Creative games for musicians?

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Just wanted to get some ideas of creative games that musicians can use when writing/recording material. I'm calling them "games" for lack of a better term... Basically, they're a way of imposing a loose structure on a musician's method of working so that creativity can be focused in a particular direction.

I don't know if I explained the concept well, so let me clarify with some examples...

The most famous example is probably Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. Everyone here has probably heard about those...

An excellent game I found is Album-a-day -- it forces a musician to write, record, and finish 20 minutes of completed music (or 30 songs, whichever comes first) within a contiguous 24 hour period.

Another game is Songfight.org, a forum where "Songfight.org posts a title, people make songs for that title, the songs are posted on this page, people decide which they like best, and vote for their favorite."

Besides other web links, I'm interested in hearing unorthodox methods -- from interviews with musicians or personal anecdotes -- for imposing a structure for creative writing/recording.

Any ideas?

― anonamon, Wednesday, 22 September 2004 23:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Is taking drugs a game?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 23:33 (twenty-one years ago)

taking drugs and method acting you're from mars

― gaz (gaz), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

actually isn't there another one that eno used on a bowie record where each musician had to do just that? like, er, imagine they were a plastic guitarist in a frugmetalzydeco band from the planet zirallion or a 7 armed drummer from the third ring of saturn etc

― gaz (gaz), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 23:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, for part of the Outside album.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 23 September 2004 00:07 (twenty-one years ago)

john zorn's cobra?

― m0stly clean (m0stly clean), Thursday, 23 September 2004 00:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Thinking of a title.

Yelling the title repetedly for about 2 minutes.

Add 1 guitar chord.

― Sasha (sgh), Thursday, 23 September 2004 01:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Chord Progression Poker:
Take a standard deck of cards, remove jokers, draw 4 cards at random. The value of each card determines the root note of a chord:
A = C
2 = D
3 = E
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
7 = B
8 = Db
9 = Eb
10 = Gb
J = Ab
Q = Bb
K = wild card

Red cards = major chords, black cards = minor chords

The four cards you draw can be placed in any order to form a chord progression. You can extend the chords (e.g. adding sevenths, ninths, etc.) in any way you want.

I tried doing this once, it was totally shit.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 23 September 2004 01:13 (twenty-one years ago)

It is called "poker" because you are gambling your career in music by using one of these progressions in one of yr songs

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 23 September 2004 01:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Make up a phrase and then make ten variations on it, moving or changing only one or two things.

Or, take a phrase/riff/melody and adapt it to two more time signatures.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 23 September 2004 01:31 (twenty-one years ago)

'Mr Carrot says':

The band takes a carrot and treats it as a god. They worship the carrot and ask it for inspiration. One band member goes into a trance and channels the spirit of the carrot. He or she utters directions for the completion of the song.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 23 September 2004 01:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I read that T.Heads' "This Must Be the Place" was subtitled "Naive Melody" because the 4 members switched instruments and played something they weren't so comfortable or familiar with. I wonder who played drums?

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 23 September 2004 02:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Make up a phrase and then make ten variations on it, moving or changing only one or two things. Or, take a phrase/riff/melody and adapt it to two more time signatures.

or make up a basic, obvious progression but turn the second (or third or fourth) chord into your starting chord. for example, you come up with something simple like

D E G A

but then you turn the E into the first chord, so now you've got

E G A D

or make the G into the first chord, and now you've got

G A D E

and then you've got

A D E G

try writing around any of those progressions.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 23 September 2004 03:08 (twenty-one years ago)

robert pollard claimed he wrote one of his classic albums (i think it was bee thousand) by going through an old high school yearbook and making up songs to tell the imaginary stories of random faces in it.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 23 September 2004 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Listen to a piece of music and try and determine the assumtions behind that piece of music and try and work outside of that assumption.

John Cage realized that western music was based on people making music intentionally, so he created music based on their unintentional actions.

Eno realized that the record industry assumed that people wanted music that was directly engaging, he made background music instead and called it ambient.

Hell, Just read as many Brian Eno interviews and books as you can and go from there. He is the king of devising creative games for the studio.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Thursday, 23 September 2004 03:17 (twenty-one years ago)

"Free Play' by Stephen Nakmanovitch is a good book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0874776317/103-3435725-4382218?v=glance

It's where I got the carrot game from. I believe any object will doi, but it should be imbued with sacred qualities and in some sense be your spirit guide or music teacher from the beyond. The sillier the object, the better, in my opinion. I once used one of my socks.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 23 September 2004 04:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Guitarist/composer/etc. Elliott Sharp devised a new guitar tuning based on the Fibonacci series of numbers.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 23 September 2004 08:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I once used one of my socks

i may have heard the resulting piece moley...it stunk!

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 23 September 2004 08:42 (twenty-one years ago)

The Piss Shivers.

Rules:

Write/record 10 original songs in 3 hours each song is 2 minutes long.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 23 September 2004 11:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Serialism could loosely be thought of as a game, maybe solitaire?

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 23 September 2004 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

also, Zorn has lots more game pieces besides Cobra. This site has more info.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 23 September 2004 14:02 (twenty-one years ago)

These are great... Thanks to all who responded. Any more ideas?

― anonamon, Tuesday, 5 October 2004 01:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Not so much games, but challenges. I challenge myself to do things because I'm pretty lazy creatively. Once when visiting my family for a month I took my acoustic guitar and tape recorder and made myself write and record a song every day I was there. They sucked, but I got something accomplished. Another time I wrote and recorded an album while my girlfriend was out of town for three days. That one actually turned out really well.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 16:01 (twenty-one years ago)

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