Making Music With Dice

[@jamesgrey13]

Come on Lady Luck... Daddy needs a new form of Blues!

[@krang07]

LOL

[@krang07]

Another unconventional way was used by Donald Fagan (Steely Dan) where they just threw a dart at a chord chart a few times and built a random progression that way.

[@12tone]

Really cool, I didn't know that!

[@MichaelTiemann]

2:42 How hard was it to not say "the historical record on that was a bit dicey."?

[@12tone]

I... really wish I'd thought of that.

[@katiekilgore6918]

Indeterminacy is so fascinating. The "In C" piece sounds like it would be a blend of indeterminacy and minimalism, which I think is really cool.

[@12tone]

Yeah, I love this kind of stuff! "In C" is a really cool concept, although I've sadly never seen it performed. There's videos on youtube, but it's not really the same as being there, especially with an indeterminate piece, ya know?

[@katiekilgore6918]

12tone Yeah. When it comes to indeterminate pieces, KZbin videos and live performances are definitely not the same thing. I would like to see any indeterminate piece performed live. That would be extremely fascinating.

[@BRIDKIE]

I make riffs out of telephone numbers.. I see the numbers as tabs ☺

[@12tone]

Nice! Do you pick the strings yourself, or just play it all on one?

[@BRIDKIE]

I choose strings, otherwise it'll just be too random..

[@loszhor]

How interesting! Thanks for uploading!

[@mitodrumisra8972]

I've started a bit of composing since March 2020..I always wanted to do it - the 'random' part of it, but was not getting any confidence about it.. Thank you so much Sir 12tone for clearing most of my doubts...☺☺☺😊😊😊

[@StarTheTripleDevil]

Not really random music, but I remember making a thing where it played music depending on the current time. Like it was a repeating 4-note pattern but instead of using pre-determined notes, the notes were determined by the current minute, hour, day etc. with some math in order to not have them be too low or high. Also, the instruments were the ones changing the most frequently. It didn't really sound good but its purpose was to kind of showcase what music would be like in the future where a robot would generate a hit song of the second or something like that.

[@davekinzer6258]

Great video- I'm going to show this to my music appreciation class.

[@KasranFox]

I dunno about you, but the thought of randomness in my music makes me feel a bit Cagey.

[@12tone]

^_^

[@anthonym8205]

But, isn't the scholarship of Mozart's random piece a bit dicey?

[@KennyHonu]

As a dungeon and dragons nerd trying to memories cords on the ukulele I have rolled many a D12 for practice.

[@davelanciani-dimaensionx]

12 frets on the guitar, so roll a d12 and on the E string 1 = F, 2 = F#, 3 = G, etc. Great way to choose random notes for either chords or quickie dissonant riffs.

[@thepastmemories4332]

it help me to understand chance music, thanks

[@charlesrosenbauer3135]

If you add more constraints (i.e, a particular note or chord may only be followed by one of a small set of particular notes, or perhaps with varying probabilities attached to each note), you tend to get more structured music. The book "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise" by John R. Pierce has an entire chapter devoted to things like this. It's a good read, especially if you have an interest in math, computer science, communication technology, etc. , or if you just like technology from the first half of the 1900s, as the first edition came out in the 60s. There's a lot of discussion too on vocoders (originally developed for highly-compressed speech transmission, currently used in music and movies for making voices sound robotic).

[@12tone]

Really cool, I'll look it up! Thanks for sharing!

[@MisterAppleEsq]

The greatest example of this is of course the theme to CrazyBus.

[@ericbhatnagar2873]

ur channel is a gem mate. glad I found it!

[@12tone]

Thanks!

[@TeunBuwaldaMusic]

In Dutch composer Simeon Ten Holt's "Canto Ostinato", the sheet music is divided in constantly repeating sets of bars. The instrumentation can be chosen by the performer, as well as how long one set is repeated until they move to the next one. Additionally, any notes may be left out or only played later on and dynamics are completely left to the performer. My piano teacher and her husband play this together, and watching them subtly communicate while playing can be really interesting.

[@12tone]

Interesting! Sounds kind of like Terry Riley's In C, where he just writes a series of short melodies and each instrument independently chooses when to move on to the next one.

[@TeunBuwaldaMusic]

Yeah, that's why I thought of it.

[@12tone]

Oh yeah, I forgot I mentioned that piece in this video... Anyway, thanks for bringing it up, I'll look into it!

[@HANAFUBUKI]

Great video! :)

[@RCAvhstape]

You can use a sequencer set to random mode.

[@12tone]

Yeah, that works too! I've been meaning to dive into more electronically random compositions some time soon, but it hasn't quite materialized yet. Some day!

[@kris.yochev]

This kinda looks like the "Writing a song without hearing it" challenge. It's not exactly the same because if you take on it you have at least a vague idea of how a piece of music will sound just by looking at the score but this still randomises things because you cannot be 100% sure what you've created until you play it.

[@joshuayoung6528]

I love how the length of the video comes out to be 4:43 hahaha

[@jessabellehinayon6161]

this is interesting but I am a little confused on how to write a chance music really. I'm a music teacher but I am really confused about it. Please help me

[@12tone]

Good question! It depends what you want to do with it, but basically you just have to take a part of the composition process out of your control. You could pick notes by rolling dice, or base your rhythms on the number of paragraphs on a page in a book. It's hard to answer concretely 'cause there's just so many different options, but really you just need to incorporate some kind of randomness or luck into the process.

[@jessabellehinayon6161]

thank you

[@anirudhsilai5790]

Cool stuff!

[@artman40]

Wait...it's a simple form of generative music!

[@xTEETSx]

make a video about the tone row matrix!! plz :3

[@intelligentshitpastinginc]

It's here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qn3OiqhonrOmiNU

[@jeffrey322]

I wrote a waltz using the name of the person I wrote it about (H = A and so on) and I am very happy with it. Didn't Shubert do this?

[@W3Rn1ckz]

Someone came up with the idea of composing music using MOLECULAR DYNAMICS. Isn't that strange?

[@juarezsilva7677]

I´ve heard Brian Eno use dices in his album productions.

[@12tone]

I wouldn't be surprised. Eno's the right sort of weird, experimental musician who does stuff just to see what happens, playing around with dice seems right up his alley!

[@jeff7775]

I remember reading Eno's a huge John Cage fan, and was greatly influenced by his writings. (Cages books on this stuff are great, and unsurprisingly wacky).

[@einarjuel]

Have to? Get to !

[@bunz420]

So basically... Chance music is created using Dice or Randomizer... just do what you want and then is thats a chance music??? Pls reply back... I really need it for my report... TY

[@12tone]

Hmm... Sort of. Chance music is music where some part of the composition is left out of the composer's controller, be it by dice, correlations with other source material, or just letting the players make decisions. That said, if you're doing a report on it, I'm probably not an academic enough source to be citable, and also different people use the term differently so I'm not sure which exact definition your teacher is looking for, so while I'm happy to answer, you probably want to find a more official-looking source. Sorry I couldn't be more help!

[@bunz420]

12tone Thanks for the Answer and Suggestion... I was just confused because in different sources... different terminologies also shows... so I Think... I'll just compile those Definition to come up with a Report for both my classmates and Teachers to understand... Anyways... Thank You Again...

[@bendurbin9585]

That intro: It takes skill to compose. The rest of the video: no u Me: I sat down ffg or 15 minutes and just played music. No reference, just me moving my fingers on a piano, hoping it would turn out good. Less skill than the dice game.

[@sterlingbidler]

I have done something similar with a number generator and a guitar effects program called Fender Fuse. The results were interesting.

[@12tone]

Nice! It's a really fun way to play around with composition, even if the results aren't always the most beautiful music.

[@sterlingbidler]

I think cacophony is beautiful, but whatever floats your boat.

[@feliperojas-doomride]

isn't a quadrillion quadrillion a nonillion?

[@12tone]

Yup! Nonillion's just one of those words that's so big that most people don't have a sense of how big it actually is so I went with quadrillion quadrillion to give people a better idea of the scale.

[@krang07]

octillion?

[@odolany]

As a realisation of your call to "share" the vid I embedded it in the glossary of musicgames.wikidot.com - hope you don't mind.

[@sledgehammer-productions]

How about stochastic music (or is it just another label)? Have you read "Formalized Music" by Xenakis? Really inspiring also on making music with computers/programming. I myself have made an excel/VBA file in which I can compose stochastic music - making a random walk in a grid in which each vertex has a pitch. Do check out my KZbin channel for examples.

[@12tone]

I'm not super familiar with the term "stochastic music", but looking it up it appears to be pretty closely related. I haven't read that book, but I'll add it to my list!

[@Gdgvnjon]

Who came from ms.harden? :) :(

[@mgscheue]

I found this especially interesting because a hobby of mine is modular synthesis, and a common technique is to use chance elements. "Generative music" means setting up structures and then letting the machine do its thing within those structures. Mylar Melodies has a fun video about that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKfVqYSYnZupd8k I found you through Adam Neely's videos, by the way! Really enjoying your work.

[@12tone]

Really cool! I'd been meaning to make a video on generative music for a while now, I'll bump it up the list!

[@felicvik9456]

C# mixolydian

[@liaveranikaputu]

interesting topic. but maybe you can speak slowly so we can understand every words that you say. good video :)

[@12tone]

Whoops, sorry! I try to slow down when I'm doing more complex stuff, but it's hard when you get excited, you know?

[@liaveranikaputu]

Yaa.. :D I am studying indeterminacy for my bachelor degree research. But I am little bit confuse about differentiation between indeterminacy and aleatoric. Even though they look similar, but I think they have a little differentiation. So, do you have any suggestion books/journal that I must read to understand that? I have read david cope, and now still struggling to read silence (john cage) :D or maybe you can explain it to me :) Thank you

[@12tone]

Hmm... That's a complicated one, and the answer you get is gonna depend on who you ask. Some theorists view them as different terms for the same thing, others view them as different ideas entirely. For me, personally, I tend to think of Indeterminate music as music where some element is allowed to vary between performances, Chance Composition as music where random elements were incorporated into the writing process, and Aleatoric Music as an umbrella term encompassing both, but I'd be cautious to make any sort of definitive statement. I'm sure you know how theorists get about their terminology, after all... But yeah, that's my view. On things to read... I do most of my research online these days, 'cause I tend to find those resources more accessible than textbooks and papers, but that's not a lot of help if you need to cite things for research. Cage is definitely a good person to learn from, but beyond that I'm afraid I don't have many good academic source recommendations.

[@thyronesigarilyo1992]

Hahakdog