The Dice Game That Lets Anyone Be A Composer

[@12tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) I have a merch store now! Check it out at standard.tv/12tone! 2) If you want to play around with existing games, opus-infinity.org has a lot of the famous ones, including Kirnberger's and Mozart's. If you'd like to download mine, it's at tinyurl.com/12tonedicegame but full disclosure Mozart's is better.

[@AntonNidhoggr]

There’re also probabilistic sequencers, quite common in modular / computer music. The most obvious examples are Mutable Instruments Marbles which is a module that can calculate a probability distribution between pitches in a played melody and generate a random sequence based on it; and Senode app for ios, a probabilistic graph sequencer allowing weighted edges, where for example you can draw a tonnetz or a set of interconnected functional chords and achieve some interesting results. Both are quite fun if you ask me :)

[@commentfreely5443]

wasn't hadyn baroque?

[@matthewcox7985]

@@commentfreely5443 He's often considered one of the "Viennese Classical" period, being more a contemporary of Mozart. He did land a pretty lucrative career, so I wouldn't say he was Baroque. A real definition of Haydn can be hard to find.

[@michanowak7060]

Ｂｕｔ　ｈｅｙ，　ｉｔ　ｗｒｉｔｅｓ　ａ　ｍｉｎｕｅｔ.

[@matteframe]

Except we never get to hear any of the resulting songs? Wierd.

[@OscarCunningham]

ｂｏｕｓｔｒｏｐｈｅｄｏｎ

[@commentfreely5443]

snake writes a minuet

[@LauraCrone]

Feel like I'm gonna get weirdly a lot of use out of "but hey, it writes a minuet."

[@rrrosecarbinela]

Sounds like a T-shirt to me!

[@InventorZahran]

18th century: musical dice 21st century: Guitar Hero The musical gaming scene has evolved a lot over 300 years...

[@rorshack23]

2:06 Kirnberger's "The Ever-ready Minuet and Polonaise Composer" 4:00 "Ludas melothedicus" (The Game of Melody Methods) Writing Minuets 6:30 Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach "Einfall (Incidents)" 6:43 Controversy section (!) 7:00 Marescalchi "Gioco Filharmonico (The Game of Harmony)" 7:13 Maximilian Stadler "Table Pour Composer (Table for Composing)" 7:48 Mozart's #1: "Contasdances" and, #2: "Waltzes" 9:38 Giovanni Catrufo "Bareme Musical" 10:24 12 Tone's "Dice Game" 11:18 Nice segue btw

[@DeGuerre]

You probably should have mentioned that Hummel was a student of Mozart (and according to Mozart, his best student). So while that's not proof of anything, if anyone had an authentic Mozart dice game, it would have been him.

[@AntHenson]

His name also means "Bumblebee" and apparently he was also a huge Shia LeBeouf fan. History's weird.

[@Hecatonicosachoron]

I’d say that the “melothedicus” is a latinised Greek-inspired neologism which can be best interpreted as “melotheticus” from melos (song, melody, music) and thesis (position, setting); so literally meaning the setting into music.

[@romajimamulo]

I wonder if they knew that 7 was the most common roll as a sum of two die, and put their favorite there

[@gromlatv]

THANK you smartypants, that is really useful :-) Not being ironic, sorry if it sounds so. Second nature I am afraid :-D

[@romajimamulo]

@@gromlatv if you don't want to sound sarcastic, maybe don't use "smarty-pants"

[@gromlatv]

The thing is, English is not my mother tongue. I am doing what I can but maybe I get things wrong sometimes. To me it sounded funny in a friendly way, if it doesnt come across like I intended, please accept my apologies :-)

[@romajimamulo]

@@gromlatv that word, "smarty-pants" is basically always used in a mocking way.

[@gromlatv]

Again, I am sorry :-) but think of this: no matter what nonsense I wrote, because you got one extra reply youtube algorithm is gonna show your comment to more people now and your wisdom can be spread out to more people ;-)

[@robtheimpure]

6:03 I get the feeling you and your sibling might have been a little miffed at this anonymous French dude, lol [furiously circles snake]

[@InventorZahran]

*laughs in Parseltongue *

[@hisham_hm]

I love that you draw Battletoads whenever you says "hard". It is a great definition of "difficult", indeed.

[@festuca]

Your pronunciation of those not-quite-sure-what-country-they- are names is just amazing!

[@ragnkja]

Rameau and his work were pronounced in French with a Spanish/Italian "R", at least to my ears.

[@zacharygh]

@@ragnkja As a french-speaker, he does. The only accent within the french language that rolls the Rs like in the latin style (spanish and italian) is the old montréal accent (and by old, I mean people born in the 50s and before). However, nobody does the latin R in french anymore. One could say that the french R is rolled, but with the back of the tongue rather than the tip. The vast majority of english speakers can't really do it. French has weird sounds like that.

[@ConvincingPeople]

Zachary Gagnon You're ignoring the traditional dialects of western and southern France such as Poitevin and Saintongeais, which do in fact feature trilled Rs and were a major influence on the development of Québecois, Acadian and Louisiana (Cajun) French, but these are all dying out due to the increasing influence of the Parisian dialect (wherein the guttural R originated back in the late 18th/early 19th century) in modern media, so I can understand why this might not immediately spring to mind. I actually have a friend from Québec who's in her twenties and rolls her Rs in the old style, and I'm just a linguistics freak in general, so I'm probably more pedantic about this than the average bear. Apologies.

[@rkond]

Excellent video! I can offer my two cents as a dance historian. All the examples of these games are for popular dances of the era. Most of these dances were danced for quite a long time like half an hour or more. And while the dancers are having fun, musicians usually get somewhat bored repeating the same 16-32-whatever bars for more than a few minutes. So it’s not inconceivable that the musicians varied the music somewhat during the dance. But these variations are to be done within very ordered and predictable structure of the dance music as dancers rely on it. This is where these interchangeable musical parts may be from. They are there to add variety to some 30 minutes minuets or polonaises. For the sake of musicians and their audience. And while such long and repetitive dances are not unique to this period by any means, such games seem to be limited to the classical music only. N. B. This is my educated guess, not definite opinion.

[@rkond]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqWVaqWioLGbrJY This is an example of how these variations may arise naturally. Note what the musicians do toward the end of the dance. This was their own idea after 15 minutes of playing the same 16 bars over and over.

[@brunzmeflugen]

It truly is unbelievable how much Euler has had an effect on

[@nickalasmontano1496]

Yeah. Euler discovered so many things that people felt obligated to name things after the second person to discover them so that not everything would be named after Euler.

[@littlefishbigmountain]

lmao

[@WombatSlug]

I've been intrigued by musical dice games for years, but had a difficult time finding anything online that didn't do it for me (e.g. via RNG on a web page). I was only aware of Mozart's games, so this was a great dive for me. On the subject of Euler, I had heard that he did dabble in music and found he wasn't too good at it. There's a book by Eli Maor called "Music by the Numbers" which talks about it. I have to admit that I started the book and then got distracted by another squirrel, so I never finished it...

[@kevek42]

"This dice game really makes you FEEL like a composer"

[@ambrozkeen]

Dunkey?

[@crisdekker8223]

Fair use badumm tss... .

[@Seltaeb_]

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the elegance, sleekness, and beauty in your logo? Its. So. Good.

[@rorshack23]

I couldn't help but think the same thing as I watched :)

[@BenjaminKassel]

This channel is why I'm glad I don't have a class at 10:00 AM local time on Friday.

[@lincolnpepper816]

you're one of the few channels i smash like before the video starts, cause i know it's gonna be a good video.

[@Stephen-Fox]

So, were these the first examples of procedural music generation?

[@12tone]

They're the earliest ones I know of, although I'd be somewhat surprised if they were actually literally the first.

[@ThePolishCan]

I remember that in 1650 Athanasius Kircher invented a box with cards called Arca Musarithmica that could write choral music in first and fifth-species counterpoint to Latin hymns. Heck, at secondary music schools they demonstrate the complexity of the Franco-Flemish polyphony with anonymous 4 parts canon, where voices wander on the musical chessboard like horses(?) from the corners. Needless to say, there are older examples.

[@matteframe]

You REMEMBER 1650? Wow dude.

[@Tehom1]

Do you count wind chimes as procedural music generation?

[@ThePolishCan]

Addendum: it turns out that chess canon is actually Ghiselin Danckerts' "Ave Maris Stella" from 1535 and it doesn't actually implement knight's tour in any way. It's just a puzzle with 20+ solutions, just like many others (for example in literature) in 16-century Netherlands.

[@InventorZahran]

Can you imagine what would happen if someone programmed an AI to write music using these formulas?

[@SpencerPhreak]

RPG tools for the win: roll a D8, use the 8 result to make some sort of octave. If you want something more, go minor key with a D10 with the 9 being flat 2 note and the 10 being a flat 5 note.

[@rrrosecarbinela]

As of about 20 years ago, someone was still publishing a mozart dice game.... I don't know where mine ended up, but I had fun with it. Thanks for bringing back good memories.

[@odolany]

how in the world i missed when that was on. i'm a fool for anything music games, i see 12tones vids often and i'm subscribed and somebody else has to tell me about this vid. algorithm betrayed me...

[@kopesetik]

Today would be a great day to release a video on Earth, Wind & Fire’s September. Maybe next year

[@HauntedLuci]

I've created my own system of composing by means of a deck of playing cards! Aces are the root note, numbers are steps from the root, and K is a rest. J & Q are the interesting ones though. Normal cards are quarter-notes, but J & Q = 1/2 length. So if you pull a J, the next 2 cards immediately following it will be eighth-notes. And this stacks: so 2 J/Q = the following 4 cards as sixteenth-notes! There's some other rules as well, but I think it's a pretty neat setup I've come up with, and I've actually gotten some interesting chunks of melodies out of this before!

[@ZipplyZane]

Surprised there was no mention of creating a tone row with dice as showing that dice didn't fall away completely.

[@matthewcox7985]

Dice have a strong chance of repeating numbers. A better way to generate a "random" 12-tone row would be to pull cards from a hat. Take the Jokers and Kings out of a standard Poker deck, shuffle, and the remaining 48 cards can generate four tone rows in one take. I'm almost certain someone did that in a music theory class.

[@ZipplyZane]

@@matthewcox7985 That's quite true. However, I was talking about historical usage, not which was the best method. And there were those who used dice to create a tone row. Also, there are theoretically ways to mitigate the repetition issue somewhat, if you start remapping as you go. The factors of thirty six include 12, 9, 6, 3, and 2. (I say "theoretically" because I'm not aware of any being used historically. However, such wouldn't surprise me.)

[@loganstrong5426]

My favorite thing will always be your slightly obscure drawings for certain words. Like your atom for "dating," referencing carbon dating.

[@WordsofHeresy]

Idea for a musical dice game: Make a chart based off of the possible rolls on 2 di. For instance, if you're using 6 sided di, its a 6x6 grid and numbered 1-6. Doesn't have to be numbered in order; you can have the axis and/or boxes resemble a multiplication worksheet or entirely randomized. Now, each number you get is a bar and you make your own bar based on the given notes, but you can change whatever you want about it, just as long as the notes are included. I would also recommend using either different sections of the song on every roll or entirely different pieces for variety and probably shouldn't publish it if it resembles the original piece(s)

[@J3Puffin]

This is an amazing concept and I love that it exists...and it causes FIGHTS.

[@loszhor]

How interesting! Thanks for uploading!

[@benjaminhavens7266]

In light of this, what do you think of A.I. composition assistants? The concept seems similar, except that there are theoretically infinite possibilities (or at least close to infinite), and the artist has more control of exactly what comes out.

[@RandyBakkelund]

This is really awesome information! Thanks 12tone!

[@yudasgoat2000]

I realise it could result in a composition with the extremities played concurrently (and no key signature), but using a 12-sided die to decide which note of the octave and an 8-sided one for which octave would cover the full range of an upright piano (so 1 1 would be lowest A, 4 8 the highest C, 8 4 the E above middle C, etc.).

[@keenansutherland7690]

Literally just realized he writes with his left hand, GO SOUTHPAWS!

[@GroovingPict]

what an odd thing to root about

[@littlefishbigmountain]

GroovingPict Right-handed people will never truly understand just what it’s like to be left-handed or how different it really is to live in a world mostly designed and occupied by opposite-handed people to yourself

[@emilyclaireotto]

You pronouncing "Musikalisches Würfelspiel" and "traité de l'harmonie" is my new ringtone

[@emilyclaireotto]

Nope allerzeitfertige menutten und Polionissen Komponist is the best

[@Wayne_Robinson]

I was already laughing at the absurdly tedious minuet composition process, and your frustration about the anonymous French dude's drawing of a snake that's supposed to help somehow provided the best chortle this week by far! Effectively eliminating any of the joy of artistic creation and replacing it with total clerical tedium didn't catch on for some reason. Now we have AI to do that, right?

[@ConvincingPeople]

I personally like convoluted processes like that, but I know I'm weird.

[@Wayne_Robinson]

@@ConvincingPeople I can understand that, but it's hard for me to appreciate the complete lack of personal decisions and ability to try out original (well, semi-original) ideas. What creative itch is scratched by using a random number generator over and over and over to literally reuse someone else's content?

[@ottolehikoinen6193]

To a proper musical dice game you'd need a d8, 2*d6, 3*d4s and a coin toss. Do not use d12 unless you are Schönberg or his minion. Well... in throwing passing tones it might still be applicable. Leave out d20 too if you don't preselect the good bits of some high number EDO.

[@dsuedholt]

3:34 how many tries did that take you? :P

[@Ngasii]

6:28: You're so angry🤣🤣🤣

[@Draconiator]

Sometime in the far future, some archeologist is going to find these sheets and mistake it for some kind of weird hieroglyphics or something.

[@gromlatv]

Hi dear, awesome and interesting as usual :-) the word Einfall means idea though, not incident

[@12tone]

Huh, looks like Google Translate lied to me. Thought I could trust it 'cause it was a single word, but I guess I should've run that by an actual German speaker. Thanks!

[@gromlatv]

@@12tone Come to think of it, it CAN mean something like incident, but that only happens about once in a lifetime lol. It's one of those words that have several meanings depending on context

[@ragnkja]

​@@12tone The Norwegian cognate is "infall", and the most literal translation is indeed "in-fall", meaning "something (an idea) that falls into one's head".

[@gubblfisch350]

@@gromlatv how can Einfall mean incident in German? I can only think about the meanings idea and invasion

[@gromlatv]

@@gubblfisch350, you are right of course. But I was thinking an incident CAN sometimes be the "incident of an invasion" and that way, I could save dear 12tone´s feelings a bit :-D btw the whole question has made me think, perhaps the more common use of "Einfall" as "idea" is much more related to the meaning invasion as I ever thought of. Because we also have the word "Idee" meaning idea, right? but an Einfall is more of a SUDDEN idea, thus, an invasion of thought into the brain :-D

[@hoagy_ytfc]

Yay for the Reason logo at 0:37

[@battlestar62fleet]

How many takes until you got that nat 1 at 3:34?

[@stuartcoyle1626]

I love the nethack reference.

[@Empyrean55]

Put "But hey it writes a minuet" on a shirt please!

[@andreasrehn7454]

In my music text book in highschool there was a simplified version of the Mozart one... as i was also in programmin in those days(the 90s) i wrote a little pc program with delphi. so you could press a button and a new waltz was diced together.. it was funny.. they all sounded the same but still slightly different... unfortunately i lost it over the years...

[@noahzach2324]

Can you do an analysis of Firth of Fifth by Genesis

[@Brigand231]

So.... musical dice game on PC and mobile when? :)

[@rrrosecarbinela]

Google did this just recently for one of their google doodles on Bach's Birthday

[@matthewcox7985]

@@rrrosecarbinela Now that's development hell for you: ~270 *years!*

[@MisterAppleEsq]

I love the idea of a newspaper back then having a lengthy op-ed from a super old snobbish guy (the 18th century equivalent of a boomer) about how these new-fangled dice games meant that music didn't need talent anymore or whatever.

[@lr1594]

The word Melothedicus would sort of make sense as a Latinized Greek compound of melos (a musical 'strain'/song/melody) and the- from 'to put/set/arrange'. What does not make sense is the letter d. dicus would rather seem to point to the stem deik (to show) or Latin (and etymologically related) dic- (to say). On the other hand -icus clearly points to the Greek adjectival suffix -ikos. If the d were actually a t, it would make more sense. Ludus Melotheticus would mean something like "game of melody arrangement". But that's not our word...

[@CarolusMagnus98]

1:50 ASCII rogue-like ?

[@KimuraKurosai]

Maybe the snake meant you were supposed to go down the table in a back-and-forth pattern as the shape of the snake suggests and the inconsistent blank spaces on the right sides of the table helped "randomize" the 9 count?

[@duophile7692]

0:36 Is that... is that the Propellerhead Reason logo

[@jackalope2302]

3:35 Natural one!

[@djAstraim]

SInce nobody has done it yet... "Game of Tones"

[@juicebox86]

The fair use pun was great.

[@squigglycircle]

0:35 the age of Propellerheads :D (the music software studio formerly known as)

[@gromlatv]

Btw when I read the title of this video I thought it was about assigning scale degrees to numbers and then using those scale degrees the dice suggested for a melody. The truth is a lot more colorful so to speak ;-) and I was wondering if that is again the general mood of the era at play here. I see some kids who are devouring Jules Verne and thinking of some crazy complicated contraptions right in front of my mental eye :-D

[@drewajv]

The idea of using the dice to get a random value between 1 and 12 kinda falls apart when you learn about standard deviation and the proportion of 7’s to every other number

[@MrMisterkrazy]

Or it's completely intentional. Put the more stable, less adventurous stuff near the center of the distribution, and the wacky stuff near the outsides. That way, most pieces will have moments that stand out

[@PtolemyJones]

Anyone know of a place where we might hear some of the results?

[@richardskelt912]

Here's an article published last year on AI producing music. It's over a year old and aimed at potential investors, so may be a bit out of date now, but I guess this is the 21st century version of the dice game www.nanalyze.com/2018/05/11-startups-ai-compose-music/

[@pedrohenriquecanciamsantar2044]

be honest, how long did it take foy you to roll that 1 on the d20?

[@InventorZahran]

We need an app for this!

[@CharmanteEstPris]

I'm french and your "R"s made my day :)

[@tymime]

There ought to be a generator website that follows these rules and generates a piece of music for you. Having to keep track of all these numbers sounds like a bit of a headache.

[@commentfreely5443]

but what do they sound like? vid?

[@dr7246]

Loved this video and LOVE your channel!! However, one small point of disagreement: the peerless brilliance of JS Bach is ALWAYS relevant. :-)

[@MarsLos10]

Very interesting video!

[@iansewell5457]

Maybe I missed this, but who are the scholars you're thinking of when you talk about the authenticity of the "Haydn" dice game?

[@georgthegreat]

Hi, I can not find any trace of Johann Goetz musical generator. Could you, please, help me to find it?

[@MisterAppleEsq]

Check the pinned comment.

[@jessica8564]

I love how angry you are, this is one of your funniest videos yet 😂😂. But hey, it writes a minuet

[@decalice4272]

Apparently The Dillinger Escape Plan used dice to determine time signatures

[@erikthered931]

I don't think you circled that snake enough.

[@Tehom1]

Is "Johann Hummel" here the same as "Johann Nepomuk Hummel"? Student of Mozart and composer of a well-known trumpet concerto?

[@12tone]

I wondered the same thing when I first saw the name, but no, in this case it's apparently Johann _Julius_ Hummel. I can't find whether or not they're related.

[@Tehom1]

​@@12tone OK, thanks.

[@WaterShowsProd]

I also assumed it was him.

[@1oolabob]

I'm a simple man: I see "anyone" I click play.

[@andreas_4898]

Melethodius is propably coming from the greeck word μελωδία (melodía) that means melody .

[@nategeorgenson5179]

First thing I thought of was Common Practice Era Bach....

[@JoyBausch]

Considering how some self-entitled "Producers" throw together loops and call it a day, we already have a modernized version of the musikalisches Würfelspiel; ohne Würfel...:)

[@fzxfzxfzx]

the cringe

[@ganaraminukshuk0]

Now instead of making this a dice game, you instead turn the whole thing into a Markov chain...

[@rdbury507]

Didn't John Cage experiment with randomly generated music, like using irregularities in the texture of the paper he was writing on to determine which note to use? Serialism seems like a return to the strict forms of classical music (different forms though) so dice driven composition could have had a resurgence, if only Serialism caught on with the general public. Also, Beethoven not Classical? Not romantic enough to be Romantic, too romantic to be Classical, so transitional?

[@bd______og]

This reminds me of the arbiter method.

[@nathanielvalla6142]

for a second i thought you where talking about the harmnonica

[@columbus8myhw]

So what about Crazy Bus

[@NomeDeArte]

Come on! Just play the Kirnberger composition!

[@francissreckofabian01]

I have no talent AND I have a pair of dice! Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news. P.S. Kirnberger was correct. BACH was one of the greats!

[@12yz12ab]

1:48 i 'member nethack

[@kenkoopa7903]

12yz12ab That may be a Rogue reference for...reasons.

[@oravlaful]

i love your sassiness

[@cazgerald9471]

I bet an army of monkeys could have written a musical dice game for the Romantic period XD

[@Anonymous-df8it]

Lol!

[@legoharry100]

So if I roll a natural 20, does that mean I’m like the Steve Vai of this game?

[@terryenglish7132]

Play these videos at 3/4 speed and you can actually follow them

[@xerogh1821]

Michael New sent me a set of these a while back: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3jWg6Boa9p1rbc , very cool take on the dice/random music assistance thing. I use them when I get stuck or when I just want to start something different. Not sure what happened to his channel, always like his vids.

[@wfcfilms]

Nice intro

[@prestonhochstetler6904]

Can you analyze Panic Attack by Dream Theater?

[@joeldcanfield_spinhead]

What does the ant mean? Everything else I get, but not the ant. Can't connect it.

[@IanWagner94]

Did u rolled a d20? Kkkk

[@benbeauchamp2498]

A dice game except it’s always Megalovania

[@timkramar9729]

Mellifluous?

[@caseyhamm8822]

But hey, it writes a minuet

[@stokesa3122]

Someone should make this into an AI program.

[@AaronRotenberg]

You don't need AI to do this, just a lookup table and a random number generator. If you want to see AI that writes music, check out the Bach Google doodle from a while back. It was... pretty bad.