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Turn a card, write a song: Easy as Ace, Two, Three!
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Did you know that even the great composers played musical games?
• Songwriting games are a great way to inspire a child’s creativity - and our own!
• Andrew Bishko created a songwriting card game for his son.
Learn more: http://eartra.in/a19
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To begin, first sort a deck of playing cards.
• Remove all but the Ace through 7 cards to start.
• The cards are used to represent the seven musical pitches in the scale.
• This is how the cards are assorted in the key of C major: C, D, E, F, G, A, B.
• Ace is for C, 2 is for D, 3 is for E, and so on.
• You may also arrange the pitches in alphabetical order (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) or with solfa.
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Shuffle and pick ten cards from the pile and line them up - that’s your melody.
• When deciding to move the melody up or down to a note, choose the smallest distance.
• For example, C up to A is a sixth, so instead move from C down to A, which is a third.
• If the range of the melody is too low for, move (transpose) it up.
• The notes move up by the same amount and the intervals maintain the same relationship.
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To create the rhythm, use short notes: half, quarter and eighth notes.
• Use picture cards to choose: King for half notes, Queen for quarter notes and Jack for eighth notes.
• Decide whether or not to group the notes into measures of 3 or 4 beats.
• If the rhythm is a little hard to sing, “square off’ the rhythm.
• For example, add a rest on the end of the song to “square off” the last measure.
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Have a friend or child sing the melody along with you and add words.
• Form their ideas into lyrics that fit the rhythm of the melody.
• Try rhyming the last line, if you want to rhyme your lyrics.
• Find ways to match the lyrics to the movements of the notes.
• For example, long notes create suspense or descending notes suggest looking down.
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Repetition holds musical compositions together but can be boring so variations need to be made.
• There’s no point of writing something new when you already have a good melody.
• Keep the melody and write new lyrics for variations.
• Add extra syllables if necessary and halve the notes accordingly.
• Try adding or removing short words like “the” or “a” to create melodic variation.
• The repeated melody is familiar and the variation adds surprise.
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There are easier ways to find your next line than by referring back to the cards.
• Using ten cards (notes), your phrases are roughly three measures long.
• Similarly, most popular and folk songs use phrases in multiples of two measures.
• Johann Sebastian Bach wrote pages of music from just one or two measures of melody.
• Running the melody backwards, or retrograde, was one of his tricks.
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• Mozart often structured his pieces just like many folk melodies.
• Another way to find your next line is to make groupings AABA form, as in folk music.
• In AABA form, the A sections are similar, but the B section contrasts.
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Your song may or may not be a big hit but hopefully you had fun!
• Games like this also exercise your melodic, rhythmic, and lyrical muscles.
• Play moves us past our grown-up inhibitions and self-criticism to the inner source of our creativity.
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Full instructions and a song example
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