Tango Innovator Q&A | Local Teacher Survey Reminder | And a teaser...
Our first innovator profile: Eric Lindgren on building music tool TangoUnion.net
Welcome back to Awaken Tango, an innovation-focused tango newsletter. As a reminder, here you can learn about what people are building in tango, and opportunities to experiment, collaborate, and nurture community. If this is no longer is part of your life, unsubscribe below.
Hello everyone!
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on what content you’re interested in. Based on last issue’s poll, there is interest in hearing successful community case studies, wisdom teachings applied to tango, and profiles of tango innovators.
Today, I’m excited to share our first tango innovator profile! Check out this Q&A with Eric Lindgren who created the awesome tango music tool TangoUnion.net.
Local Tango Teacher Survey: Less than two weeks left
Thank you, local teachers, who took the time to complete the local tango teacher’s survey. And thank you all who helped by passing this survey on to your local teachers.
We need to hear from more teachers! Our goal is 100 local teachers. That will be enough data to develop a grounded sense of what challenges and needs tango teachers have today, so we can use these insights to help create a rising tide to lift all boats.
Please take 10 mins and share your perspective here. The final deadline is May 15th. If we hear from enough teachers we will summarize the learnings into a public post for everyone to benefit from.
Eric Lindgren: On making TangoUnion.net
I was excited that my friend Eric Lindgren took the time to answer my questions about the rad tango music tool he built for the tango community. Here is my interview with Eric.
What was/is your project in a nutshell?
Let’s say you know you like a tango by D’Arienzo with Laborde singing in the ‘50s. Maybe you want to see more D’Arienzo/Laborde recordings from the ‘50s. Or, maybe you want to see what orchestras Laborde recorded with in the ‘50s other than D’Arienzo.
This is a “graph search.” You can start at any point, e.g. orchestra, year, genre, singer, and then use that as an anchor to further explore music. TangoUnion.net is a graph search for tango music, coupled with a Spotify-style music player.
Enabling this sort of omni-direction guided search (with the ability to listen immediately to your results) is the purpose of TangoUnion. It also makes it really easy to share songs/tandas (or even searches) with friends.
Where did you get the idea for it?
My students were learning about tango music and beginning to DJ from Spotify. But Spotify is a very poor source and often fails to capture the communal consensus we have around which recordings are nicest to dance to.
I wanted to couple the ability to dig through the vast amount of tango discography data, with the immediacy of listening to the music we all love to dance to.
While exploring sites like Tango.info and trying to find danceable recordings, I found that YouTube pretty consistently had the recording I was looking for. I realized that if I could improve the search experience and couple that with YouTube’s collection, that would be a useful tool.
How long did it take? How much time/money did you spend on it?
All told I’ve spent several hundred hours on it. I’ve been prototyping it for years on and off. And honestly what’s available online right now is still a prototype. I have had a couple major bursts of working on it 4-6 hrs/day during vacations from work.
The hosting costs about $40-60/month. There are ways to cut costs but they involve substantial refactors of the project.
What was the most difficult thing about making it? What obstacles did you face and how did you surmount them?
There are a lot of ways I could make it more user friendly and a ton of features I’d like to implement but I don’t have the time. After spending so much of my day in front of a computer for work, I rarely want to spend more time doing the same in my free time!
What/who was most helpful to you along the way?
I didn’t really get any help along the way. I showed the project to people at various stages of prototyping and got a lot of “Oh neat!” feedback but that’s about it.
Proto-help came from an organization called The Recurse Center in NYC, a writer’s retreat for programmers. It was there that I transitioned from being a long-time tinkerer to somebody with the ability to really conceptualize and complete projects.
What has been the best thing about the project?
Honestly I just find it really useful. I have discovered a bunch of tandas I never would have if I hadn’t made this tool, which is very satisfying.
Also despite the usage being fairly modest, occasionally I will hear folks talking about it at a tango festival, not knowing that it’s my baby, and that’s fun.
What do people get out of it? How is that similar or different to what you hoped?
In my dream scenario I had hoped more users would be full time professional tango DJs who wanted to mix up their sets more. What I have found, however, is that a lot of DJs are less interested in exploring. They don’t understand the value because they see it as a weaker alternative to their huge MP3 collections.
But TangoUnion is not meant to take the place of your local library for actual DJing.
It’s a tool for exploration and curiosity and sharing. E.g., use it for a class and then send the playlist to your students after. Very useful!
I find new students and non-professionals are generally much more interested because they haven’t amassed a huge collection of music yet and are coming to the world with fresh eyes.
I think the people who like it use it exactly as I envisioned.
What does success mean to you as a tango innovator?
I felt compelled to create this thing, I had an idea of it for so long. Success has meant instantiating the vision enough that I no longer feel compelled to burn through my vacation days working on it (even though it still happens now and then lol). So maybe success for me is the relief of no longer feeling compelled.
Are you working on anything new now?
Trying to sleep more 😅
What tango music are you listening to these days?
Here’s a tanda I love that I probably never would’ve encountered if not wandering around TangoUnion. 50s Lacava/Vargas
Closing reflections
Thank you Eric for both building such a helpful and unique tool from scratch, and for taking the time share your journey. If you’ve enjoyed this, share it with someone you know who is learning about music, or working on building something new!
P.S. Something special’s in store
Can you guess how much tango is packed in this deceptively understated box? I am excited to reveal a passion project many years in the making on May 25th.
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