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Black MIDI is a
music genre A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from ''musical form'' and musical style, although in practice these terms are some ...
consisting of compositions that use
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
files to create a song or a remix containing a large number of notes. People who make black MIDIs are known as blackers. However, there are no specific criteria of what is considered "black"; as a result, pinpointing the exact origin of black MIDI is impossible.


Origins and early history

Though the two are unrelated in origin, the concept of impossible piano existed long before black MIDI, manifesting itself for example within
Conlon Nancarrow Samuel Conlon Nancarrow (; October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was an American- Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. Nancarrow is best remembered for his ''Studies for Player Piano'', being one of the first ...
's work involving
player piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...
s, in which he punched holes in piano rolls, creating extremely complex musical compositions in the same impossible, unplayable spirit of black MIDI. Another precursor to black MIDI is ''
Circus Galop ''Circus Galop'' is a piece written for player pianos by Marc-André Hamelin. It was composed between the years 1991 and 1994 and it is dedicated to Beatrix and Jürgen Hocker, piano roll makers. Its duration is approximately 4–5 minutes. Scores ...
'', a player piano composition written by Canadian virtuoso Marc-Andre Hamelin, featuring complex and impossible arrangement with up to 21 notes played simultaneously.
Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Free improvisation, free-form improvisation, sound experimen ...
also wrote a dense and extremely difficult composition called "
The Black Page "The Black Page #1" is a piece by American composer Frank Zappa known for being extraordinarily difficult to play. Originally written for the drum kit and melodic percussion (as "The Black Page Drum Solo"), the piece was later rearranged in several ...
". Black MIDI was first employed in Shirasagi Yukki at Kuro Yuki Gohan's rendition of "U.N. Owen Was Her?", an extra boss theme from the ''
Touhou Project The , also known simply as , is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by one-man independent Japanese ''doujin'' soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. Since 1995, the team's member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed ...
'' shooter video game ''
The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is a 2002 bullet hell scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed by Team Shanghai Alice. It is the sixth game in the ''Touhou Project'' series, and the first ''Touhou'' game to be released for Microsoft Windows. The story follows either the ''m ...
''. It was uploaded to the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga in 2009, and public awareness of Black MIDI started to spread from Japan to China and Korea in the following two years. In its early years, black MIDI compositions were represented visually with traditional, two-stave piano sheet music, containing a number of notes only in the thousands. They were created with MIDI sequencers such as Music Studio Producer, and Singer Song Writer, and played through MIDI players such as MAMPlayer and Timidity++. The black MIDI community in Japan vanished quickly because, according to Jason Nguyen, the group was "analogous to those TV shows where there's a mysterious founder of a civilization that is not really known throughout the course of the show".


Popularity outside Japan

The popularity of Black MIDI spread to Europe and the United States due to a video of a composition uploaded to
YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
by user Kakakakaito1998 in February 2011, and shortly thereafter, blackers from around the world began pushing limits of the style by making compositions with notes increasing into the millions, and using an enormous number of colors and patterns to match the complexity of the notes. The first of these tracks to reach the million-note mark was that of "Necrofantasia" from ''
Touhou Project The , also known simply as , is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by one-man independent Japanese ''doujin'' soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. Since 1995, the team's member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed ...
'' video game ''
Perfect Cherry Blossom is a 2003 vertical Shoot 'em up#Bullet hell, bullet hell scrolling shooter, scrolling shoot 'em up developed by Team Shanghai Alice. It is the seventh game in the ''Touhou Project'' series. Playable characters include returning protagonists Reimu ...
'', arranged by TheTrustedComputer. The end of the title of many black MIDI videos displays how many notes are in the piece. The number of notes and file sizes that could be played back has grown as the computational power of consumer hardware has increased, and while black MIDIs of Japanese video game music and
anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
are still common, the genre has also spilled into compositions based on modern-day pop songs, such as "
Wrecking Ball A wrecking ball is a heavy steel ball, usually hung from a crane, that is used for demolishing large buildings. It was most commonly in use during the 1950s and 1960s. Several wrecking companies claim to have invented the wrecking ball. An e ...
" by
Miley Cyrus Miley Ray Cyrus ( ; born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her distinctive raspy voice, her music spans across varied styles and genres, including pop, country, rock, hip hop ...
. English-language blackers have formed collaboration groups, such as the Black MIDI Team, where they make MIDI files and visuals together so they can be uploaded online sooner. Blackers around the world have used software such as
Synthesia ''Synthesia'' is a piano keyboard trainer for Microsoft Windows, IOS, macOS, and Android which allows users to play a MIDI keyboard or use a computer keyboard in time to a MIDI file by following on-screen directions, much in the style of '' ...
,
FL Studio FL Studio (previously known as FruityLoops before 2003) is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by the Belgian company Image-Line. FL Studio features a graphical user interface with a pattern-based music sequencer. The program is avail ...
,
SynthFont SynthFont is a commercial MIDI editor and "MIDI to Waveform" converter, developed by European software developer Kenneth Rundt. Description SynthFont is a program for editing and playing MIDI files using various sound source files like soundfonts ...
, Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard, Piano From Above, MIDITrail, vanBasco Karaoke Player, Ultralight MIDI Player (a Java program), Zenith, MAMPlayer, Music Studio Producer, Singer Song Writer, Tom's MIDI Player, TMIDI, and Timidity++ to create and play Black MIDIs. Some of them, like Jason, record the MIDI files at a slow tempo and then speed the footage up in video-editing to avoid RAM and processing issues.


Analysis and reception

The term "black MIDI" is derived from the appearance of the
sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...
representation of the music, in which there are so many notes in close proximity that the page looks nearly entirely black. According to
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
-based blacker TheTrustedComputer, black MIDI was intended as more of a remix style than an actual genre, and derived from the idea of "bullet hell"
shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...
games, which involved "so many bullets at a time your eyes can't keep up." Black MIDI has also been considered the digital equivalent, as well as a response, to composer
Conlon Nancarrow Samuel Conlon Nancarrow (; October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was an American- Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. Nancarrow is best remembered for his ''Studies for Player Piano'', being one of the first ...
's use of the
player piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...
which also involved experimenting with several thick notes to compose intricate pieces without hands. ''The Guide to Black MIDI'', however, denies this influence: "We believe that references to Conlon Nancarrow and piano rolls are too deep and ." Black MIDI received some early coverage from Michael Connor, a writer for the non-profit arts organization Rhizome, in September 2013, leading to attention from publications and bloggers including Aux,
Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...
's
Adrian Chen Adrian Chen (; born November 23, 1984) is an American blogger, and former staff writer at ''The New Yorker''. Chen joined Gawker in November 2009 as a night shift editor, graduating from an internship position at ''Slate'', and has written extensi ...
,
Jason Kottke Jason Kottke (born September 27, 1973) is an American blogger, graphic designer, and web designer known for his blog Kottke.org. He won a Lifetime Achievement Award as a blogger. , his blog is ranked #66 overall and #20 in Science on the Technor ...
, and ''
The Verge ''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media' ...
''. It has garnered acclaim from journalists, bloggers and electronic musicians, with many noting it as a distinctive and engaging genre thanks to how regular piano notes are combined to make new, abstract sounds not heard in many styles of music, as well as the visuals representing the notes.
Hackaday ''Hackaday'' is a hardware hacking website. It was founded in 2004 as a web magazine. Since 2014, Hackaday also hosts a community database of open-source hardware designs. History Hackaday was founded in 2004 by Phillip Torrone as a web magaz ...
's Elliot Williams spotlighted the style as ironic, given that the fast-paced arpeggios and "splatter-chords" that are developed with a restricted number of voices come together to make other tones that leads a piano sounding more like a
chiptune Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is a style of synthesized electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles. The t ...
and less like an actual piano.


References

{{reflist, 2


External links


Official Black MIDI Wikia

Black MIDI on Wix.com
Music genres MIDI 21st-century music genres