Instructions for this game (each player will go one at a time) :
- Shuffle your hand of 13 cards
- Draw the first three cards from the top to form a chord
- If card is between 1-Q, the card’s note must be played in this chord
- If the card is a King, you may select any note you would like to add to the chord
- If the card is an Ace, you may replace the drawn chord with any chord you would like
- Drawing an Ace immediately negates previously or future drawn cards for this chord
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 three times until you have your chord “progression”
- The player now has two minutes to create anything with the progression they have drawn
- All players will come together at the end of these two minutes to perform their composition to one another
- The players then decide on a winner
This musical game was greatly inspired by Takako Saito and her modifications to the game of chess. Pieces like her “Sound Chess” game got me to think about how I could manipulate traditional games into something that stimulates the senses. Similarly to that piece, I thought it would be a great challenge to incorporate something musical to a traditional game of cards. After having difficulty pairing instrumentation to an already existing game of cards, I decided it would be best to create a new one. I came up with this idea after sitting at my keyboard for a while and being stumped on where to start in terms of making a song. It then came to me that I could make a game where the deck of cards started the song for me. With this new random way of putting chords together, it is much easier to overcome writer’s block in a fun way.
Roommate playing this game:
Classmates playing this game:
