This article is a draft. You can help by editing it or discussing in the comments
Adapting existing games to music is not rare. It happens in educational and artistic contexts, with sound-making or with just theory. The more popular the game, the more frequently it gets its musical version, but there are also other important factors for that, like simplicity, or the in-game usage of sound-space that influences the adaptability.
Pros: Familiar rules. High-quality components available without DIY. Tried and true solutions.
Cons: High risk of a boring, over-used result. Lost opportunity for additional creative engagement. Popular ≠ good.
To the last point, indeed, games might be popular not because they're good, but because they've been around for a long time and/or due to intense marketing. Now, let's see the frequently occurring options for adaptations.
Roll-and-move games
A simple mechanic of "roll dice — move that many spots — do what it says where you land" is probably the most popular for musical adaptation. Even here at the wiki, we have a Goose game with cues from all around the site.
Chess
We will have a specific page for all matters of chess music and musical chess. But let's note that due to the game's complexity, adaptations are realized in a more advanced, artistically involved contexts, and it's not easy to do them in a broadly participatory way.
Go (Baduk/Weiqi)
A bit less internationally popular, but with much simpler rules than chess, Go has a few projects in a software-assisted realm for generating music from games. If you know of the pieces that work with live performance, please, please, edit that in.
Traditional playing cards
There are many musical activities that are based on existing games with traditional playing cards, but probably there are more titles that use this prop in an originally musical way, without a connection to previously existing games. Currently on the wiki, there is one adaptation: CFSNAP!R148 (Snap! Rite) from 1969.
Bingo
A popular game in education, especially in the "American" 5x5 version, and especially for children, being a game of chance. It's usually used with terms for memorization, performance-based adaptation is possible (for example like this), but naturally will have a rather linear sound result, still with no decisions from players.
Adaptations on the wiki
CFSNAP!R148 | an adaptation of a card game Snap |
Goose | A classic dice game for musical interpertation |
Musical Bingo | a straightforward bingo adaptation |
One Into Another (for music) | an adaptation of one of surrealist games |
Parallel Tunes | improvise with verbal signals from all players |
Adaptations outside of the wiki
Musical Dominoes | C. W. Grimm | 1893 rare |
Classic Dominoes adapted to musical notes |
|
Das Neunundneunzigmusikspiel | Lee-Sean Huang | 2009 free |
A goose roll-and-move game made of 99 carefully chosen musical prompts |
|
Shake'n Play | rare |
Acoustic memory (Memo-like) game with 16 shakers of 8 distinct sounds to listen |
||
Dixit | Jean-Louis Roubira | 2008 sold |
This game, and extensions, is a huge set of inspire cards, rules focus on speaking but allow musical play |
4 links here (see all).
If you think anything should be added to this subpage, please drop a hint or a link for future editors.