New ideas for Games

Just thought I'd start a thread for people to put forward suggestions for new games as all that really happens at the moment is melody harmonising and motive development, which, although fun and useful, don't cover everything needed to compose well.

I have a few suggestions first, feel free to comment or add your own suggestions:

Write variations on a short given theme
Orchestrate a given melody with a pre-arranged ensemble
We could even compine all of these and take a motive, develop it, harmonise it, orchestrate it and end up with a whole short piece.

Mark

start a melody and every body is entitle to one note...so say I start
C, mark plays D , then some ramdom guy comes and adds a E , of corse it will probably take a year to complete a song...but still it improves your capabilities of problem solving...u know like a puzzle thing..
so what do u think?

sounds interesting, does each person get to decide about note length and articulation?

Hey thats a really great Idea! New Games are always fun. Here are a few of my suggestions off the bat:

Modulation Games: What about modulation in key? I rarely ever know how to do that successfully - and I've always wanted to see it done well before my very eyes. So maybe we could have melodies, that people could modulate into different keys?

Question and Answer: Another Game which I haven't played for years is "Question and Answer". Thats basically where someone improves something on say a piano, and the other person tries to respond to that phrase with something that either continues the 'story' or the logical unravelling of the melody or the abstract phraseology/algebra of the music in inventive and often quite amusing ways. This would require purely melody only. But instead of say, harmonizing a melody - someone could post a short phrase - which requires someone to respond to it. All using the same instrument. And it could be altered numerous times. And each time someone added to it, you could decide which version you liked more. Each person could have 4 bars for example, or even simply 2 bars. And then, you could take the piece you enjoyed and write your own reply. Forming endless musical 'conversations'. Until you decided you were done with that piece! It would be great inspiration for composing - you wouldn't need to invent your own melodies so much as participate in the melodies of others - even steal/borrow from ideas of other composers to create your own music! With due deferrence of course Then when we have finished with the melody - someone can harmonize it! Just a suggestion

Multiple Question and Answer: Alternatively you could say have a quartet, involving question and answer again (which is a basic compositional technique I suppose now that I come to think of it) and each person could take the role of one instrument. So one person could be the first violin, the other the 2nd violin, viola, cello, etc. This would allow someone to write out a full melody, employ some kind of counterpoint, and then harmonizing, etc. It would vary wildly - there would have to be distinct rules....still - I don't know.

Fugual Games: What about Fugues? Fugues and Counterpoint are always great ways of experimenting with melodies and harmonizes. I suppose thats already available in the current format. You could have 'form specific' games as !Mark! suggested - like having particular ensembles. Or even music from particular styles, eras.

Imitation Games: You could have imitation games - like take a certain famous nocturne of Chopin and write on in a similar key, if not the same key - in imitation of it. Like, trying to capture the same feeling, etc.

Theme/Inspiration Games You could have say, a poem, or a picture, or some description, or prescribe a novel to read (pretty instensive though) and then have people reflect and discuss upon it - and then they are given a set period to compose a piece that would be the equivalent of a tone poem, or a sonata, or something of that kind - to demonstrate how they interpreted the piece/reacted to it/how it affected them. If necessary I will gather random poems - as that kind of creative cross-fertilization is one of my hobbies!

Well, I ran out of creative juice - they were just a few ideas. Tell me what you think! Ciao for now,

Pravin

wow, nice respose, they all seem to be great ideas worthy of looking at more, maybe we could try just starting a question and answer one where maybe you could come up with the question and then people could make up different answers, and then a poll would decide which is the best and it would then become a melody for harmonising? would that work? Anyway, if anyone wants to start one of the games mentioned above, i for one will try hard to take part in as many as i can.

Originally Posted by !Mark!

sounds interesting, does each person get to decide about note length and articulation?

yes!

I have a suggestion for something else that could go in this forum, how about something like the competitions, composing a set style of piece/for a set ensemble, but without a deadline and without judges? We could still post scores/midis/mp3s for feedback, just without the pressure of having to work to a deadline.

Obviously, it wouldn't be as big an event as one of the competitions, but it would be good practice for those who want to take part in the comps but maybe doesn't want to have their work put up against those who have been composing for much longer than themselves.

Another advantage would be it wouldn't have to be such a big work, for example, if you normally work with a brass band and haven't worked with strings before, it would be preferable to start with maybe a minuet or something, and if the brief was a minuet for strings, you could study the scores of some of those who had alredy posted. And that would certainly be preferable to joining a competition for a string quartet!

Anyway, just a thought, Mark

Hey !Mark!

Yeah I get what your saying. I've always wanted to work on the competitions section but think I'm just 'not ready' to compete with people I know on these forums who make far better music. Perhaps we could have 'Amateur competitions', having certain prerequisites to competing that can be enforced by the judges. E.g. having only started composing under 2 years, having a basic knowledge of music theory only, etc. It could be a good way of leaning the formal features of a sonata - which everyone seems to just *know* and I'm always like If I could have formal feedback and encouragment on stylistic and formal features I would *very* much like to write a violin sonata, and a much better string quartet. Well - keep us updated. I would like to know what we should petition to the YCF admin All the best,

Pravin

thanks for your support, anyone else like the idea?

Me too.

I have a lot of pressure because of my three weekly, 30-pages reports. I'd like a little more flexibility in this kind of cases.