Da Capo: The Music Theory Card Game

Da Capo is an exciting and nerdy new card game developed by musicians for musicians, perfectly suited to anyone from professionals to students just starting out. 

The concept is easy to grasp; play notation cards in the right order, be the first to discard all your cards, and take everyone else down along the way with as many action cards as you can get your hands on.

The game is named after the worst (or best, depending on who’s playing it) action card, ‘Da Capo’, which can force any player to throw their hand away and start again, rekindling that sinking feeling of seeing a ‘Da Capo’ in real life and knowing that, just when you thought you’d got to the end of the piece, you’ve got to play all that music again. 

Professional musicians can have great fun with this game, spontaneously reenacting some of the more obscure musical excerpts, tactically using the ‘modulation’ card to get hold of another player’s hand, and realising you don’t actually know how many minims there are in a bar of 9/16.

For students still refining their music theory knowledge, the game is just as enjoyable; you might discover some terms you’ve never come across before, but the intuitive nature of the cards means you’ll gain a subliminal knowledge of their meanings without having to do any practice or revision. All the foreign and musical terms are translated on the cards, but by playing you’ll begin to associate them with their in-game functions, which will give you a head start when they begin to appear in your sheet music.

Even if you have no music knowledge at all, you can still enjoy beating your musician friend at their own game using the cheat sheets that tell you the order of each type of notation card. By the end you’ll probably even understand a bit about reading music, and if you’ve not come across them before you might get a laugh out of the ridiculously-named “double-dotted hemidemisemiquaver”.