It’s In the Game

Computer and video game enthusiasts of a certain vintage might recognise the reference in this week’s blog post. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it shouldn’t be surprising that I include an off-hand game reference. It is, however, also directly related to the topic of this week’s post.

So far this year, I have been terribly busy with work as well as private issues (including but not limited to my water pipes freezing). Sadly, this has resulted in not getting any time for composing since early January. After almost a full two months without writing any music at all, I decided this past weekend to do something about it.

I have used aleatoricism regularly in my composition classes, particularly as a tool to get around writer’s block. Almost every student I have taught so far has treated writer’s block as utterly incurable in any other way than simply waiting for inspiration to strike. In my opinion (and experience), it is very much something you can treat actively.

In group classes, for instance, I have devised simple dice games to randomise parameters for a short composition etude: the number of bars, instrument(s) to be used, key and/or time signature, to name a few possible ones. I have also suggested and helped students devise similar but more specific games to generate a type of material that they are struggling with, or to at least get them working on something – anything – to get away from banging their head against the proverbial wall.

Chance music, at least in the Western art music context, dates back to the mid-20th century. Simply put, it is a musical composition in which some aspects are left to chance instead of being predetermined by the composer. Acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler defined its sibling term ’aleatoric music’ as “determined in general but dependent on chance in detail”. A more extreme example of aleatoricism is American composer John Cage’s piano piece “Music of Changes” from 1951, created with the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching as a compositional tool.

For my part, I didn’t need to get out of a rut as much as I wanted to find a way to compose regularly, which is often frustratingly difficult with my irregular schedule. Well, it turns out that aleatoricism is useful not only for creating hardcore avant-garde pieces. It can also be put to use as a fun and unpretentious etude-maker!

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Saulesco’s Etude Game

Instru-ment family1
No. of instru-ments2	One	Two	Three	Four	Five	Six
	One player			Two players/four hands
No. of bars	2–12 bars (roll two dice)
Metre3	2		3		4
Tonic	Any tone between C# and B (roll two dice)
Mode	Ionian	Dorian	Phrygian	Lydian	Mixolydian	Aeolian

¹ Keyboard: piano, harpsichord; Woodwind: piccolo, flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon; String: violin, viola, cello, double bass; Brass: horn, trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, tuba; Mallet: marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular bells; number six is player’s choice.
² For the keyboard instrument family, pick from the lower row (one or two players); in all other cases, the upper row.
³ Roll one die per row to get the complete time signature.

I downloaded the icons for free from the icon repository Flaticon. The gorgeous music icons were drawn by the user Freepik and the die faces by the user Mike Zuidgeest. (I made the note values myself.)

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To play Saulesco’s Etude Game (ver. 03/2026) all you really need apart from the game sheet is two regular six-sided dice. I’m assuming, of course, that you already have the necessary resources for actually composing music, whether physical or digital.

The first stage is to roll one or two dice for each of the six parameters I have defined in the table above. (Other parameters, such as tempo and dynamics, are free to work with at one’s pleasure while composing.) Two parameters specifically call for using two dice, but if you only have one die at hand you can technically roll that die twice for the same effect.

Note that rolling a six for instrument family means you get to pick any instruments from the other five groups, and that if you roll the keyboard instrument family you only get two possibilities for number of instruments: one player or two players/four hands. (Also, because the lowest possible result with two dice is two, it’s impossible to get a natural C as a tonic. But that’s fine.)

I have challenged myself to write one etude every day in March using this system. Let’s look at yesterday’s etude as a practical example of how the game works.

Etude for March 1st, 2026

For the instrument family I rolled a two, so I got woodwinds. Then I rolled a three for the number of instruments. (If I had gotten keyboards, it would have been one player.) I chose oboe, cor anglais, and bass clarinet.

For the number of bars I rolled a one and a two, so the first etude would only be three bars long. Then, for the metre, I first rolled a four and then a six, so the time signature I got was 3/8.

Finally, for the tonic I rolled a four and a five, adding up to the ninth tone which is A-flat, and then for the mode I rolled a one – the Ionian mode (which corresponds to a plain major scale).

Here’s what I made.

All in all, I spent only about 20 minutes first generating the structure and then composing the music. Part of the idea is to work quickly, although that doesn’t mean you should be sloppy or just rush through it; you should avoid agonising over small choices, instead embrace whatever ideas come to you within the constraints you have been dealt. And, if no ideas come, just make something – anything. You’ll get a new chance tomorrow so there is (or at least there should be) no pressure.

While I haven’t yet composed today’s etude, I have already generated the structure for it and it is entirely different from yesterday’s. I will include all of the past week’s etudes in each of March’s four remaining blog posts, with the last two coming on Tuesday, March 31st.

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