Just like everyone else, I like to think that I’m immune to advertising’s influence. But that’s not really the case. The other day, Gmail figured out that I’m interested in music and decided to show me an ad for Musician’s Dice. Those sounded pretty novel, so I decided to take a look. Next thing I knew, I was ordering a copy of Muzundrum, a sort of musical Scrabble/crossword puzzle board game that is played with the Musician’s Dice.

I had a chance to play a few games while visiting my family in Kansas, and I think it’s a pretty great game. Players take turns rolling one of the 12-sided (one side for each note in the chromatic scale) dice and then try to place that die on the board in a way that adds to a scale or a triad. To keep things from getting too complicated, only major scales are allowed and triads must be either major, minor, or diminished. If that’s too simple, they also have a master’s version of the game.

I’ve played only three rounds (and won one!) so far, and I’m still using the cheat sheet quite a bit. But, as I hoped, it has helped improve my understanding of music theory.

Nathan (who is a full-time music minister and really knows his music theory) and Abu (who isn’t half bad at music theory either) were able to be in town one evening, and we all played a game with Grey (who claims not to know music theory, but has successfully applied his mathematical superpowers to the game). We probably spent more time talking about music theory and fiddling around on the piano than we did actually playing the game. It was great! Nathan won. :-)

If you happen to get a copy of the game (or come visit me!), here are the important bits of music theory you’ll need to know. Major scales are made up of whole steps and half steps in this pattern: WWHWWWH. Or, you can think of it as two identical tetrachords separated by a whole step: WWH-W-WWH (thank you, Wikipedia). Major triads are made up of a major third (the second note is two whole steps above the first) and a minor third (the second note is one whole step and one half step above the first). Minor triads are the opposite: a minor third followed by a major third. Diminished triads are made of two minor triads.

I’d learned all that stuff at some point, but playing the game and talking through it all really helped solidify it in my mind.

One potential gripe I have with the game is that there seems to be very little strategy involved. You never know what note you’ll get on your next roll, so there’s usually not much point in planning ahead; just find the best place to put the note you just rolled. For now, just trying to find that best place is sufficiently challenging to keep me interested, but I can see how it might get less interesting once I get better.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it might be fun to try pre-rolling some number of dice for each player and keeping them secret. This could make Scrabble-like strategizing possible. Or, maybe once I get bored with the standard gameplay, I could just move up to the master level.

Anyway, it’s a cool game. You should come visit me so we can play a round!