Reason The Board Game!

[GRIFTY]

I've actually been wishing recently that I had some kind of "random song generator"... something that'll just tell me what key, chord progressions, and song structure to use. I dunno why, but I just don't feel inspired as a "songwriter" and would love a little push from something like this.

Crazy that you bumped this now, I was thinking about this thread just last night

[pushedbutton]

I'm figuring out if making a physical product would be worth it. I think the final product would amount the same same thing as a card game that uses 3 decks of cards. What would you consider paying for something like that?

[GRIFTY]

Depends on the price.

EDIT but yeah

[pushedbutton]

Inspired by such an overwhelming response I decided to try to start writing the instruction book.

Pushedbutton Presents...
Reason the board game.
A way to visualise music using colours.

Hello and thankyou for considering this product. After many years struggling to find a way to learn music that suited my learning style I stumbled across this simple method. While I was developing it I began to feel more confident in my abilities to compose music, I started to understand how to play a chord without having to look it up, I started to know instinctively which notes would be out of key so my improvisation skill improved. Most importantly I started to have fun and feel less frustrated when the song in my head wasn't the song my fingers played.
I am not a trained musician, they wouldn't even let me do the gcse exam at school, so after years of chatting on web forums, watching online tutorials and generally wasting a lot of time in my bedroom I was starting to know bits and peices about music theory but nothing structured.
This technique simplifies music theory into 7 colours and gives you the tools to translate these colours into any scale, chord or note you like. Once you get used to this technique you'll never hit a bum note again! If the circle of fifths confuses you like it confused me you might have more luck with this technique.

Let's take a look at how the colours relate to notes by using the Scale of C as an example.

Red     = i     = C
Orange    = ii    = D
Yellow    = iii    = E
Green    = IV    = F
Cyan    = V    = G
Blue    = vi    = A
Pink    = vii    = B

So that's all the white notes. The Scale of C contains all the white notes. Dead Simple. If we were looking at the white and black notes as if they were all in a row you'd notice that there's a pattern to it, this pattern is important.
In a Major Key, any major key, you follow a pattern of Root, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step.

So why is that useful?

Let's take a look at the Major Triad Chord.
The Major Triad Chord is Constucted of The Root Note (i) , The Third Note (iii) and the Fifth Note (V) in the scale.
So using the information above we could say RED YELLOW and Cyan make our Major Chord.
So a C Major Triad Chord is C, E and G.

OK so that's nothing too ground breaking, let's look at another Scale and see what we can come up with. Let's try F#.
So this is how the colours land in the Scale of F#
Red     = i     = F#
Orange    = ii    = G#
Yellow    = iii    = A#
Green    = IV    = B
Cyan    = V    = C#
Blue    = vi    = D#
Pink    = vii    = F

From what we established earlier we can now build an F# Major Chord using the colour code RED YELLOW CYAN.
This gives us F# A# C#, which I'm pretty sure is F# Major. Great.
I think some of you may need to take a rest at this point to prevent your mind being blown. For those less easy to impress let's plough on.

Now let's take a look at the Minor Chord. It's very simple to figure out a minor chord. All we need to do is make a little alteration to the pattern we use to establish the Major Chord so that the 3rd note goes down one semitone and the 6th and 7th note go up one semitone. Once you get that you're one step closer to noticing one more thing. What's major in one scale is minor in another and all of a sudden you're learning at twice the speed you thaught you were. Here's the trick to it, 'The relative minor starts on vi, or in this technique, the Blue note. So looking at what we've established so far we can deduced that the C Major is relitive to A Minor because that note is BLUE and because I say so.
Using the same trick where F# Major is the scale we want to find the reletive minor for we see that the BLUE note is D#.
So that means all the notes in the scale of F# Major are the same notes found in D#.  

Major (please refer to the card)
Root, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step
i C    ii D    iii E    iv F    v G    vi A    vii B    viii C

Natural Minor (please refer to the card)
Root, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole step.
i C    ii D    iii D#    iv F    v G    vi A#    vii B#    viii C

Harmonic Minor (please refer to the card)
the 7th is always raised by a semitone.
Root, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, [Whole step+Half Step].
i C    ii D    iii D#    iv F    v G    vi A#    vii B#    viii C#

Melodic Minor (please refer to the card)
has the 6th and 7th note raised on way up but not on the way down.
On the way up...
i C    ii D    iii D#    iv F    v G    vi A#    vii C    viii C#
But on the way down....
i C    ii D    iii D#    iv F    v G    vi A#    vii B    viii C

Augmented Chords....to be continued.

[pushedbutton]

must get around to this. lol

[Jagwah]

Just bumping this because it's not a dead idea yet.

Thinking about your workplace and this concept gave me a few ideas. Rather than selecting the card randomly, let the guests choose them as that could make it more like they personally have affected or changed the music taking place. Also, the cards look cool and intricate - but only really for the musician who can interpret it all, just an idea that the cards could be more basic, with less notes and less clutter, or perhaps have a distinctive symbol on one side to be chosen by the guest - and then all the music data on the other. Otherwise I thought overall the concept is great and could be a lot of fun for the people there.