If you've been sent to this post from Twitter, then you are already playing the game of Musical Join The Dots. Make sure to keep the game going.

I've been asked how to play Musical Join The Dots, because I mentioned it on a blog post. Here are the rules for standard play, and for Twitter.

STANDARD MJTD:
Players take it in turns to choose and play a song from their music collection to the other players.

There must always be some clear connection between each song and the next one. This is usually achieved by linking a word from the title, artist or album name from one to that of the next. For example, 'We Will Rock You' by Queen could be followed by David Bowie's 'Queen Bitch'.

See what we did there? The connection was Queen. It's the name of the artist of one song, and in the title of the next. This is as dumb as it needs to be. You could just as easily have gone from 'We Will Rock You' By Queen to 'Rock Me Amadeus' by Falco.

Connections can be more sophisticated (eg: a shared guitarist or producer) but these must be agreed by the players.

Nobody wins. The aim of the game is to keep the game going, and to impress with interesting and unexpected turns. Like keepy-uppy with a hacky-sack.

TWITTER MJTD:
Potentially everyone is playing. You nominate whose turn is next by sending them an @ message with the name of your song, artist and the name of the album it's from. Hashtag the tweet with #MJTD (always at the end of the message) so that spectators can follow the game and act as adjudicators if they don't think the connection works.

Also, please link to this rule post so that the person you've sent it to knows how to play. I have created a short link to this page at http://is.gd/8BMX

The format for a Twitter MJTD post is:
@user_name song_title by artist_name from album_title http://is.gd/8BMX #MJTD

So - for example - I might receive the following Twitter message:
@dubber We Will Rock You by Queen from News of the World http://is.gd/8BMX #MJTD

Which would lead me to post:
@aeioux Queen Bitch by David Bowie from Hunky Dory http://is.gd/8BMX #MJTD

The trick is NOT to send it back to the person you got it from - but to choose someone else who might enjoy playing.

NOTE: Please try and make the song something that not only clearly connects to the previous song, but is also something that you would genuinely recommend to the person you're sending it to. They can Google it or find it on their favourite music site if they're interested.

To start a new game of Musical Join The Dots, simply begin your tweet with NEW GAME: and then continue as normal according to the format.

Enjoy!