Decks

These are custom sets of cards that I compile to put constraints on the game results. For example in my "Jazz" set I only includes flat keys, and meter cards more appropriate to jazz characteristics. Decks are in PDF format and can be printed on letter size card stock and trimmed to 3x5.

Deck 1
Deck 2 (Jazz)
Deck 3 (Rock)
Deck 4 (Pop)
Deck 5 (Sci-Fi)

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Donna Smith, a music student in Hull England contacted me in June 2005 regarding possible use of the strategy cards in a music workshop she was holding. Apparently music education is being used as a strategy to address social and economic issues there. Sadly, music education is still relegated to the rote process of "reading the dots" , but fun and interesting game-based approaches to music can ultimately bring out the natural curiosities about music.

She also devised some new cards and a new suit "performance", which I like. If you can add cards to a deck, then it follows that you can add suits as well, and then choose any 12. The strategy I particularly like is "Incorporate words from some literature near by."

See also Loren Wilson's Music Criticism as a Creative Tool (using computer-based content analysis of popular music reviews to guide the music-making process) He has devised custom software which statistically analyzes the content of thousands of record reviews from the Pitchfork music website , and generates a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. He then uses those guidelines to write and record original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data. Fascinating.