The gnöd-möd™ möd cards deep dive, part 1 of 3.

Let's take a deeper look, diving deeply while also looking more deeply at the mysterious images found in the möd cards.

These are the Purely Principle cards. They outline a musical principle and then suggest that you follow it!

Enter the cards!

The Functional Progressions

This is the the major scale, arranged as dots going around a circular path. The whole steps look like whole steps and the half steps look like half steps. Roll D3 to determine what kind of steps to take and D2 to determine which direction to go.

The Matrix Card.

This is the matrix card. To perform a matrix, make each note goes to each other note in the scale. This can be done with a single note or you can draw a gnöd card to make a group of notes moves from each note in the scale to every other note in the scale.

The Octave Card

There are two ways to use this octave card; either with or without a gnöd card.

To use this card with a gnöd card: Pull a gnöd card. Roll a D2 to add an octave of either the top note or the bottom note to the gnöd group and pattern. Then add the extra octave to the group by rolling the appropriate D2, D3 or D4 to determine which step in the pattern and rolling a D2 to determine either before or after said step.

To use this card without a gnöd card: Pull a gnöd card to reference patterns for two (2), three (3) and four (4) note groups. Roll for a pattern and use octaves to play the pattern, instead of different notes. A fifth octave can be added to a four octave group by rolling a D4 to determine which step in the pattern and rolling a D2 to determine either before or after said step gets the new octave.

The Key Change Card

If you are in one key, there are eleven (11) other keys that you can change to. Roll D11 to change keys.

The Inversion Family card

This card tells you to find and pull all of the gnöd cards that both have the same number of notes and are the same color. These cards all belong to the same inversion family. Roll either D2 or D6 depending on the number of notes in the group, and cycle through all the groups in the order indicated by the roll.

The Functional Progressions X Key Change card

Well! It looks like we have two concepts in one card, because we do! Let's roll for each, because this card suggests that you both change keys and progress functionally through the scale... at the same time!