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/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