Famous Composers Game!

For a follow-up to a lesson about the Boulanger sisters, some children and I created a board game about famous composers. We came up with the design and the rules together. I wanted to share it with you.

To begin making our game, I drew a long, snaking track of spaces that looked like piano keys. On each piano key I wrote a little number. Every so often I drew circular spaces. In the circles, I drew the name and likeness of a famous composer along with the composer’s birth and death dates. Also in the circular spaces, we wrote the track number of a piece by that composer from a CD that came with a book we have in our library about famous composers.

The book we used for the game.

While I was drawing the game board, the children designed small cards. On each colored card they wrote a number from 1 to 8. They then separated the cards into piles by color and number.

The rules of the game were simple. Players take turns. Each player begins by rolling the die and moving the corresponding number of spaces. When the player lands on a piano key with a number on it, he gets to collect a card from the pile of cards with that number on them. If the player lands on a circle space with a composer’s face on it, he plays the indicated track from the CD and everyone listens to the track. On his next turn, the player continues.

The first player to reach the finish space is the winner. To celebrate, when she reaches the finish line, the winner may compose a melody using her collection of numbered cards. To compose a melody, she rolls the dice to determine which scale strip she will use. Then she puts her cards in any order she likes, places her numbered scale strip in front of the tone bars, pulls down the corresponding bars, and plays her melody while the others listen. (You can also play without a “winner” and just have each player play his or her melody when they finish the game.)

Everything you need for the composer game: game board, colored cards, die, and book with CD. (The tone bars aren’t pictured here.)

Detail of the game board.

More details

You could play this game with jazz composers, rock bands, or any kind of musicians you like. We had a great time playing this game. I hope you will too.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Happy music making!

Michael