Cards Against Musicians || Chaos, Game Pieces, and Controlled Improvisation

Controlled Chaos

For those unfamiliar, a game piece is defined as a concept of experimental music having its roots with composers Iannis Xenakis, Christian Wolff, John Zorn and Mathius Shadow-Sky and may be considered as controlled improvisation. (Wikipedia, Game piece (music)) While there the element of improvisation is a large part of what makes up game pieces, there are parameters that exist to guide their music in a certain direction. There are ideas and interactions that are created by these game mechanics that drive the ensemble extra-musically. What makes this different from text-pieces of similar controlled improvisation methods, is the fact that the text is directed instructions on with certain goals in mind, such as role reversal by interactive mechanics or being the last person left on stage to "win". The main idea is that the rules of the game piece had as much a role to play as players of the piece itself.

My own game piece, Cards Against Musicians, follows these ideals for a game piece by guiding group chemistry with rules by a set of four cards. Just like other game pieces, there was a goal that was to be achieved by the individual participating in the group. It was written for Uncommon Ensemble (the Contemporary Music Ensemble at University of Northern Colorado). The ensemble performs music of our time, focusing on 21st-century repertoire. The work was a part of an album of live music put out in 2019 following their 2018 Fall concert. This was a group of musicians who were close friends as well as colleagues. In writing this piece for the ensemble, I focused more on the chemistry we had as a group and I wanted to try my hand at creating a proper game piece.

The inspiration came from my own participation in a casual performance of Cobra by John Zorn. It is one of Zorn's most iconic piece and is still actively played today by improvisors of all sorts. The essence of the game is the exploration of roles through the game mechanics. It was all held together by rules that were the game itself. "It was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter." (Cobra (1987)) The goal was to use these game mechanics to facilitate an improvised form that was changing and evolving with subversion and imposition by different people or even groups of people.

My first real experience came with Zorn's Cobra with members of the Uncommon Ensemble. I played with a group of Northern Colorado musicians that gathered at The Music District in Fort Collins, Colorado to play it. I was invited by my friends from Uncommon Ensemble who had heard about this event from a mutual friend of ours, Matt Smiley. This group that gathered at the Music District included performers from all walks of life from established jazz musicians, students, composers, fiddlers, and even an assistant professor of viola. It began somewhat nervously as we didn't know one another other than the people we had come with. But, by the end of the night we had become fast friends and comrades in Cobra. This was the catalyst in what became my own game piece design.

I focused mostly on John Zorn's Cobra as a source in my inspiration for composing the game piece because it had allowed me to dip my toes into a controlled chaos with guided improvisation. I had experience in performing it and I wanted to try other paths of different kinds of games that might inspire mine. I knew that there was an open ended element that allowed Cobra to be what it was with any of the musicians that participated in it. Instead of putting constraints on creativity, these rules acted more as guides to channel infinite creative ideas into building something cohesive as a group.

The piece also relied on the chemistry and group dynamics of the ensemble in order to drive how the piece unfolded over the course of its performance. According to Zorn:

“You want to pick someone not just because they can play well, but because they have a good sense of humor, or they get along with the guy across the room; because they believe in democracy, or because they don’t believe in it; because they want to subvert the shit or because they just want to sit back and do what they’re told; because they have a lot of compositional ideas (and maybe play awful) but they’re going to make good calls. There’s a lot of reasons to call someone into the band in a game piece.”

(John Bracket, "Some Notes on John Zorn's Cobra," American Music, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 44-75)

The piece I wanted to write had to be inclusive and build upon the feedback of chemistry between participants. Zorn's intent was to allow this chemistry to drive the piece instead of the skill that participants may have. These kinds of ideas were a part of what I used as inspiration in my own game piece. I wanted a piece that was held together by some rules, but was mainly driven by an ensemble of artists who were not only incredible musicians, but a group that also felt like a second family.

Another aspect that made Cobra work the way it did was its use of game mechanics that created different situations and interactions between participants.

As it had become clear to me, good game pieces are founded upon some consistent set rules that may be made up or drawn from actual game mechanics to create loops of interactions between ensemble members. Zorn had used some game mechanics and roles from an actual video game. Unlike Cobra's direct inspiration from an existing video game, Cards Against Musicians was directly inspired by an adult version of Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity. The basis of the entire card game was on "using words or phrases typically deemed offensive, risqué or politically incorrect printed on playing cards." (Wikipedia, Cards Against Humanity) The music I wanted to create was more geared towards equal participation from the musicians without the context that dominant or subversive roles may have had in Cobra. Good humor, friends, and a whole lot of silliness was all that my own game piece needed to take off.

The Game

There were big elements that I took from the card game that made it into the piece. Like the game, each player had a hand of cards where each type had a purpose, answers or prompts as in the White and Black from Cards Against Humanity. I had a set of three types of cards on the stand with different actions:

• Red: an interruptive gesture or action

• Blue: a continuous background sound

• Exit: an abrupt end with exit from "stage"

The set of cards create what I like to call a "soundboard" for musicians to draw from. Some are more specific, including musical notation, and some are more open to interpretation through suggestions. The selection of cards are at random before the music begins which gives an element of surprise in parameters for the chaos to unfold in. I had created a system that was constantly interruptive and structured around reactions from members of the ensemble in a constant feedback-loop between Red and Blue Cards. Only when an Exit Card was performed was a feedback-loop broken.

This piece is open to both instrumentalists and vocalists that works best when there are 4-6 performers. Like Cards Against Humanity, it gets harder when there are more than 6 people involved. Each player takes one Exit Card and one Blue Card and two Red Cards. The piece ends when there is one person left performing. While the game mechanics rely on elimination, the goal isn't necessarily to "win," but to create controlled, good-humored chaos. It is more important to create music in this "game." Anyone can play this piece with their colleagues and friends at almost any skill level or style of playing.

The dynamic I wanted to create with this game piece was to eliminate any sense of non-fixed roles that Cobra had used as game mechanics. I wanted the participants to generate their own roles from the interactions they had with their group. The experience is entirely lead by the interactions of the musicians performing Cards Against Musicians.

What was contained in the cards was just as heinous as their inspirational counterpart with a spin towards "meme" music, comedic situations, and out of place music and sound effects produced by the participants. "Meme" music is directly rooted in the internet culture where there are sound bites or music that refers to a joke that has been passed around with many versions and spins to the original meme.

In the concert that was performed on the album embedded in this article, the listeners might be able to pick up on what musicians had on their "soundboard." Some of them included tunes one would recognize like Smash Mouth's "All Star" as music that has been deep set into internet meme culture. Some jokes include some performance "art" that was also included references to music that was never played, such as the reference to "Wonderwall" by Oasis performed in an exit card.

Catharsis of Improvisation

Within the chaos of Cards Against Musicians and Cobra, there is a certain catharsis within the improvisation that is found in the interactions between members of the ensemble. The feedback loop in Cards Against Musicians creates a certain interaction that feels comedic and familiar to a lot of musicians. Cobra had the excitement and constantly changing roles that created interesting interactions between improvisors that could be unexpected and refreshing. Within improvised music there is the freedom to create something together that isn't constrained by actual musical scores and very specific roles.

The practice of improvisation in general creates a level of deeper listening and creativity in an ensemble, and with the guides of game pieces, something more structured and formalized can grow organically from its participants. The purpose of the game pieces in controlled improvisation is to add a catalyst to a group chemistry that brings it to a certain direction that participants drive through with their own artistic creativity.

Game pieces bring a certain inclusivity that some other genres of music doesn't have, especially in traditional classical Western music. As mentioned before, the level of experience, schooling, or style of playing doesn't matter in the piece to create an ensemble experience. The energy that game pieces bring allows participants to improvise in a more open and inclusive environment. In cultivating a group energy and chemistry, openness and experimental interactions builds a synergy that can be harder to recreate elsewhere.