Making music from Tarot

I'm a musician in my spare time and I studied music in college. I had a thought while driving home today. It seems there has always been much discussion about what type of music people enjoy while reading the tarot, but here's another perspective!

Some authors like to use the Tarot to frame a story, since the characters and plots in the story can be well represented by the archetypes and worldly issues raised by the cards.

It stands to reason, then, that if you can write music to tell a story, you could use Tarot cards to write music!

If you look at such baroque and classical examples of music scores written to tell a story, like Bach's Magnificat or the Mozart's score to Le nozze Di Figaro, the themes of the music (and even instruments used) are molded expertly around the archetypes of the characters. A Fool character might have a happy, carefree melody in a major key composed of piccolos, where as a sorcerer (Magician) might have deep, sweeping minor lines in strings and brass, an epic sound. On another level, the suits and numbers could correspond to key signatures or scale degrees, or numerology can be employed to reduce the numbers on the cards down to chords!

You could even apply this concept to popular music, which also tends to contain specific archetypes, often related to love and relationships, war, and problems of the 21st century.

My question is ... are there any musicians out there who have used the Tarot to assist them in writing music? If so, what were your experiences? Do you think a random draw of several cards could be enough to bring together a whole symphony? A whole rock album? If the Tarot is a focus for your intuition, could it be a focus for extracting your musical creativity and getting past musical "writers block?"

I plan to try it myself soon and explore many of these questions.

One part of Tarot Constellations by Mary K Greer assigns musical notes to the Major Arcana, which is also associated with the letters of the alphabet. Then you can spell out your name musically. I did that and had a musician friend play my name melody. I thought it fit who I am rather well.

That's not quite what you were talking about, but it's the closest I can come.

Rodney

Oh interesting, I haven't read that book yet. I'll have to try and find a copy once I get done working through Tarot for Your Self.

I've seen on Amazon/other places albums with tarot...

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Tarot-David-Steve-Gordon/dp/B000008QVW

But you got me thinking...I'm flashing on a song phase like "Hit the road Jack," and seeing the Fool and singing "no more, no more, no more no more..." a jazzy tarot, that would be!

It's interesting to me, modern style music with tarot.

Usually I'm thinking of stately past art styles with tarot...for instance, I was in an art history survey class where we glimpsed the Book of Kells and the Four Evangelists ornately beautiful, like the corners of the World card...and Gregorian chants started echoing...

We saw an outside stone cross that was supposed to mark a space for preaching outdoors--as people gathered in the Middle Ages in Ireland outside to worship--and saw an upside down figure between two saints...and heard legends/myths associated with this figure...I thought of the Hanged Man and still heard...Gregorian chants...as the spoken Latin was saved by Irish monks...

So the mind of mine was first thinking old-old-old European music and jeweled inks and stone images...

I'd love to put tarot to other old styles of music, but when I do Japanese lute music, nothing so Western crosses my mind. I'm doing the wind-water-metal-earth-wood associations and somehow because I'm learning in a different way...my limits with an old Eastern lute hasn't extended out yet into modern tarot...Oddly enough, if I am within tarot mode, I do search for musical and sometimes Eastern references in the images. (Hence my collection of East Asian-influenced cards and tarots).

My spirit is willing, but my musical ears are still weak!

Fascinating topic.

Cheers,

Cerulean

P.S....storyboarding musicals with tarot...

...I used the Secrets Tarot to storyboard Phantom of the Opera...that deck was never the same to me after that...

My favorite latest musical movie is "Once" with Glen Hansard and "Falling Slowly" could be either the Lovers Card or Hanged Man...cannot decide....to me, that would be one major with a bunch of minors to illustrated each stanza. If I wanted to write musical lyrics or themes that were similar to how a beautiful to me ballad sounds, I think I would analyze that song/movie with certain cards and try to evoke the same moods or card draw...

Each theme of the musical or song took as many cards as it could--it was if the scenes fit what the music evoked.

Now does that relate... as perhaps you were suggesting hearing the music first and then the tarot cards pulled after for inspiration? But only in creating music?

I hope this relates!

Cerulean

It absolutely relates! It would be great fun and a learning experience to associate cards with music this way. Finding a card that matches the archetype you want to portray, then writing music around it, seems like it would be a great inspiration.

Another idea is that you could draw cards at random (or lay out a spread) and use the inspiration of them to come up with the musical concepts you'll use, rather than vice versa. Instead of finding a card to go with music, drawing a card...and writing music based on what you see. It's like Tarot Journaling almost, except instead of writing a story what you see in your spread, you write a song for it! It could be instrumental or lyrical.

You could even extend this concept to writing music based on readings in general. Say you do a reading to get guidance about the future of your relationship, and it turns out to be a very hopeful and energetic reading. You could turn that into a song, and it could become "your song" as a couple! Or it could be a song you listen to when times aren't so great that puts you in good spirits because it reminds you of that hopefulness. Just an idea!

Cerulean said:

...I used the Secrets Tarot to storyboard Phantom of the Opera...that deck was never the same to me after that...

My favorite latest musical movie is "Once" with Glen Hansard and "Falling Slowly" could be either the Lovers Card or Hanged Man...cannot decide....to me, that would be one major with a bunch of minors to illustrated each stanza. If I wanted to write musical lyrics or themes that were similar to how a beautiful to me ballad sounds, I think I would analyze that song/movie with certain cards and try to evoke the same moods or card draw...

Each theme of the musical or song took as many cards as it could--it was if the scenes fit what the music evoked.

Now does that relate... as perhaps you were suggesting hearing the music first and then the tarot cards pulled after for inspiration? But only in creating music?

I hope this relates!

Cerulean

Click to expand...

I don't have much experience with non-Western music, but it sounds intriguing as an outlet for Tarot-inspired music.

Thanks for the link, too! I didn't know such a thing existed. I'll have to order it.

Cerulean said:

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Tarot-David-Steve-Gordon/dp/B000008QVW

But you got me thinking...I'm flashing on a song phase like "Hit the road Jack," and seeing the Fool and singing "no more, no more, no more no more..." a jazzy tarot, that would be!

It's interesting to me, modern style music with tarot.

Usually I'm thinking of stately past art styles with tarot...for instance, I was in an art history survey class where we glimpsed the Book of Kells and the Four Evangelists ornately beautiful, like the corners of the World card...and Gregorian chants started echoing...

We saw an outside stone cross that was supposed to mark a space for preaching outdoors--as people gathered in the Middle Ages in Ireland outside to worship--and saw an upside down figure between two saints...and heard legends/myths associated with this figure...I thought of the Hanged Man and still heard...Gregorian chants...as the spoken Latin was saved by Irish monks...

So the mind of mine was first thinking old-old-old European music and jeweled inks and stone images...

I'd love to put tarot to other old styles of music, but when I do Japanese lute music, nothing so Western crosses my mind. I'm doing the wind-water-metal-earth-wood associations and somehow because I'm learning in a different way...my limits with an old Eastern lute hasn't extended out yet into modern tarot...Oddly enough, if I am within tarot mode, I do search for musical and sometimes Eastern references in the images. (Hence my collection of East Asian-influenced cards and tarots).

My spirit is willing, but my musical ears are still weak!

Fascinating topic.

Cheers,

Cerulean

Click to expand...

Hmm, do you mean like pulling a few cards as inspiration for what you should compose? I've seen writers spreads, so by extension you could apply that to the songwriting/lyric writing process. If you were composing music other than popular, such as classical you could use the feeling or idea behind a card and try to convey that idea through music. I think that would work very well with the majors, because they're very worldly, bigger concepts. I wouldn't use the suits to correspond to key signatures, chords etc...for me that would be to limiting. It's a cool idea though, I've kind of tried it actually, unwittingly. I wrote a poem initially inspired by the imagery/concept of the moon card. It's not really about what's on the moon card, but that's what inspired me, and the content of it relates back to the moon's meanings. I then set it to music, I haven't really finished with it though...think I might revise it a bit. It's kind of folksy.

The closest I was able to get...association and then weaving musical themes...

I do hope this is related! It took me a week or so to weave a few things together and a lifetime to hopefully sketch out an idea or two...amid a busy life with work and other things...but hope this works out to your musical theme of the thread!

...the closest I was able to get is being able to associate musical themes to a certain range of cards, then selecting illustrations that would be suitable and then doing drawings...and eventually, do a musical arrangement...

There's Western a song meant for potential lovers that sounds to me that could be re-arranged and played on the simple Japanese biwa lute that I have. I like what sounds to me as the simple pitch changes and progressions in a song called "Falling Slowly" in the movie Once by M.I and G.H, (Marketa I. and Glen H.). They use a guitar and piano and there's a water drop-by-drop liquid sound that I like.

So the movie theme might start as the Lovers Card, but for Marketa's character the growth is first illustrated with Two of Cups, progressing to Nine of Cups and the Ten of Cups. Her character seems to want 'family'. For Glen's character, it actually works from the two of Pentacles to the Ten of Pentacles, as he seems to want to 'make money' as his success.

In the background, the song "Falling Slowly" where the two people first find they can play music together...the piano and the guitar...there's something captivating about the simplicity of the song. I think it might work in a similar fashion to a "Floating" theme in the Japanese biwa piece that I'm learning. The first four stanzas of Floating have mainly a water element and liquid sound to them, so that's what I'm picking up. How does this relate to the tarot? I'd like to touch on the music parallel first.

In the 'moso' biwa style--very folkloric four strings--Japanese biwa pitch changes come from how one uses the left hand to press the spaces in between the frets that symbolize water, metal, earth, fire, and wood. Of course there's a twangy Eastern sound in every strum.

I don't know if the details make the difference, but the vocal range my teacher and I share is F, Bflat, F and F in various octaves (?). I only know one tunes the older lutes to the voice. Using wooden pegs and silk strings that one ties on and threads oneself is quaint, to say the least...gotta love the old ways. The biwa is a lute by its very nature that has some classical associations with lovers--in many a culture and time.

Back to the song Falling Slowly. Anyway, MI and GH do have a kind of attraction and share a love as 'charactors' in the movie. The movie shows a suspension from their real life as they work to record some music and lyrics and yet with this enchantment, there's sadness, lovely work and this haunting, simple song for me...and the old guitar of Glen Hansard has with it's barby-wild strings round the peg looks to me like how I string and strum this old wooden lute...

...and the theme of lovers as a card, with a lute, tarot illustrations and music...and eventually, as I gain competence, I do want to 'arrange' and be able to attempt a simple proficiency in playing such a Western love ballad on my old lute. The Western song "Falling Slowly" as played on the guitar and piano has some themes of love, water sounds, slower tempo that remind me of how the Eastern lute can also take on the same theme aspects, just perhaps expressed in a different way. I hope the thread below explains the interwoven aspects better--a very musical interweaving...

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=106823

So thank you for the illustration and the start on something I wanted to work into tarot: the start of a musical tarot journey!

Cerulean

P.S. I think the use of tarot with modern folksy themes might work better for me. Glen Hansard is also kind of folksy in his music--I think they call it "busker" style in Ireland

Im a musician and songwriter myself. Im not so much a composer as I cant read music, but I write with the guitar. I posted a thread a few years ago on Tarot and songwriting, and later developed a spread to use as inspiration for the songwriting process with such positions as theme, tone, chorus, verse etc witch I would use kind of in a story writing way where it would give me ideas for the theme of the song, the tone (as in whether its sad and melancholy or upbeat or whatever), and characters etc. Its worked realy well for me when I have been lacking inspiration. So yes, people do use Tarot in songwriting, and I do believe its a wonderful medium for inspiration. Incidentally you probably already know of musicians writing songs based on each of the archetypes, another way of using the cards in songwriting. Australian musician Wendy Rule has some wonderful songs based on the major arcana. She is very haunting, and I believe, worth a listen.