The gnöd-möd™ gnöd cards.

Let me tell you about it!

These here gnöd cards tell you which notes to choose from a seven note scale.  There are forty-one (41) total gnöd cards in this deck.  As the author and inventor of the card deck, I recommend using the traditional major scale as your seven note scale (at least at first) to gather all the deep intricate juicy elegance that hides within, waiting to flow freely with your practical actions of unlocking.

Anyway, on to the cards:

All of the gnöd cards will have this symbol on their back.

You might also see this symbol on the face of some möd cards.  This also references gnöd cards.

I like to call this image the Possibili-blob. It references the shape found on the left side of every gnöd card.  While the Possibili-blob appears to be constructed of a color spectrum, the individual structures that they reference on the left hand side of every individual gnöd card;

1. Will be only one (1) color, 

2. Will look like a ladder made of squares,

3. Will ascend from darker squares to the lighter squares,

4. And will have some squares filled in with circles

Ladders made of squares.

So here’s the deal! Each box in that ascending ladder is a note in a seven (7) note scale, and counting up each ladder one (1) note at a time will move through a scale in steps. For each card and whatever exercise, you should use the notes that have circles in the squares, leaving the notes from the empty squares out altogether.

Gnöd card categories and direction blobs.

So each one of these different colored ladders, which I also like to call color blobs, will fall into one (1) of three (3) categories:

Two (2) note cards,

Three (3) note cards and

Four (4) note cards.

On the right hand side of all of these gnöd cards are direction blobs and the direction blobs are uniformly the same for each category of gnöd card.

Why, you might ask?

Because what you can do with two (2) notes is what you can do with two (2) notes is what you can do with two (2) notes…

And what you can do with three (3) notes is what you can do with three (3) notes is what you can do with three (3) notes…

And what you can do with four (4) notes is what you can do with four (4) notes is what you can do with four (4) notes…

Let’s talk levels!  When you choose two notes, you have created two levels; a lower level and a higher level.  Just like in the color-blobs, each shaded box in the direction-blob takes you up or down, but only uses as many boxes as there are notes chosen.

Here’s a stack of direction-blob boxes.

Now, we can use circles to choose which notes to play from the set, and place stacks side by side to create sequential patterns.  Let’s look at the direction-blob by category.

Two (2) note gnöds:

All of the two note gnöd cards have the same set of direction-blobs.  Here they are!

To choose a direction blob from the two (2) note cards, first start by rolling a D4 to select from one (1) of the four (4) regions, then roll either D2 or D6 to further refine your choice.

Three (3) and Four (4) note gnöds:

The three (3) note gnöd cards also share a uniform set of eleven (11) direction-blobs. They are these.

Since we have three (3) notes, we now have a new middle level of note choice.

When we look at the six (6) direction blobs from the four (4) note gnöd cards, we would see that they all share the same direction blobs that have four (4) levels.

Loops and Reversals.

Now! Towards the bottom of the three (3) and four (4) note gnöd cards are the Loop and Reversal symbols.  They looks like these on the three (3) note cards

And like these on the four (4) note cards.

Rolling a D2 and coming up with a one (1) would choose the simple loop on the left.  This indicates that we play the notes going in one direction for the exercise.  I’m culturally conditioned to start from the left and proceed to the right, but starting right and proceeding left will also work just as well and provide all the same exact patterns and options.  An example of this would be taking A-B-C-D and repeating A-B-C-D as the basis for an exercise.

Rolling a D2 and coming up with a two (2) would choose the reversal loop on the left.  This indicates that we should play a direction blob taking turns in two opposite directions.  This would take our previous exercise of A-B-C-D and now turn it into A-B-C-D-D-C-B-A, or maybe instead A-B-C-D-C-B-A, or even still A-B-C-D-C-B.

Mini-Patterns.

But let’s not overlook one super-critical and very important aspect of this game, the hidden mini-patterns!

In the three (3) and four (4) note gnöd cards, every direction blob has as many mini-patterns inside it as it has steps in the direction-blob pattern itself!

So, given the previous loop example of A-B-C-D, A-B-C-D is just the one expression of this loop that starts on A, and the loop has three others that start on the other notes.  All of the loop patterns for A-B-C-D would be listed as:

1. A-B-C-D

2. B-C-D-A

3. C-D-A-B

4. D-A-B-C

There are four mini-patterns because we have (in this case) four different steps to start on. As the dice symbols within the loop symbols might suggest, the starting note is decided by rolling a D3 if there are three (3) steps for a direction blob or by rolling a D4 if there are four (4) steps for a direction blob.

Mini-Patterns and Loop Reversals.

When rolling a D2 and coming up with the reversal loop on the left, then you have dice rolls for the starting note as well as the direction change note!  This opens up many more possibilities. For instance and returning to our A-B-C-D scenario, I’d like to keep the starting note the same but cycle through the different direction change notes like so:

1. A-B-C-D-C-B-A-D-A (Changes on D)

2. A-B-C-B-A-D-C-D-A (Changes on C)

3. A-B-A-D-C-B-C-D-A (changes on B)

4. A-B-C-D-A-D-C-B-A (changes on A)

And all of these options merely start on A, the first step!

Would you believe that I’ve pretty much gotten out everything that I needed to write down for this instructo-blog installement? 

Perfect timing because I don’t want to type anymore!

PEACE!