from Hacker News

The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

by GotAnyMegadeth on 11/11/15, 1:16 PM with 119 comments

  • by baldfat on 11/11/15, 3:56 PM

    I immediately thought of a quote from the movie Amadaus (About Mozart)

    EMPEROR: Of course I do. It's very good. Of course now and then - just now and then - it gets a touch elaborate.

    MOZART: What do you mean, Sire?

    EMPEROR: Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say? [he stops in difficulty; turning to Orsini-Rosenberg] How shall one say, Director?

    ORSINI-ROSENBERG: Too many notes, Your Majesty?

    EMPEROR: Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.

    MOZART: I don't understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.

    EMPEROR: My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. I think I'm right in saying that, aren't I, Court Composer?

    SALIERI: Yes! yes! er, on the whole, yes, Majesty.

    MOZART: But this is absurd!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU

    This certainly is an interesting area to explorer musically. Want can we do with a piano if we had more than ten notes to play at a time. Right now it is HOW many can we play and still sound musical from the samples I saw.

  • by reviseddamage on 11/11/15, 5:00 PM

    The weirdest thing: my son who is autistic is fascinated by this music and can't seem to let go. He keeps watching/listening to every "black MIDI" out there on youtube.

  • by hammock on 11/11/15, 2:39 PM

    Has anyone ever created an "inverted" song? For example, take the Ode to Joy melody and play every other note BUT that one. Maybe limit yourself to one octave so it's at least somewhat listenable. Wonder what that would sound like.

  • by avian on 11/11/15, 3:57 PM

    I guess the "speaking piano" could also classify as black MIDI:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4

  • by felipebueno on 11/11/15, 4:46 PM

    That's facinating!

    If you are reading this comment watch this [Black MIDI] Synthesia – "Nyan Trololol" | Rainbow Tylenol & Nyan Cat Remix ~ BusiedGem

    https://youtu.be/zqan54VUSq0

    You are welcome ;)

  • by aclissold on 11/11/15, 4:22 PM

    This is fascinating! They took a medium I had always classified as a cheap imitation of a real piano, and accentuated its strengths to make it something incredibly! Blocks of notes for percussion, impossibly fast trills for a different timbre of sustained notes, melodies that are detectable aurally but not visually... Awesome!

  • by s_kilk on 11/11/15, 2:23 PM

    Pretty cool, but the note-counts are a bit less impressive when you realize they're using big blocks of notes to simulate percussion and noise/pads.

  • by 6stringmerc on 11/11/15, 3:26 PM

    Mmmm. Reminds me of some of the most interesting Drum & Bass that I come across in my listening / purchasing. From what I can tell, it has about the same appeal haha.

    I've been legitimately impressed by the abilities of certain artists to really push the boundaries and limits - in my opinion - of packing in musicality in the D&B platform. One I can point to would be Camo & Krooked[0]. Another that sort of crosses into bass music would be Knife Party[1]. What they have in common, to my ears, is that they're able to embrace the full spectrum of available sounds. High peaks and really, really deep bass. Then, with so much digital control, they can go up and down, place certain sounds in certain tonal areas...it's just amazing to me.

    One of the things that infuriates me about music commentary is the tired refrain of "rock is dead" or "music isn't original anymore" because frankly, they're not true. Rock continues to be a broad genre, and I really see electronic-production tunes like Skrillex an extension of rock and metal in that it appeals to a younger audience (predominately) and is very abrasive to 'traditional' ears.

    Music is really going through a metamorphasis of innovation thanks to software like Ableton and the numerous brilliant synths out there. It's one thing to say "I don't like that music" but it's completely dishonest to say nothing's original anymore. Yes, there will always be 'trend jumpers' and some formulaic stuff (it goes for all genres, and specifically anything Max Martin touches), but now and then, BAM. Something shows up and moves the needle.

    [0] Camo & Krooked - Let's Get Dirty - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5H38bpvFA

    [1] Knife Party - Resistance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwqUGkR9yh8

  • by skywhopper on 11/11/15, 5:17 PM

    The potential artistic value here doesn't appear to be so much in the pure number of notes, which is not particularly impressive in itself, given that MIDI files are easily auto-generated. But the examples given remind me most of all of the old early days of overdriving vacuum-tube based amplifiers till you got the crunching of the waveforms and created an entirely new sound.

    Here, the folks creating these files are creating new kinds of sounds by overdriving their MIDI synths, essentially. By providing more notes than can actually be generated at once, or at rates faster than the chosen synth patch can coherently render, you can achieve new and unplanned sounds and effects.

    Essentially the same idea as getting the explosion-type of sounds out of old 8-bit PCM synths in game consoles by overloading the input beyond spec.

  • by dwiel on 11/11/15, 2:55 PM

    Lubomyr Melnyk does something similar by hand on a real piano.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LICgfSqZcdg

  • by GFK_of_xmaspast on 11/11/15, 2:56 PM

    The music looks incredibly dense, but I wonder what would happen if you took a symphonic score and put all the notes on the same staff. (and also wonder if they could get significant reduction in note count by using different instruments besides a piano)

  • by beat on 11/11/15, 7:55 PM

    As much fun as the black MIDI is, you should also check out the music of Conlon Nancarrow, who was mentioned prominently at the beginning of the article. Unlike black MIDI, which tends strongly to the metronomic behavior of drum machines and modern computerized music, Nancarrow's music swings. His heart wasn't in 8 bit video game sounds, but rather in 20th century avant-garde classical and jazz.

    The closest tonal reference for most people would be certain kinds of soundtrack music, especially older mystery movies and kaiju films from Japan. But it's more musically interesting, and more human, than the relatively simplistic sounds of black MIDI.

    Dig it, man.

  • by userbinator on 11/11/15, 3:34 PM

    If these were in the form of player piano rolls, they'd probably have a similar effect to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card

  • by andrewclunn on 11/11/15, 3:48 PM

    I'm synesthetic and this is AMAZING! How did I not know this genre existed before now?

  • by greyhat on 11/11/15, 9:09 PM

    Along the same lines, but perhaps more accessible, and played with a Yamaha Disklavier player piano:

    http://www.kylegann.com/BudRanBackOut.mp3

    Kyle Gann - Bud Ran Back Out (Mechanical Piano Study No. 6) (2001) "The question was whether I could make the Disklavier respond as fast as Bud Powell played. Doubting that I could surpass him, I added some tricks that I hope Powell might have envied, such as playing his ultrafast melodies in chromatic sixths and triple octaves, and simultaneous melodies in tempo ratios of 7 against 8 against 9. It was time for technology to provide a new spin on Thelonious Monk's composition In Walked Bud. The piece is dedicated to Thurman Barker."

    More here:

    http://www.kylegann.com/Gannmusic.html

    http://www.kylegann.com/DisklavierStudiesnotes.html

  • by sprokolopolis on 11/11/15, 9:27 PM

    A normally electronic musician, Dan Deacon, has used some very complex player piano arrangements. When he recorded his album Bromst, they set up multiple MIDI player pianos to play the midi arrangements. What I found very interesting is that the density of the notes actually builds up to a very full and soothing (to me) sound, when played on the analogue instruments rather than on a computer. This is an album I play when driving through the woods or staring at the stars. There is texture to be heard from all of the hammering keys, but the notes all combine to a smoother and very meditative, calming, uplifting sound. I feel like like that fullness of sound from the analogue instrument allows the listener to here the overarching melodies, rather than focus on how many notes are being played.

    Here is a link to a documentary about the recording of the album linked to a visual of the pianos playing:

    https://youtu.be/TPg4Vcr56F0?t=785

  • by pdkl95 on 11/11/15, 4:07 PM

    There's a "too many notes" version of Bad Apple? Hmm... I think I'll stick with marasy8's incredible cover[1] of the song.

    Not that there is anything wrong with noise. As a fan of CCCC (Mayuko Hino)[2], I have often thought noise is best when it is played directly (analog), instead of the digital perfection of MIDI. I like my digital noise when it's written in Fourth[3].

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr7uwOp0Yck

    [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXbb-e0RRc0

    [3] http://pelulamu.net/ibniz/ (warning: turn down the volume - raw square waves at the beginning!)

  • by autarch on 11/11/15, 9:11 PM

    This isn't particularly novel. Two good historical examples besides Conlon Nancarrow are:

    * Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8 (music + animated score)

    * George Crumb's Black Angels - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11o8nHk-l_o - (images from the score via https://goo.gl/2rHYAc)

  • by boomlinde on 11/11/15, 6:36 PM

    It's interesting how this sort of blurs the line between composition and sound design. At some point I would only really call these "notes" in the strictly technical sense that they are encoded as such in the MIDI stream, while the compositions themselves seem like relatively straight forward songs. In that sense, songs like Circus Galop (written for player piano) are more interesting compositionally.

  • by digi_owl on 11/11/15, 12:53 PM

    Their examples reminded me of listening to a modem going all out. At points it simply turns into a hiss.

  • by kmenzel on 11/11/15, 4:01 PM

    It's amazing how complicated you can make something look with very low midi velocities...

  • by thebouv on 11/11/15, 3:33 PM

    What I find particularly interesting to watch is the patterns drawn by some of those YouTube videos when the notes are struck. A visual art as well as the sound.

  • by TheOtherHobbes on 11/11/15, 3:45 PM

  • by joeyspn on 11/11/15, 2:33 PM

    "Less is more" - Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

  • by dietrichepp on 11/12/15, 2:22 AM

    It is a little rough to see this on the front page for so long when I submitted the exact same link and title 3 hours earlier. :-(

  • by apalmer on 11/11/15, 3:29 PM

    Not really fundamentally interesting from a musical standpoint. Only 'interesting' part of it is looks funny on paper...

  • by sideshowb on 11/11/15, 2:37 PM

    Too many notes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_UsmvtyxEI

    (To clarify - I feel the clip from Amadeus is somewhat amusing in this context, but to those who critique black midi as music, I don't think it is really ... it's art).

  • by omginternets on 11/11/15, 1:45 PM

    It's a shame that none of this music is ... well... enjoyable.

  • by ph0rque on 11/11/15, 2:53 PM

    So, it's like the high-frequency trading of music then.

  • by DanBC on 11/11/15, 1:58 PM

    There's a bit of discussion from 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6640963