We made a card game! Regency Vicki explains the concept below. Initially crowdfunded these decks are now being produced and will be shipped out at the start of November (or as soon as they arrive!)
Aim
A pack of cards that makes music! Shuffle the cards. Turn them over. Play the tune.
The Musical Card Game is a beautifully illustrated pack of bridge-sized playing cards that doubles as a simple musical composition game.
You don’t need to be a composer. You don’t need to learn complicated rules.
Just turn up the cards, pick up your instrument, and see what music you’ve made.
How does it work?
It’s surprisingly simple.
1. Shuffle the deck.
2. Turn cards over one at a time.
3. Keep the first Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8 and 7 you reveal.
4. Read the music represented by those eight cards.
And that’s your tune.
Because each suit represents different music, the cards can generate
4⁸ = 65,536 different combinations.
Shuffle again, and you get another one.
It’s part card game, part musical experiment — and every deal is a new tune waiting to be played.
Who will enjoy it?
- Musical families and friends — shuffle, deal and discover what tune you’ve created together.
- Musicians — use the cards to generate new tunes and musical ideas.
- Folk musicians — play the waltzes on fiddle, melodeon, whistle, flute, recorder and more.
- Card players — it’s a genuine bridge-sized deck, so you can also use it for traditional card games.
- Beginners — the tunes are deliberately simple and approachable.
I have always loved playing cards, first being introduced to whist and cribbage by my dad and when I discovered that there were historical card games I had to create my own! The concept is simple. Shuffle the deck and turn up cards. Take the first Ace, King, Queen Jack, 10, 9 8 and 7 you turn and voila – you have a playable waltz. (For playing card aficionados you’ll spot that this is the piquet deck). Each suit has different music and it doesn’t matter which suit you turn up. This means that 4 to the power of 8 – over 65,000 different combinations are possible!
I have written the music to be accessible to as many people as possible. Scored in treble clef it can be played on pretty much any musical instrument, such as penny whistle, fiddle, melodeon, flute, recorder. The tunes are nice and simple, so players from beginner level to more advanced can have fun with these cards.
