TME Tuesday - Dice Compositions
Today's Therapeutic Music Experience (TME) is one that I borrowed from Mozart (allegedly). While it's attributed to Mozart, I'm not sure exactly where I learned it from, and I'm not sure when I first started using it, but I use it to spur my own songwriting as well as to encourage melody composition for my clients.
It's pretty simple. You need dice (at least one per two clients), paper - either lined or scratch depending on the level of musicianship, pencils, and an instrument that the clients know how to play (I like my Orff instruments since they have note names printed on them).
You can use a regular dice in order to encourage clients to transfer from one symbol notation system to another (numbers to note names or numbers to actual notation) or you can change a dice to simplify the symbol transfer. A bit of double-stick tape and you can place just about anything on the surface of the die. I often use note names in place of the numbers - it makes things easier on my pre-readers or novice readers.
So, we roll the die, write down what comes up, and roll again. We keep going until we get a specific number of notes or come to a natural end. Then, we go to the instrument and play our melodies.
For clients who are more musically sophisticated (and for me), I use different dice to indicate different musical elements. For example, I might have a red die be the note choices, a yellow die for note length (rhythm), and a blue die for other notation elements.
When I use it to compose, I take liberties with the musical choices that the dice offer me. I cheat, I guess. I choose a key and write cadences rather than just leaving things the way the dice dictate. Then I have a complete melody rather than one that just stops somewhere because I got tired of rolling the dice or ran out of time.
As always, I would love to hear how you use or adapt these ideas to work with your own clients. Drop me a line via the email address on the website. Happy Tuesday!!
It's pretty simple. You need dice (at least one per two clients), paper - either lined or scratch depending on the level of musicianship, pencils, and an instrument that the clients know how to play (I like my Orff instruments since they have note names printed on them).
You can use a regular dice in order to encourage clients to transfer from one symbol notation system to another (numbers to note names or numbers to actual notation) or you can change a dice to simplify the symbol transfer. A bit of double-stick tape and you can place just about anything on the surface of the die. I often use note names in place of the numbers - it makes things easier on my pre-readers or novice readers.
So, we roll the die, write down what comes up, and roll again. We keep going until we get a specific number of notes or come to a natural end. Then, we go to the instrument and play our melodies.
For clients who are more musically sophisticated (and for me), I use different dice to indicate different musical elements. For example, I might have a red die be the note choices, a yellow die for note length (rhythm), and a blue die for other notation elements.
When I use it to compose, I take liberties with the musical choices that the dice offer me. I cheat, I guess. I choose a key and write cadences rather than just leaving things the way the dice dictate. Then I have a complete melody rather than one that just stops somewhere because I got tired of rolling the dice or ran out of time.
As always, I would love to hear how you use or adapt these ideas to work with your own clients. Drop me a line via the email address on the website. Happy Tuesday!!
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