First play Tee-Tee Notes. This game extends Tee-Tee Notes, making the songs that result much more exciting. It does this by allowing the players to vary the durations of their notes. At any given moment, one player is the “whole note” person while another player is the “quarter note person”, and so forth. The trick is that a player can swap their note duration for another players’ duration. The players have to be listening for these swaps, notice when their note duration has been “stolen” and take over the note durations of the player who stole theirs. It is super fun to steal from others in this way!

Malcolm X said, “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything … you take it.” If we want to be free in life, free in our communities, perhaps we can first learn how to be free in art. Learning how to steal our freedom and also how to offer it up in trust to others we love, turns out to be a fundamental motor of group musical improvisation. You may grow to love the people with whom you play Tee-Tee Note thieves.

Choose some notes, at least 5.  A good first choice is, for example, the D minor scale: D E F G A Bflat C D.  However, you could try other scales, modes, or random collections of notes, etc.

Someone keep an even, moderate beat with a foot or the like.  On each beat, each player chooses a note to play from the scale.  Just like in the children’s game Rochambeau (rocks, paper, scissors), everyone makes a simultaneous choice of their note without knowing what note the others might play.  Play Tee-Tee Notes until you are fluently playing melodies that harmonize and weave around one another.

Now add one variation.  Player 1 plays only half or whole notes (2 or 4 beats long). This is called playing the SLOW part.

Player 2 plays the FAST part; eighth or sixteenth notes (2 or 4 notes per beat).

Player 3 plays the MEDIUM part, only quarter notes (right on the beat).

Now if player 1 doesn’t want to play the SLOW part anymore, he or she can be a thief and steal the FAST or MEDIUM part.  Whoever has his or her part stolen, must immediately recognize that this has happened and accept the part that the thief was playing before.

For example, the FAST player could decide to steal SLOW. Then the SLOW player would have to give up being SLOW and would have to become FAST.