This page is about how to make music in a new way. It's about being creative in a different way and innovating ways of breaking patterns of thought.


The story:

In June 1999, I was wondering how I could force myself to think in a different way while composing. It was a time, when I found myself using the same basic patterns of thought while composing - say a jazz-tune. I tended to use the same old chord-progressions. The I got this strange idea of using random elements in music. Why not let coinsidense decide chords and melody for a while ?

I bought myself a 20-side die, where each number could represent a different chordtype, plus I got a 15-sidet die, that I used for selecting a melody-note. (I couldn't find a die with only 12 sides for each of the 12 chromatic notes).

I found out, that I had to define a set of rules - limitations - before I began tossing. I decided, that the length of my tune should only fill out a sheet of A4 paper. So I devided the sheet into groups of 4 bars per line. Then I began tossing.

I started out by selecting one note per bar, with the help from my 15 sided die. Then I selected a chord type with my 20-sided die. I had previously written down a selection of chord types. I then selected the root of each chord by using the 15-sided die.

Now I had a strange piece of music, that had some errors in it: I had an 'e' in the melody while playing a Cm7b5 over it ! I then dicided, to change the root of the chord to something else, using my 12-sided die. (You could also - of course - change the melody or the chord type).


The creativity in 'Random Music':

The challenge is to create a melody, that 'makes sence' to your ears. You shouldn't filter out ALL the strange sounding stuff though - you don't want your new song to sound like something you have heard before unless the die decided it that way - that would take all the fun out of it. You will have to delete or insert bars, melody-notes, chords etc. to create a tune out of this random material.

Only you can define how random your tune has to be. Maybe it might be better to only use the major-chords: maj7 (ionian), m7 (dorian), m7 (frygian), maj7 (lydian), 7 (mixolydian), m7 (aeolian), m7b5 (lokrian) plus perhaps all the secondary dominants for chords I-VI. Or maybe you prefer using the minor chords. This way you will get a song that sounds more 'jazz-standard' like.

Good luck !!!