about
Welcome to chessmusic.info, where chess meets music!
We transform chess moves into unique musical compositions, mapping the board’s a-h files and 1-8 ranks to octaves and notes. Explore a library of 500.000 historical games, featuring grandmaster showdowns, and listen as each move plays out in sound. Customize your experience with adjustable beats or tweak the chessboard-to-keyboard mappings for a fresh twist. Dive in and hear the beauty of chess like never before!
We transform chess moves into unique musical compositions, mapping the board’s a-h files and 1-8 ranks to octaves and notes. Explore a library of 500.000 historical games, featuring grandmaster showdowns, and listen as each move plays out in sound. Customize your experience with adjustable beats or tweak the chessboard-to-keyboard mappings for a fresh twist. Dive in and hear the beauty of chess like never before!
story
It all started with a conversation between me and my son, a budding pianist immersed in his studies. One day, he was telling me about his modern music class—full of wild, abstract ideas about creating sound in unconventional ways. As we tossed around thoughts on these avant-garde concepts, something clicked for me. I noticed that a chessboard, with its a-to-h files and 1-to-8 ranks, mirrors the structure of musical octaves and notes. The idea sparked right then and there: what if chess moves could become music? A few months later, inspired by that moment, I brought the concept to life with this webpage—turning the strategies of the board into melodies you can hear.
list of chess games
- here you can search for games by clicking on a row the dispayed track will start to play.
- the entry page is listing the 100 best ranked songs.
- you can open the controlpannel by clicking on the cod icon.
- open the chessboard by clicking on the
icon.
- open the history (played tracks as long the side is not refresh) by clicking on the icon.
raiting
- here you can rate the track which is playing.
- the 100 best rated tracks are on the first page in the entry list of the homepage.
control pannel
- chessboard: click here to open the chessboard.
- auto open: switch here to open the gameboard when starting a game.
- record: switch here to record video and audio of the chess game.
- bpm: the beats per minute of the music playing.
- low: low tempo range of bpm.
- high: high tempo range of bpm.
- inst: the instument which is playing the chess notes.
- beat: a selection of beats wich play with the chess melody.
- map: the way midi notes are mapped to a chessboard.
- play: switch here when notes are being played.
- random : you can switch random on/off for the functions:
- Bpm
- Instrument
- Mapping
- Rhythm
- Play mode
map selector
- there can be different ways for mapping a chessgame to a piano/keyboard.
- here you can see which notes are being played for each chess field and you
can change the dropdown to see the the piano/keyboard notes on the chessboard.- Schema 1: Here, the fields a-h are placed on the notes of a piano. The numbers represent the octaves.
- Schema 2: Here, the keys are one by one counted up the board fromleft to right and bottom to to.
- Schema 1 / 90°: Same as Schema 1 but tilted 90°.
- Schema 2 / 90°: Same as Schema 2 but tilted 90°.