MUSIC The Card Game: Soon To Be A Box Office Smash!

Love music?

Love card games?

If you answered YES to either of these questions, you're in for a real treat...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr. Steve Link to witness something pretty spectacular.

Link - a mathematician, educator, musician, and inventor of MUSIC: The Card Game - met up with me to play some 'variations on a theme' within his new creation: a deck of cards... 'where hands are played and can then be played!'

With its slick contrast like a keyboard and eye-catching colors to help broadcast the two values that are on each card, Link created six games within one deck of cards. However, he encourages you to experiment and discover other possible variations to play! Since both the chords and the pitch-values are distinct from each other on every card, the structure makes everything work with rule variations in multiple games.

Let's explore several possibilities of ways to play that this one-of-a-kind deck has to offer...

Before we jump into each individual game, it's important to know that there are two major headings between games: Ensemble and Diva. Ensemble-style games are could incorporate interaction, teamwork, or bluffing. Diva-style games translate to each player purely focussing on their own playing. Each game has its own suggested “variations on the theme” to tweak the rules, but the goals and the core ideas of the games remain the same.

1. PROGRESSION (ensemble)

Think, "Glorified UNO," or Uno with a deeper level of understanding to make for greater strategy! The purpose is to be the last person to play a card on the longest hands possible, which causes everyone to build longer chord progressions as they play more cards.. This is Link's personal favorite out of all the possibilities, having forced him out of his comfort zone when coming up with chord progressions for his compositions and arrangements:

“This game was developed first, because I wanted something to help me get past writer’s block. I would find myself using the same chords in the same type of ways after a while when I was writing songs. With this (Progression), as you play more cards in each hand, you’re constantly writing longer and more interesting chord progressions.

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Once I had gotten into a rhythm (no pun intended), I found this game highly addictive. Never heard of roman numerals applied to music before? Not to worry: the arrows in the center of each card indicate the possible chords (roman numerals) you could play next.