What for whom
"500+ Non-Jazz Games for Performers, Educators, and Everyone Else" from the cover is not precise yet… The understanding of "games" in the book is not like at our wiki — we defined our "music games" as "sets of rules" (systems?), while the book often presents singular constraints to challenge oneself during musical performance. It's a quite common understanding within educational contexts and Jeffrey Agrell speaks about naming openly:
Why call them "games"? Why not "drills," "exercises," or "systematic text-based task-specific collaborative extemporaneous musical solo or ensemble performance studies"?
[…]
because it best suits the needs of teaching the subject matter.Learning improvisation for classical musicians means approaching music in a completely different way, and this represents quite a challenge for both teacher and student. An improviser must engage in experimentation, exploration, and personal discovery of music, instrument and self […] using the term "games" helps us lighten up and lets creativity and imagination flow, instead of blocking it by fear of mistakes. [p. 42-43, emphases as in the original]
As we can see in the quote above, intended players might often be musicians who know their instrument and the music theory quite well but so far has been distanced from improvisation. This ideal student is rhetorically placed in the educational system of the U.S. but that matters much more in auxiliary materials than in games themselves.
AMAPFALAP — As much as possible from as little as possible.
Yes, and... — Method of improvising when you accept everything that is played and do something with it.
Needless to say, there is an overlap between the contents of the book and our wiki, albeit not within the library itself due to the simplicity of book's items, which may even have their own individual entry with us, but are treated here rather as general premises or mechanics, like Amapfalap or Yes, and... both entered as separate games in the book.
Still, in this voluminous collection the diversity is considerable, leading to the inclusion of "pieces", "concepts", and indeed "games", among other suitable categories. The intended usage scenario of the items is also not homogeneous, and some rulesets mention a "class" with a "Leader", some might be for a single player (often with an access to the piano), while some refer to everyday, non-musical situations.
Before an overview, let's have a look at some examples, of which none would be considered for our library. In this sample, the most under-represented aspect is the diversity of length — all chosen examples are short, while the longest items in the book span over more than two pages, despite their gaming simplicity, just with all variants and facilitation tips provided.
Offbeat Metronome
One player. When practicing scales or other technical materials, hear the metronome click on two and four instead of on one and three. Once you get the hang of it, brag to your friends that you have a special metronome that clicks on the off beats, and then demonstrate. They may want to know where they can get one, too.
Playing the Gallery
Two-plus players. A small group of players arranges with an art museum to provide an updated and improvised version of Pictures at an Exhibition. The group selects a number of paintings from the current exhibition and creates pieces to match on the spot. Make arrangements in advance, so that gallery-goers can plan to attend the concert.
What You Hear Is What You Get (To Do)
Four-plus players. One or two players are designated as soloists. They may play anything they wish. All others are designated as listeners and may play only what they hear a soloist play or a variation of it. Motivic development techniques (e.g., augmentation, diminution, sequence, transposition, etc.) may be applied. The Leader may reassign the soloist function at any time.
Games overview
At the beginning of the collection (after the introductory sections) there is a chapter 10 Quick-start Improvisation Game Favorites that gathers a selection of items from the book — it's quite representative for quick reading and it's ordered additionally by the number of players. In general, the games are mainly organized by their primary category with helpful cross-linking indices at the end. There is little overlap between chapters, a few games appear more then once, occasionally with small variants. Some chapters end with a few "combinations" which are propositions of playing a few games at once, often between categories.
Here is a list of all categories with their starting page, number of games included in the chapter, and a short remark ("→" means here a general tendency). Almost every chapter is named "Adjective Games" — with these adjectives entered in the first column below.
| Chapter | p. | # | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | 71 | 13 | may assume students having a set practice routine |
| Rhythm | 77 | 80 | includes classic percussion drills (as games) |
| Accent | 105 | 12 | e.g. Accenting The Wrong SyLAble |
| Dynamics | 109 | 4 | 75% about the whole group, 25% individual dynamics |
| Melody | 111 | 85 | with jazz-adjacent info about scales |
| Form | 135 | 13 | may just instruct: ABCBA, or ABACA, etc. |
| Harmony | 139 | 42 | the most advanced in terms of musical skill (?) |
| Bass Line | 155 | 11 | typical simple jamming (for classical musicians) |
| Aural | 159 | 44 | → call-and-response |
| Nontraditional Score | 171 | 16 | with drawing and other art-making |
| Conducting | 177 | 9 | → Soundpainting |
| Energy/Mood | 183 | 9 | → music therapy |
| Texture | 187 | 12 | defined as "number of instruments", density/on-off |
| Timbre | 193 | 16 | → extended technique (dubbed "X-tech") |
| Composition | 199 | 18 | using traditional Western notation |
| Depiction | 205 | 27 | → Entitled Piece |
| Technique | 213 | 7 | dealing with mistakes and unfamiliar material |
| Accompaniment | 217 | 9 | with short info on improv backing |
| Style | 223 | 22 | esp. genres of classical music |
| Text | 231 | 11 | → improvisational theatre |
| Storytelling | 237 | 17 | → Fairy Tale |
| Miscellaneous | 245 | 51 | diverse set, includes our fav pick (below) |
| Improv Set-ups | 259 | 40 | no "Games" in the title, narrow and specific rules |
| Extended Combination | 267 | 6 | more consecutive than concurrent games mixing |
Final picks
Sometimes, a more typical gaming situation occurs, when the instruction calls for making a set of cards for randomization (DIY, no sheets for photocopying are provided). Actually, in line with a modern music gaming "trend", more than half of the book (short items) could successfully be made into a deck of rule cards, so players could draw instructions randomly or maybe sort them by category (color?). But gaming qualities may be found throughout the whole book, scattered among a lot of education. For that maybe the most outstanding example is Who Started It? (← click for a few tweaks):
One other item we had in the collection before this review appeared, it is a simple instruction to play only with smallest intervals, efficient in its simplicity (doing a lot both for the music and for the experience). Finding an "inventor" of such a "game" would be a hard task, it is an activity that Jeffrey Agrell not only describes and promotes, but especially excelled in providing a name for it: Dueling Bumblebees (after YouTube in this case, the book has different titles for it). And indeed there are so, so many punny titles to choose from in the book, that it should be a great gift for every dad.
But is it worth the (personal) money? The publisher set a price rather high, aiming probably at institutions, and indeed the book is a great fit for a school library. Your individual satisfaction may vary depending on genre affiliations and your current experience with music games and with improvisation in general.
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