Using Dice in Musical Composition

So, since I've used dice before to help me compose, I thought I'd start a topic where I could post all my thoughts/techniques about how precisely one can compose using dice.  If you've composed using dice and found a technique that's worked for you feel free to add to the discussion!  At the minimum you will probably need two regular 6-sided dice.  But for my purposes I've purchased a set of fantasy RPG dice which includes 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided and Musician's Dice which are 12-sided and labeled with the 12 tones of the chromatic scale.  Also, there's some regular 12-sided dice labeled with numbers, and 20-sided dice as well.

Using Dice to pick a Mode or Scale in which to compose in

Perhaps a method of using dice which still allows the composer quite a bit of freedom is using them to pick a mode in which a given melody will be set.  For this purpose I have made the following table, the choices in which are determined by rolling a 4-sided die with an 8-sided one:

Using Dice to determine metrical feet/rhythms and accents

A somewhat recent discovery of mine is using metrical feet from poetic meter to determine the rhythms of a given phrase of music.  For music in compound or complex meters, a 4-sided die can be rolled once for each beat of music:

Here's a cool video about how one can use ordinary 6-sided dice and some simple concepts to guide musical composition:

Ha thanks for mentioning my post and I am happy to help inspire you Peter! This will be a good method for aleatory music as well. Or the 12 sided Musician dice can be use d for a serial melody with the repeated note not counted! Or the regular 6 side dice can determine the period of the piece: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th century. Or the number of the dice can determine what interval you have to follow after the initial notes.

Quite interesting. It was amazing the discovering of indeterminacy. Although we know this techniques were used before, I think it was John Cage who developed the method.

I wrote some pieces using cards and different levels of control/indeterminacy of the parameters of the music. I liked them. Also, sometimes I catch one of my cats. walking on the midi keyboard and put it to record. I consider it as an aleatory music. Afterwards, I add some harmony....

Dice method is intriguing, perhaps I'll try.

Yes, an interesting topic (to which I've responded before), having several dice with weird numbers-of-sides. Have used the numbers to create melodies with 1 = the keynote but not for aleatoric composition beyond that. If a number comes up more than once, so does that note. I don't need dice to distort rhythm! I use a 14-side dice and work on until 13 or 14 comes up which mean "end of" so melodies can be very short (and which will likely get discarded) I cheat by doing several and choosing those I think might be usable. 

It'll be particularly interesting how other members are using dice for composition. It needn't be to come up with contemporary-sounding music though in my case it seems to. 

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Hi this is an example of what I wrote "with a little help from" indeterminacy, using cards.

Do you have any examples?

The following two pieces of mine were composed using dice:

Gadget for Wind Quintet

Let the Earth Grow Wild

The exact techniques of how I used dice in those compositions are mentioned in the descriptions.

Impressive, particularly the vocal piece.

Using Dice to come up with Chords, Extensions and Intervals

Besides the methods already mentioned in the above video (of using regular 6-sided dice to come up with intervals or figured bass numbers) I have also used other kinds of dice to help determine different kinds of chords (triads and 7th chords), their extensions and various melodic intervals.

If a composer is looking to come up with triads only, a 4-sided triangular pyramid die can be quite useful as shown in this table:

Using Dice to yield a diatonic chord progression in a number of different harmonic contexts

Either 6-sided or 8-sided dice may be used to determine chords for a progression the length of which may be of the composers choosing.

The avoided chords are here taken from "20th Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti.  They are best avoided because their presence might suggest a different modality/tonality than intended, contradicting the intended Lydian modality.

The major scale may perhaps be the most obvious formulation.  Although instead of re-rolling when the die lands on 8, one might choose instead to put a secondary-dominant qualifier on some of the other scale degrees.

Of course, one may also modify the list/table to include only specific flavors of chords that might be preferable, potentially including modal mixtures and secondary dominants.  Or, if one is so inclined, using only major or only minor sonorities for a specific intended sound.

This is of course in no way a comprehensive list of modes, and building one's own custom modality based on what chords one might want to include in it may be more practical and give the composer more control over the specific musical sound or effect intended. 

The avoided chords cannot always be avoided in a tonality or modality.  Their instance might give the composer a challenge.

Rolling a die for the determination of a chord might be useful once again, in combination with another die rolled to determine the chord's quality (if one is not predisposed to staying in a specific mode from the outset).