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The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

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Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#131

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nobodysfool wrote: post #92
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…

It's not really 'unplayable' it's simply not playable by a single pianist at a single keyboard. It would entirely be possible to have 30 pianists at 30 keyboards playing these songs. The question then becomes, "Why?"

> The question then becomes, "Why?"

Why not? [/argument]

Not everything needs to be done for a practical reason; that's most art.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#132

Post by Cthulhu_ »

algorias wrote: post #85
msutherl wrote: post #79

People here with critical perspectives are missing the point. "Where's the value?" The answer is that the people who make this music are not making music for you . They make it more as a personal challenge and/or to one-up their friends. There's a long history, going back to 80's[1], of artists abusing various computing platforms to write somewhat melodramatic music that pushes the boundaries of both traditional pop…

Interesting that you bring up the demoscene. This music genre shares with it the fact that it takes a platform to its limits in a technically interesting way (just like 4k intros, C64 demos, etc), but in my taste it distinctly lacks aesthetic merit, which is recognized in the scene as an essential component of any good prod.

And taste is something that cannot be argued with. C64 demos, 4K intros also take a certain kind of people to appreciate.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#133

Post by Cthulhu_ »

walshemj wrote: post #8
mcmire wrote: post #4

MIDI was never intended to be playable by people. It's just a protocol, you can do whatever you want with it. So saying that this is "impossible" doesn't make any sense. That said, this music sounds atrocious when you run it through a computer, it'd sound better if it were spread out across multiple instruments, but whatever.

Yes if you displayed the full orchestral score to Beethovens 5th on to a single grand stave it would look "black"

Whilst clicking through the related youtube links, I found a 3D representation / rendering of one of these tracks (instead of the 2D one shown on most videos), with the notes cascading downwards onto ten rows of keys - gives a bit more perspective to how they made it.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#135

Post by marvin »

siegecraft wrote: post #96
daveungerer wrote: post #83

I'm incredibly surprised by the negativity of the comments here. Taking a medium, in this case a piano midi track, and pushing it far beyond its limits, while still resulting in something resembling music, is just about as close to hacking as you can get. Also, constraints breed creativity, and this is just another example of that. It's not the type of music I would listen to generally, but insisting that this should…

Actually, this is kind of the opposite of constraint breeding creativity. You have removed the constraint of having to make a piece of music playable by a human and now you might have a 20 million note song not because it sounds good but just for the novelty of having so many notes. Like any other medium for art, there will of course be good and bad pieces created. But a million old-school geocities web pages w/ auto…

There's plenty of constraints in this style. You need to have very many notes. It must be a single instrument. It should presumably sound good or otherwise have some musical value. There is a lot of exploration possible within these constraints.

Most of the criticism in this thread are just eloquent formulations of "Get off my lawn" and "your a faggot". No different from the literally tens of thousands of previous instances of situations where a new artistic medium or expression has been criticised.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#136

Post by Flenser »

john61 wrote: post #128
bane wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? It doesn't mean the composer can't write music that exceeds the ability of any human performer and still encode the nuance they intended into the performance. Just because I can't humanly play Paganini's Caprices doesn't mean it's bad music.

If the composer writes music that is not even playable by himself, then this music is never played by a human. Therefore a soul to soul communication to the listener is impossible.

I challenge John Williams to play the theme to Star Wars on his own! The point bane is trying to make is that the composer can use MIDI to record parts of a performance and then combine it into a form which is then unplayable by a single person [Edit: or any group of people].

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#137

Post by owenmarshall »

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 just want to point out how depressing it is that a comment that has spawned quite a bit of interesting discussion has been downvoted so heavily.

C'mon HN, be better than that!

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#138

Post by peterpathname »

kalleboo wrote: post #129
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".

Some of my favorite music is VOCALOID-based (musical speech synthesis), so it doesn't even have a real person singing. And it sure as hell has a lot more "soul" that a lot of the music that's been played by "real instruments" (especially your extremely slim definition).

recommendations?

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#139

Post by vidarh »

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.

No, but creating the recipe is making music.

You are assuming that more "soul" (whatever you mean by that) is better. I argue that often it is worse: I tend to dislike classical music where the person playing the music adds too much personal flair (or "soul"), because it makes it sound different to what I expect the piece to sound like. To me that added "soul" detracts from the experience more often than it adds. For that reason too, I organize my classical music solely by composer: If the performing artist is "too noticeable" for me, the piece won't stay in my library, and so I have no interest in who the performer is for the classical albums I keep playing (yes, I can hear the cries in agony from people who considers the performer important).

And electronically generated music is not sheet music. It is more akin to a recording of a performance, even if that "recording" was not live. It embodies what the composer intended the piece to be, rather than being a mix of a recipe from the composer and a musicians interpretation of that recipe. And I am perfectly fine with not having someone else meddling with the composers vision.

(I do listen to a lot of remixes, and that is different in that they are different enough to the originals to be separate works that I can enjoy that separate expression).

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#140

Post by vidarh »

john61 wrote: post #76
MoosePlissken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of other artistic mediums that lack a performance aspect. Painting, drawing, literature, photography. Do these mediums also lack soul because they directly connect the composer to the audience, without a third party to interpret? Sure, if a piece of music was written with the intent that it be played by human hands, then it probably won't sound great when played by a computer. But if an artist create…

A computer can not paint like Leonardo Da Vinci. He can not write like Shakespeare. And he can not play music like Sviatlosav Richter. A prush, pencil, and musical instrument that can not be used by humans is therefore useless.

Your premise and your conclusion is entirely unconnected by any form of logic.

The point of the post you reply to is that art can be created even when it is not possible or meaningful to do it as a live performance. Performers do not have a monopoly on creating art. In fact, sometimes performers are props that are or have been necessary due to the lack of technology.

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