did actually come through under "Spam and Blocked", so if you're having issues I'd recommend looking there.
Two years ago I bought a pair of Gizmo watches for my kids (review). There's a companion app for texting and configuration ("Gizmohub"), and Verizon is moving everyone over to a new one ("Verizon Family"). But the new app doesn't work for watch-only accounts like ours yet, and they're still saying they're going to turn off the old app on July 6th. Without the app we won't be able to text back and forth, see where they are, or add new contacts (the watch blocks calls except to/from contacts).
I first got the notification that Gizmohub was going away as an email on 2026-06-10:
Since Gizmohub is not a very good app, I was initially pretty excited about this. Unfortunately, when I tried to switch over I got an error that my phone number was "ineligible":
If instead of using a Verizon login I used the "social" login (which some people online reported success with), it tried to send a text to my Google Fi account to verify me, which wouldn't show up.
On 2026-06-17 I talked with Verizon support's virtual assistant for a while, and then an associate for half an hour. They were not able to resolve the problem, and said that Verizon Family does not yet support cases where you have Gizmos as your only Verizon lines of service. They said they'd follow up with me by email when they sort this out, but I never received anything.
The associate agreed with me that they should not deprecate the old app until the new app can handle this configuration. I asked them to raise this up the chain: they need to push back the deprecation date.
I called again on 2026-06-19, and the rep said this was their third or fourth call today from someone who had a gizmo but not a Verizon smartphone. That seemed high to me, and I might have misheard. They said they're working on fixing the problem, it will be at least 4-5 business days, and they won't take down Gizmohub until Verizon Family is working.
I called again on 2026-07-02, and the rep said this was a known issue. They took my information, gave me a ticket number, and assured me that someone higher up in the Verizon support system would reach out to me within 24hr. (Later I got an email saying 48hr.) Unlike the previous two reps they wouldn't commit to this being fixed before Gizmohub would stop working.
It's now been 48hr, and I haven't heard anything. While normally I would be understanding about longer response times over a holiday weekend, here I am not. It was entirely Verizon's decision to set a deprecation date immediately following a holiday. The new app still doesn't work for me, the reps say it's still not working for many others, and on Monday morning we'll lose the ability to text our kids.
Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, r/verizon, hacker news, mastodon, bluesky
2026-06-29 21:00:00
Choux pastry (the kind used in eclairs and creampuffs) is very picky, and depends heavily on the chemical properties of eggs. Five years ago I played around with trying to make it eggless with aquafaba and xanthan gum. It didn't work, but now that we have vegan egg white protein, can we do this for real?
Nope. I gave it several tries over vacation, and wasn't able to get it to puff properly. Here's the closest I got:
As with standard choux I heated the water, milk, butter, and sugar to a boil, then added the flour. I mixed it well, let it cool a little, and then gradually added the egg (replacement) while beating will in between additions. The batter looked just right:
But when I baked it, it didn't inflate. I tried again, and this time took advantage of the AirBnB's nice oven to observe that there were little bubbles on the skin. Video:
My hypothesis for why this isn't working is that eggs normally have a range of proteins that set at different temperatures. The most common (~54%) is ovalbumin which sets at 176–183F, and this is what the precision-fermented egg white is made out of. But there's also ovotransferrin (~12%) which sets at 142–149F, and I'm guessing this early setting is why choux made from normal eggs forms a thin flexible crust in time to capture steam and inflate. Whereas in my version the steam just leaks it out.
Models think I should try either potato protein isolate (149F) or methylcellulose (gels at 140F, reverses on cooling). Thoughts?