I have a few ongoing music game gatherings that I direct.
The first one I’ll introduce here is one of the latest.
It’s held at my small music & language school in Tokyo, Japan.
This particular gathering is titled “Sunday Morning Ambient Improv & Music Games.”
A relaxing and creative gathering to help start one’s Sunday!
It’s limited to seven people with no audience, except for the pedestrians walking about outside.
This particular gathering is also unique in how I get people to come. Usually, my gatherings involve friends, musical colleagues, or students. But, this time I only get people through meetup.com and a few other smaller online places. I believe playing music games with as many different kinds of people as possible helps one grow as an improviser, music game designer, and event organizer.
One problem with meetup.com is that people are supposed to RSVP their spot, which is what I originally liked about it, but some people don’t do that and they show up unannounced. This is bad for gatherings like mine where I wish to keep a limit of participants.
Here’s my meetup page for the gathering: https://www.meetup.com/Free-Music-Improvisation-Music-Improv-Games
It’s a two-hour thing. From 11:00am to 1:00pm. The first Sunday of every month.
I’ve held two meetings from this series so far. Though I’ve been doing similar meetings since the nineties.
It’s quite the casual meeting. I make a schedule, but it’s generally abandoned within 30 minutes.
Here is the schedule for yesterday’s meeting:
I like to start with a completely free improv session to get people settled in and relaxed. Though there is the theme “relaxed ambiance,” so we do try to at least stick to that. This is a nice way to introduce everyone to each other musically, players can make adjustments to their setups, and because we’re not focused in on a game yet late-comers are not disrupting anything.
After that was the usual round of personal introductions. Names, what we play, where we’re from (most from various different countries).
Then we did a variation of Loop Cycle. Instead of being locked to loops, we played more “organically” and freely. And only three players could play at the same time. That means you must eventually drop out once the next person starts playing.
People requested a Card Drop game, so we went into that. I used the cards odolany made, originally for the game “15 Cards.”
Everyone gets two cards each. We start with one card in the center. We must musically improvise interpretations of the image on the card. At any time anyone can throw a new card in the center and we gradually change to that one. Continue until all the cards have been used. Cards are dropped fairly quickly - usually within a minute. Some examples: on the “grassy field” image we played soft music, then the “people talking” image was dropped in of course we all started talking, next someone dropped the “elephant” image to which I grabbed a long hose and placed it on my nose while others used this hose as percussion, then the “birds” card drop - one player played his bird pipe flute others whistled I played bird like motifs on my acoustic guitar, then someone dropped the “Godzilla” card and the music quickly turned ugly while some people stumped around, and so on. Fun stuff! I’ll put the game in the library and link it from here soon.
After that, we took a break and all talked. One guy explained about a British(?) children’s game called “The Winking Murderer.” And with that, together, we created our own music game based off of this children’s game. Spontaneously creating this game was just as much fun as playing the games! Everyone chipped in with their own ideas.
Then we played three rounds of it. Adding improvements after each round. The basic idea is that before the game everyone blindly grabs a card. You are the only player allowed to see your card. We had seven players and seven cards. low tones / rhythm / weird noises / harmony / high tones / murder / detective. Nobody knows any of the other player’s roles. Everyone, except the murderer and detective, plays music relating to the role on their cards. If you are the murderer your first job is to try to fit in musically. Also you must wink at other players. When a player is winked at they let out a scream, on instrument or voice, stop playing and die. But, if the detective catches the murderer winking then the murderer loses and the game is over. If the murderer winks at the detective, the murderer is caught and loses. The detective must also try to fit in musically. If the game comes down to only the detective and the murderer - the murderer wins. It’s great fun to play! I was the murderer once and it was a bit scary trying to wink and not get caught. I was able to kill one player. The second player I winked at happened to be the detective. It’s one of those games when everyone laughs at the end when the roles are revealed.
Before we knew it it was time to finish. We didn’t get as many games in as planned, but we all got to create a game together and that was a ton of fun!
Next, I'll write about the next music game session I do with a few musician friends of mine inside an old house/studio. I guess I could call it a more serious kind of thing, as we play more difficult music games.
