This reflection explores the ideas, methodologies, and implications of integrating game mechanics into live musical performance. These concepts are examined through the compositional, rehearsal, and performance process of the author’s work I’m Actually Just Making Stuff Up, a string quartet piece in which performers are randomly selected to improvise and the others must guess who the improviser is.
Topics discussed include the relationship between audiences of a performance (usually not the players) and the “audience” of a game (often the players themselves). Connections are drawn between spectating board games, watching gaming streams, and seeing live music. Furthermore, this essay considers how an audience can learn the rules of the game, the objectives of the players of the game, and a group’s social dynamics as they play. This reflection also discusses how game mechanics in musical works can be an avenue to directly examine concepts such as the perceptual difference between improvisation and composition, since the audience watches the players attempt to make that distinction themselves over the course of the game.
The reflection details the process of designing the systems and rules of I’m Actually Just Making Stuff Up, and the author’s attempts to balance the game. The rehearsals and premiere of the piece with the JACK quartet at New Music on the Point 2022 are described, focusing on what choices the quartet made and how that impacted the performance (particularly their “musical names”). The paper also discusses a second performance with a different instrumentation, and how different combinations of instruments can have an impact on the difficulty of the mechanics of the game (such as how to avoid detection as the improviser). It concludes with a discussion of whether an “ideal” performance of such a work exists, and what that means for both the performers and audience.
University of California Press