Chess Variants And Microtonal Music

One of the original microtonal music pieces which I did, was, actually a game of chess which I played against the computer mapped to 64ET, one degree of the chromatic scale for each square on the chess board!
 
The first row is notes one to eight (of 64ET), the second row notes 9 to 16 (of 64ET), the third row notes 17 to 24 (of 64ET)etc…..
 
Each move then plays a chord of 32 notes which gradually get less and less 31, 30, 29, 28...etc...as each peice is captured.
 
I have actually emailed the moderators of this website:
 
http://www.chessvariants.org/
 
To suggest to them the possibilities of mapping chess variants to microtonal music, after, of course, explaining WHAT microtonal music is.
 
They seemed mildly interested, but couldn't really understand the point of this exercise, but again, it is all about EXPERIMENTATION, and hearing what it would sound like....
 
Please tell me if anyone on the alternative tuning list had ever heard about any composer mapping a game of chess to a musical composition, microtonal or otherwise?
 
I thought it fitting to mention chess variants specifically because this is another interest of mine, and it just seemed fitting that chess variants and music variants should go hand-in-hand, so to speak...
 
I then do suppose that other variants, like a 10 by 10 board with the zebra piece (please see the website....), could be mapped to 100ET.
 
What needs to be done by me now is to go through all of my compositions and make a judgment as to their originality, but I will still seek free legal advice from a lawyer.
 
Also, please do checkout the Odd Music Gallery.
 
----Sarn.

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Try this:

http://www.greschak.com/muschess.htm

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/music.html

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3522

http://www.ondespirale.com/e4/learn.html

I know about Czech composers using chess as inspiration - Martinu,
Kapr and Simon.

As you see lot of composers were inspired by chess game, but there's
not direct connection between the situation on the board and music as
far as I know.

I'm interested a lot in different transformation or conversion of
extra music material to music. Everything is possible if one finds a
good way of mapping. I tried many things like this, so I couldn't
omit games. I have converted Rubik Cube solving to music, and have
some plans to use Japanese chess shogi game for music generating.
They are more complex than standard chess, more characters, more
movements and some other interesting aspects. For sure I will use
different approach, for me is more interesting to convert moves of
characters. Position conversion is rather simple.

Few years ago I wa also thinking about some kind of 3D chess where
characters could move in 3D space, for example matrix of 10x10x10
cubes, and map movements to pitch, timbre and volume.

Daniel Forro

On 8 Feb 2010, at 5:02 PM, Sarn Ursell wrote:

>
>
> One of the original microtonal music pieces which I did, was,
> actually a game of chess which I played against the computer mapped
> to 64ET, one degree of the chromatic scale for each square on the
> chess board!
>
>
>
> The first row is notes one to eight (of 64ET), the second row notes
> 9 to 16 (of 64ET), the third row notes 17 to 24 (of 64ET)etc…..
>
>
> Each move then plays a chord of 32 notes which gradually get less
> and less 31, 30, 29, 28...etc...as each peice is captured.
>
>
>
> I have actually emailed the moderators of this website:
>
>
>
> http://www.chessvariants.org/
>
>
>
> To suggest to them the possibilities of mapping chess variants to
> microtonal music, after, of course, explaining WHAT microtonal
> music is.
>
>
>
> They seemed mildly interested, but couldn't really understand the
> point of this exercise, but again, it is all about EXPERIMENTATION,
> and hearing what it would sound like....
>
>
>
> Please tell me if anyone on the alternative tuning list had ever
> heard about any composer mapping a game of chess to a musical
> composition, microtonal or otherwise?
>
>
> I thought it fitting to mention chess variants specifically because
> this is another interest of mine, and it just seemed fitting that
> chess variants and music variants should go hand-in-hand, so to
> speak...
>
>
>
> I then do suppose that other variants, like a 10 by 10 board with
> the zebra piece (please see the website....), could be mapped to
> 100ET.
>
>
>
> What needs to be done by me now is to go through all of my
> compositions and make a judgment as to their originality, but I
> will still seek free legal advice from a lawyer.
>
>
> Also, please do checkout the Odd Music Gallery.
>
>
> ----Sarn.
>

Is your chess music piece available somewhere? I would like to hear it!

I once had a similar idea with the game of Go. It is played on a 19x19 board, so the obvious idea to map go games to microtonal music would be 19EDO. But I didn't manage to define a good transformation function...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Sarn Ursell <polyverse2002@...> wrote:
>
> One of the original microtonal music pieces which I did, was, actually a game of chess which I played against the computer mapped to 64ET, one degree of the chromatic scale for each square on the chess board!
>  
> The first row is notes one to eight (of 64ET), the second row notes 9 to 16 (of 64ET), the third row notes 17 to 24 (of 64ET)etc…..
>  
> Each move then plays a chord of 32 notes which gradually get less and less 31, 30, 29, 28...etc...as each peice is captured.
>  
> I have actually emailed the moderators of this website:
>  
> http://www.chessvariants.org/
>  
> To suggest to them the possibilities of mapping chess variants to microtonal music, after, of course, explaining WHAT microtonal music is.
>  
> They seemed mildly interested, but couldn't really understand the point of this exercise, but again, it is all about EXPERIMENTATION, and hearing what it would sound like....
>  
> Please tell me if anyone on the alternative tuning list had ever heard about any composer mapping a game of chess to a musical composition, microtonal or otherwise?
>  
> I thought it fitting to mention chess variants specifically because this is another interest of mine, and it just seemed fitting that chess variants and music variants should go hand-in-hand, so to speak...
>  
> I then do suppose that other variants, like a 10 by 10 board with the zebra piece (please see the website....), could be mapped to 100ET.
>  
> What needs to be done by me now is to go through all of my compositions and make a judgment as to their originality, but I will still seek free legal advice from a lawyer.
>  
> Also, please do checkout the Odd Music Gallery.
>  
> ----Sarn.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________________________
> Yahoo!7: Catch-up on your favourite Channel 7 TV shows easily, legally, and for free at PLUS7. www.tv.yahoo.com.au/plus7
>

I would also like to hear it!

This idea may have been done before by drone musicians. Much drone appears to have been based on the computer game "Desert Bus" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus).

There are lots of other options available... Connect 4 with each column representing a note from 7-tet? Tower of Hanoi for some minimalism?

And there's a lot you could do with Scrabble played on a harmonic lattice. In one example, each new word would play a chord, and each chord would share a note with a previous chord. We could go further, and speak the word out loud, vocoding it with that chord!

Good fun. :)

Sean

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "hstraub64" <straub@...> wrote:
>
> Is your chess music piece available somewhere? I would like to hear it!
>
> I once had a similar idea with the game of Go. It is played on a 19x19 board, so the obvious idea to map go games to microtonal music would be 19EDO. But I didn't manage to define a good transformation function...
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Sarn Ursell <polyverse2002@> wrote:
> >
> > One of the original microtonal music pieces which I did, was, actually a game of chess which I played against the computer mapped to 64ET, one degree of the chromatic scale for each square on the chess board!
> >  
> > The first row is notes one to eight (of 64ET), the second row notes 9 to 16 (of 64ET), the third row notes 17 to 24 (of 64ET)etc…..
> >  
> > Each move then plays a chord of 32 notes which gradually get less and less 31, 30, 29, 28...etc...as each peice is captured.
> >  
> > I have actually emailed the moderators of this website:
> >  
> > http://www.chessvariants.org/
> >  
> > To suggest to them the possibilities of mapping chess variants to microtonal music, after, of course, explaining WHAT microtonal music is.
> >  
> > They seemed mildly interested, but couldn't really understand the point of this exercise, but again, it is all about EXPERIMENTATION, and hearing what it would sound like....
> >  
> > Please tell me if anyone on the alternative tuning list had ever heard about any composer mapping a game of chess to a musical composition, microtonal or otherwise?
> >  
> > I thought it fitting to mention chess variants specifically because this is another interest of mine, and it just seemed fitting that chess variants and music variants should go hand-in-hand, so to speak...
> >  
> > I then do suppose that other variants, like a 10 by 10 board with the zebra piece (please see the website....), could be mapped to 100ET.
> >  
> > What needs to be done by me now is to go through all of my compositions and make a judgment as to their originality, but I will still seek free legal advice from a lawyer.
> >  
> > Also, please do checkout the Odd Music Gallery.
> >  
> > ----Sarn.
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________________________________________
> > Yahoo!7: Catch-up on your favourite Channel 7 TV shows easily, legally, and for free at PLUS7. www.tv.yahoo.com.au/plus7
> >
>