The Quest for The Golden Die

The Quest for the Golden Die is a collection of pieces where the majority of the material is

generated via gameplay. These are intersected with set songs and pieces and embraced

with a fantasy narrative.

 

Each of the game/pieces interacts with play at a different level, addresses short comings in various non standard notation systems and delights in bringing the non-musician into the ensemble playing world.

 

The Quest for the Golden Die is a culmination of a decade of work. Starting out as practice theory and an attempt to make instrument practice less work and more fun by incorporating dopamine generating actions. This was combined with studies in aleatoricism and particularly the effects of randomness, choice and objective.

 

This is evident in the strong surface level narrative elements within Quest for the Golden Die. A reason must be given for why play these games in particular, though a game needs no reason to be played past the game itself. Think to the weak similarities between chess and a battle field or the nonexistent narrative of poker. This is compared to almost entirely narrative driven games like Dungeons and Dragons where the activity of the game can be likened to a form of group story telling. These elements factor into McCandless’ studies and readings of Jenifer Walshe, writes the “theatrical (is) as important as the sonic”.

 

McCandless has always considered himself a wholeistic composer with more and more of his work embracing his present life. His previous “era” of extra dimensional regular polytopes ended with a suite of six pieces, each vastly different from the last. The Quest for the Golden Die marks the end of his Ludic era.