- Accompanist (role)
- Ad libitum
- Agenda
- Aleatoricism
- Aspect
- Balance
- Bartle types
- BCG
- Conductor (role)
- Constellation
- Constructor (role)
- Co-optionality
- Cue cards
- Dice
- Dimension
- Downbeat
- Downtime
- Elegant Game
- Emergence
- End Condition
- Event (musical event)
- Extended technique
- Facilitator
- Fighting
- Flow
- Found sound
- Gameplay flow
- Genre
- Goals
- Heteronomous Music
- Horizon of intent
- Insert game
- Inspire cards
- Instrument Preparation
- Judge (role)
- Karaoke
- King-making
- Learning curve
- Ludomusical dissonance
- Meaningful Choice
- Mechanic
- Music game
- Non-idiomatic music
- Notation Cards
- Open work
- Parameter
- Pervasive Game
- Player (role)
- Prompter (role)
- Psychographics
- Quarterbacking
- Rhythm cards
- Rhythm game
- Roles
- RPG
- Rule Cards
- Speedrun
- Stacking
- Trading
- Transition
- Upgrade
- Victory condition
- Xenochrony
- XP
- Yes, and...
This glossary entry is a draft. You can help by editing it or discussing in the comments
A set of rules that control players to create music.
Origins
In the area of experimental music, music games (known as game pieces) were showing up from the middle of the 20th century. It was a realization of avant-garde ideas both as for expression and as for structure. Some creators found it attractive to include randomness into their music, others experimented with how to let more people play, making parts for musicians and non-musicians together.
Improvisation was getting appreciated and also some fully pre-composed music started to be 'customisable'. For example you could repeat parts a chosen amount of times or exchange some part with another if you felt like it (ad libitum), having "modules" at one's disposal. This feature got to be called "openness" of the composition.
Characteristics
To have a game piece you usually go away from more restrictive music score and write instructions in text. "Play a sustained sound" gives performers freedom of choosing pitch/timbre etc. "Play a G major chord" gives other freedoms. Some pieces involve expressive improvisation and sometimes you may need other musical or non-musical skills. An important feature of game pieces is that they don't provide a defined order of events.
So, music games are open works of music written mainly as text instruction. Music games and game pieces are basically the same thing, although at Games for Music we tend to use the first term to stress the performer side of the topic as we look especially for games that are engaging to play (more on that in library scope).