🎲 Dice Improv

Pick a scale:

🎷 Blues scale (6 notes) ☀️ Major pentatonic (5 + octave) 🌙 Minor pentatonic (5 + octave)

Step 1 · Roll the dice

🎵 Pitch diesets the note (1–6 = the six scale notes); 🥁 Rhythm diedecides what happens on this beat: 1–3 = one quarter note, 4 = two eighths (roll pitch twice), 5 = a rest, 6 = hold the previous note.

Pitch die
Rhythm die

Key:

Notes in this key:

Step 2 · Your two bars (written by dice!)

Eight beats = two bars. Once full, press play and your phrase will repeat six times over a 12-bar blues backing(2×6=12) — listen: repetition itself creates musicality.

Roll beat 1!

Lecture play: invite an audience member up to roll real dice while the host taps the results in. The whole room watches a phrase being born, then a musician brings it to life.

🌊 Ambience

A little ambience for practising, writing, or warming up a room. All synthesised with Web Audio — no audio files.

Now: none
Three practical uses for pentatonic scales:

① A safety net for guitar and bass solos: the pentatonic drops the two notes that clash most (the 4th and 7th of the major scale). Whatever you do with the remaining five sounds fine — which is why rock, blues and country players learn it first. ② Riffs and melodic motifs: take any 3–4 notes from the pentatonic, add a simple repeating rhythm, and you have a riff. ③ It transfers between keys: move a major pentatonic down a minor 3rd (C major pentatonic → A minor pentatonic) and the notes are identical — only the tonic changes. One shape covers both relative keys. Switch the scale selector above to a pentatonic and you will immediately hear how much brighter it is than the blues scale.