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The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

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Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#51

Post by john61 »

vidarh wrote: post #13
john61 wrote: post #2

As a pianist I do not understand the purpose of music that is not playable by humans. In my understanding music is a communication method between human souls. A computer has no soul, likewise Black MIDI "music".

I don't get that mindset at all. A lot of the music I listen to is music that is not playable on an analogue instruments without severely butchering it. Ranging from 8-bit chip tunes to much more complex electronic music. Why does that affect the level of communication? To me, the only thing that is different vs a song is that for electronic music the communication is mostly from the composer. But I find that to be t…

A human interpretation of sheet music is a 3 tier soul transformation. Composer - Interpret - Listener. Computer played music has an digital filter that eliminates a lot of soul in between.

Music notation is only a recipe for making music. Playing the recipe is not making music.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#52

Post by sixothree »

raverbashing wrote: post #12

Well, it is definitely interesting. But in this form, I really see no value. I'm only hearing noise in those videos, the noise from the switching on of the note (that slight 'tack') The synthesisers apparently can't handle that amount of notes without some artefacts. And see, they're only adding huge amounts of notes, but no pitch shift and no volume control (apparently) This could be interesting with different (soft…

We do know that more interesting things are certainly possible with many many notes.

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

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#55

Post by wonderyak »

john61 wrote: post #51
vidarh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get that mindset at all. A lot of the music I listen to is music that is not playable on an analogue instruments without severely butchering it. Ranging from 8-bit chip tunes to much more complex electronic music. Why does that affect the level of communication? To me, the only thing that is different vs a song is that for electronic music the communication is mostly from the composer. But I find that to be t…

A human interpretation of sheet music is a 3 tier soul transformation. Composer - Interpret - Listener. Computer played music has an digital filter that eliminates a lot of soul in between. Music notation is only a recipe for making music. Playing the recipe is not making music.

Zappa referred to electronic music (of the day) as 'missing the eyebrows'. Its sort of the uncanny valley of electronic music.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#56

Post by aimhb »

jerf wrote: post #43
blackhole wrote: post #6

As a pianist and an electronic musician, I never have any qualms about making music I can't play. This, however, is just ridiculous. The thing is, it's not at all hard to write a piano piece that's unplayable. Simply add a third note group far enough above or below the existing two note groups and it will be physically impossible to play (unless someone else helps you). It doesn't need to be a grotesque fountain of m…

I found the result to be a rather monotonous sameyness. The sound of "all the piano keys being smashed" overwhelms everything else about the piece, and the end result is that for all the apparent energy, the end result is really quite boring. Contrasted to its acoustic opposite, chip-tune minimalism, and I'll take chip-tune anyday, even in its "pure" form (limited polyphony, no postprocessing, etc, just as you would…

I appreciate Black MIDI not really as a "cool gimmick" but more as a genre of music. In my opinion, its main function and appeal is to embody music that is still pleasing to the ear, even if it would be impossible in practice.

The majority of the pieces linked to in this thread probably aren't the best example of this, but I think Dream Battle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzy_WrH8v7U) is quite good in this regard. The piece itself is just a normal piece -- it only happens to be unplayable, and since it is unplayable, there are a number of Black-MIDI-specific "extended techniques" that can be employed (as you'll see).

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#57

Post by Stwerp »

john61 wrote: post #48
PavlovsCat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds kind of esoteric / superstitious to me. Has this been blind tested? Anyway... computer music has the soul of the people selecting the samples and the parameters for instrument synthesis, and choosing when and how to play them. That's why all that is done manually. Heck, on the C64 (probably not just there) it wasn't unusual for composers to write their own composing software and playback routines.

In the C64 days I programmed my TI99/4A to play Bach. It sounded awful. The interpretation had no soul. Soul is not blind testable, like art, because it comes from the heart, not the brain.

Is soul the imprecision of notes not being perfectly uniform in duration and velocity? That's what your above comment seems to imply.

For instance: Consider a recording from a piano played by a human and a computer-generated MIDI file of the same musical piece with included variation/noise in BPM, note duration, velocity, timing etc.

This would result in at least single-blind test for `soul' if you were to listen to it. You could tell us which piece you think has more, or any (I'm not sure if soul is quantifiable or just a binary existence) soul.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#58

Post by john61 »

Stwerp wrote: post #57
john61 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the C64 days I programmed my TI99/4A to play Bach. It sounded awful. The interpretation had no soul. Soul is not blind testable, like art, because it comes from the heart, not the brain.

Is soul the imprecision of notes not being perfectly uniform in duration and velocity? That's what your above comment seems to imply. For instance: Consider a recording from a piano played by a human and a computer-generated MIDI file of the same musical piece with included variation/noise in BPM, note duration, velocity, timing etc. This would result in at least single-blind test for `soul' if you were to listen to…

No soul, is not imprecision. It is the expression of humans feelings in form of variation of duration, velocity, loudness. For example speed in music is like speed in breathing. You are not breathing with the same speed all the time. It depends on the context. If you are in a hurry you breathe fast and short. If you sigh you breathe deep and slow. An interpret has to understand the emotions that should be transported. These emotions are unfortunately not sufficiently presentable in MIDI files or music notation. As Mahler said the essence of music is not in the sheet. Therefore a computer can not reproduce the essence of music.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#60

Post by bashinator »

JonnieCache wrote: post #20

People have been doing this kind of thing with trackers for some time. Here's Vache by Venetian Snares, from 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2f5gOo1VEM And here's a webcam video of the sequencer data scrolling past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGK-EzEa45U The techniques are much older. Here's a screengrab of the OctaMed tracker running on an amiga, playing back the original drum tracks from Aphrodite's jun…

I rather like Chris Cunningham's interpretation of what it would take to perform Aphex Twin's "Monkey Drummer" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB08leFMRnM
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