Have you ever had a truly transporting musical experience? Have you ever felt music deeply or flowed incredibly freely within music? Have you seen musicians doing this, and wondered how they become that way? Have you ever had those experiences while playing music yourself? How about while playing music with others? These are experiences that should be available to every one. I found these games for song simply to help myself and my friends get deeply into music more often and more easily. You can use this book as if it was a setlist for a concert that you and your friends give for yourselves. These games, played with deep quiet, are powerful, maybe even magical. In some cultures, instead of games they could be called spells or incantations. I hope that in playing music together you enjoy yourselves, and also find a deeper part of yourselves.

Please remove your shoes, and form a circle.

A great way to get started with group musical improvisation is this sequence of group games – Floor Head Hum, Slide Away / Slide Home, Tee-Tee Notes, and then Tee-Tee-Note Thieves. These games build trust, collaboration, and musicality.

Twelve Count and Run, Jump, Hit-the-Wall will help the members of your group join in with creative motifs and phrases, building to some of the most wonderful circle games – Over and Over and Hey.

If a game wants to become a song – then let it!

Some games are for your solo practice, and help you to learn about yourself. Sing Sa helps us get in tune. Sing / Touch is the basis of playing any instrument. Metronome Ping-Pong teaches about time. Swing and Play Fast are magic for rhythm and speed. Sing Then Play is a warm-up for Make It / Let It. Make It / Let It is the most important game in this book. It asks whether you play the music or the music plays you.

If you have played the solo, group, and circle games with deep commitment, you will likely have had some ineffable experiences. You probably feel close with your group in new ways. You can begin to let all of the games lead you into improvising symphonies; Symphonies that represent, in sound, a shared way of being and mind for your community.

Now go play. Invent your own, and tell us about them!

_{Games for Song is composed by Ben Vigoda}

_{I owe many thanks to Jeff Lieberman for helping to produce this work with many helpful comments and suggestions — most notably helping to crystalize the tone of the book, Dan Paluska for supporting safe spaces for playing Games for Song, John Zorn for playing his musical game Cobra with us, Allaudin Mathieu for inventing musical improv games at Second City in Chicago in the 1950s and for providing a trove of historical information about the lineage of group musical improvisation, Trey Anastasio and the band Phish for pioneering the game Hey and other musical improvisation games with large audiences, Professor Lee Devin for introducing me to the game Floor Head Hum, and to Bret Bjurstrom, Jon Feldman, and artist Zoe Cohen for being some the first Games for Song enthusiasts and participants as we learned to make them work and codified them.}