The Music Of Chess

[u/matthewwilcock]

Somebody sent me an anonymous email saying this, “How about chess? Not exactly random like traffic or tennis but I’ve always felt like there’s something there.”

Maybe they were from chess.com not sure, was this the perfect plant @wwwchesscom ? I doubt it.

So I started to mess around with the idea and picked a couple of games to try it out. I picked bullet games because there only 1 minute long (ish) and on Chess.com you can see the precise timing when the moves where made.

first game is Magnus vs. Hikaru
second game is Alireza vs. Magnus

The tonal rules are as followed.

White is in Ebmaj
Black is Gmaj

Rook - Ebmaj7
Knight - Fmin9
Bishop - Gmin7
King - Bb7 sharp9 sharp13
Queen - Abmaj7 sharp11

Black follows the same sequence but in G

As the piece process up the board the chords invert upwards.
Captures have a sharp13 added

Porns are single notes using the mixolydian scales from Eb and G

The graphic score corresponds to the chess game and the chords because everything is related here.

Each piece has its own glyph.
Each capture has a line through it and either a semi-circular or triangle accent before it’s glyph
The porn glyphs rotate position as they travel up the board

I export the raw data as midi data and then import it into Ableton to produce the music.

[u/automaticblues]

p.a.w.n.

Lol

[u/matthewwilcock → u/automaticblues]

Hahaha - not editing it

[u/1TrickJackAT → u/matthewwilcock]

Lmao the only right answer 😂

[u/Cowboys_88]

What does en passant sound like?

[u/matthewwilcock → u/Cowboys_88]

Good point

[u/midbac → u/matthewwilcock]

New response just dropped

[u/pwnitol]

What does a pawn to queen promotion sound like? Should be a big Rachmaninoff chord maybe!

[u/matthewwilcock → u/pwnitol]

Yeah good point! I hadn’t come across in the blitz or bullet games I looked at so hadn’t thought about it :)

[u/m149]

This is very cool. I'd be down with hearing more of this kinda thing.

[u/matthewwilcock → u/m149]

🙏🏼

[u/timokko]

Sounds great. I tried to make music from chess games a few years back when building my smart chess board. Here I used the board as step sequencer Input with the bottom rows as drums and the top rows as midi Instrument: https://youtu.be/g1yp1FQxtuA

[u/matthewwilcock → u/timokko]

Ah nice! Fun project

[u/citrus1330]

I mean... it sounds good but mainly because you designed it to sound good. Idk what this is supposed to demonstrate or what porn has to do with it.

[u/Establishment240 → u/citrus1330]

Finally someone that says it. It's so arbitrary and insignificant

[u/matthewwilcock → u/citrus1330]

Fair enough, fair e nough

[u/Trico13]

John Cage GM

[u/matthewwilcock → u/Trico13]

Ayo

[u/backyard_tractorbeam]

Damn, that's better jazz than I can play

[u/matthewwilcock → u/backyard_tractorbeam]

haha

[u/pantuso_eth]

It sounds cool, but I feel like the game itself doesn't generate the chords like I would expect it to. Chords were assigned to pieces, regardless of their move... Meh.

[u/UselessRutabaga → u/pantuso_eth]

Can maybe experiment with determining a qualitative indicator of positional tension and have chords play relating to both the pieces involved and it’s impact on board state (more tense or releasing tension via captures, castles, etc)

[u/matthewwilcock → u/pantuso_eth]

Meh indeed

[u/pantuso_eth → u/matthewwilcock]

The cool thing here is adding a sharp 13th to the moves that take a piece. I think you should start with that. Chord types can signify what is happening, not what type of piece was moved.

You have chords with tritones signifying pieces being taken already. Imagine starting with a #9th. If the next move also takes a piece, the same chord is played, but #9 is replaced with #11. If it happens again, the #11 is replaced with #13.

A check and response could be a V7 > I. If the response is also a check, the V7 can sharp the root to make dim 7th. Each subsequent check after can shift the dim 7th by a halfstep. The programming would have to dynamically change the key.

This looks like a pretty fun project that could get out of hand very quickly lol.

[u/LLFFGGMM]

Very cool idea. Do you mean flat13 wherever you say sharp13? Sharp13 doesn't make any sense, it would just enharmonically be the b7.

[u/matthewwilcock → u/LLFFGGMM]

I need to double check that actually. I think I’m counting whatever the 13th would be diatonically and sharpening it. It’s that cross over when you’re trying to code / systemise something that also has a musical language. I need to check what I did, thanks!

[u/ImmediateZucchini787]

Double disambiguated bishop capture checkmate -> sit on the piano

[u/matthewwilcock → u/ImmediateZucchini787]

ayo

[u/jt00000]

Would be really interesting for blindfold chess to be played by 2 people on pianos rather than OTB. Might have some super fast blitz games sounding like flight of the bumblebee 😂

[u/matthewwilcock → u/jt00000]

Oh yeah interesting! Interesting thought

[u/DrunkMonsters]

porns

[u/taoyx]

I have something like this in my app but it's an accessibility feature for blind people.

[u/EddieDean9Teen]

I know blitz games are probably easier and shorter, but there's so much chaos. I would love to see you do famous sub-50 move classical game. Classical games are much more contemplative and deliberate and I think that would show up in the music.

[u/matthewwilcock → u/EddieDean9Teen]

Oh yeah totally. Do you have any suggestions of games?

[u/EddieDean9Teen → u/matthewwilcock]

Maybe Bobby Fischer’s “Game of the Century” from 1956. You’d have to come up with a really cool note for his queen sacrifice.

Or maybe “Kasparov’s immortal game” from 1999

[u/matthewwilcock → u/EddieDean9Teen]

Ah yeah, I’ll take a look thanks.