Compare and Contrast: Chess and Music

Chess doesn't make harmonic sounds when played. 

Both chess and music can be expressed in numerical notation.

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fianchetto123 wrote:

you sound like an ignorant highschooler who appreciates only some stupid rock music and considers yourself smart by posting it in a chess forum. And makes bad jokes...

fianchetto123: Am I right? 

mhchess13: No!!!!

...and is a liar.

What a guy, coming on the forum to abuse a kid in 8th grade. Look everybody, look how cool he is.

Both involve pattern recognition.  To be very good, both require a lot of technical skill but to be great both require creativity a and drive to make a piece/game your own/unique.

To contrast, great music can be appreciated by non-musicians who, even though they cannot play themselves, can distinguish between a good and a great player.  In chess this is not so.  All players above ~400 points in skill to you are indistinguishably good.  Similarly in music when you hit a bad note anyone can tell.  In chess you can blunder and never know it!

Prodigies appear in both.  Both are rewarding and challenging enough to be enjoyed for a lifetime.

Well I doubt many chess players sit at the board thinking "how can I make this game unique", and if they are they won't be very good.

I believe that if you're merely technically proficient you'll never be a great player.  All strong GMs, especially world champions, have contributed to chess theory in some way.  This is what I mean by making the game your own.

Even as unskilled as I am, I've started to form certain ideas about the game... I have my own interpretation or ideas in certain positions and I'll readily disagree with a book or computer.  This seems to be something very new and undeveloped, but I'm sure it only grows as a person gets better.

Oh, ok so you mean specifically finding new opening novelties to use on opponents etc?

I thought you meant that instead of players just trying to beat their opponent, they also think "how can I make this game unique, a thing of beauty". lol

Not just opening moves, but definitely not crazy stuff.  Just like in music there's room for interpretation... but not so much so that you can just do anything.

Things like accepting doubled pawns, or a bad minor piece, or a material deficit, or an exposed king... but you think you've seen the real character of the position so these things actually don't matter in this game, and what really matters is the advantage you've secured instead.

But my point was that while considering these things in preperation to making a move, you're not thinking "accepting a bad Bishop will make this game pretty unique so I'll do it!" which is what the quoted part of your original post seemed to imply to me.

Partially true. There is arguably a lot of great music out there that non-musicians won't "understand" or even consider. But I get your point. It is more true for music than for chess.

(credentials: musician/teacher with a primary emphasis in music appreciation)

Chess theory involves logical continuations based on the current positioning, spacial relationships, maintaining / resolving tension, tempo, etc... it doesn't take much thought to realize chess has some parallels to music theory.

Two interesting similarities:

- At serious levels, a blunder changes the way the game/musical piece is received (from the POV of one player)

- Though for untrained laymen: they cannot discern a mistake in both chess and music and still think your move/notes are okay! (Or so my wife + friends think when I muddle my way on the piano)

Well it depends what angle a musician is coming from. If they're doing standard rock/pop, then yes there are certain limits.

EDIT: And before Andy calls me a snob I'll add standard classical to that as well. :)

I'm thinking of different interpretations of classical pieces and how an individual, or in the case of an orchestra, the conductor, can make something you've heard before suddenly sound new and exciting.

If you want to go all abstract weird stuff, sure, there may be no boundaries at all (but not everyone would enjoy listening I think ;)

Most "musicians" in the public eye are like 1100 players, and you have 2500 players struggling to make a living, probably playing at a cafe down the street.

Well, technically a good sounding piece of music depends on the observer, whereas in chess we use interpretations to try to approximate the truth of the position, yet there is an absolute truth of it somewhere out there; to an extent you can prove your theory of what is right by winning over the board, although it's hard to do so conclusively as the opponent can claim he had improvements somewhere. Technical skill in music can be to an extent measured objectively, but what sounds good depends a lot on taste, of which there are many different kinds.

Yet at the same time there is probably a lot of thinking that goes on when people create melodies of instruments. I think what a good piece of music should try to do is get certain pitches working together, like how when we speak we go up and down with our voices to convey a certain message/emotion. So to an extent maybe you can rate a good melody based on how the composer seems to make all of the sounds seem unified and connected in a way, although if you don't like the sound of a piece of music, then no words will convince you otherwise.

I would probably try to be a guitarist if it wasn't for all the pure technique you would have to learn -- that indeed can act as a barrier -- you have to physically be able to perform what you think sounds good, which can't be done on a sense of what good music sounds like alone. In chess, you can be guided by good logic alone. Technique in chess is still logic, just of a more straightforward kind and usually well known. I love the sound of the guitar, but I frankly don't want to spend so much energy on just being able to play the damn thing at all, let alone create good music.

Pretty much true although I have often wondered about how 'creative' orchestral musicians actually are, after all they don't write the music and usually a conductor tells them how to play it. Solo pianists seem to be able to add their own interpretation to a piece but other than that the other musicians are just hired hands playing whats written in front of them.

Think of chess opening theory as something similar to scales and modal concepts according to key signature.  Think of the points of tension on the chessboard as dissonance, which requires some kind of resolution in music.  I wonder if anyone's ever compared brain wave patterns between chess players and musicians.

Good post bishop!

The same characteristics apply to both good chess players and for good composers:

1. They don´t f**k up the opening.

2. They demonstrate great creativity in the development of their opening ideas.

3. They don´t f**k up the ending.