The Impossible Music of Black MIDI • Hacker News Board

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#101

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #87

aimhb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regar…

>> "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." It doesn't take many notes to make something impossible in practice. On piano 11 notes simultaneously makes it impossible for one person to play and it would probably sound a lot more coherent. The black midi I've listened to doesn't sound bad, but it all sounds quite simi…

You can probably get to 12 to 14 and still sound good by using some of the fingers to play multiple neighboring notes.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#102

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 2:44 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #98

npsimons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that since you bring up Rachmaninoff, you know that he reportedly had freakishly large hands, and was in the habit of writing things he could play, but others considered "impossible". To me, that's significantly different than black MIDI, which just seems silly, albeit vaguely amusing.

> large hands Can't they make the piano keys a little smaller (narrower)?

Sure, but it could take considerable time to adapt one's muscle memory to the different key spacing.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#103

Post by ingrownpsyche » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 2:45 AM UTC

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #95

msutherl wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some "scene" music that I actually listen to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GIemGd3Ctk&list=PLkMjO0BRqWu... (FM funk) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl7TjvZzWMY (Zabutom) Basically just really good 4-part harmony on 8-bit chips. It's really not unlike pre-Rennaisance church music (early polyphony), or a lot of modern choral music.

That first one reminds me more of a jazz / electro / rnb / funky house type of thing. Mixed with some japanese video games of course. If that's done entirely on one 8-bit chip it blows my freaking mind.

I don't know if it's done on a real chip or not, but that's FM synthesis, like produced by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2612 in SEGA machines.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#104

Post by ars » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 2:55 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #102

ars wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large hands Can't they make the piano keys a little smaller (narrower)?

Sure, but it could take considerable time to adapt one's muscle memory to the different key spacing.

The keyspacing is identical on all pianos?

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#105

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 3:09 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #104

nitrogen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it could take considerable time to adapt one's muscle memory to the different key spacing.

The keyspacing is identical on all pianos?

For the most part, with the exception of toys and some compact synthesizers and MIDI input devices.

Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_keyboard#Size_and_hist...

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#106

Post by minikomi » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 3:42 AM UTC

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…

Even more insane - using pattern jump commands to create animations :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeCP6LteWJo

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#107

Post by moultano » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 3:46 AM UTC

aimhb wrote: post #56

jerf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regar…

I'd be interested to hear what a practitioner of this would do starting from a renowned piece with some actual complexity. It seems like there's a lot of potential for cool effects, but it's held back a bit by compositions that don't use it for much.

There's stuff out there that has a frenetic line paired with a sparse melody that might work well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5wWD1k7T0

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#108

Post by hubtree » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:35 AM UTC

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #93

jmmcd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No surprise -- the people making negative comments here are the same people who said $(your favourite rebellious composer) wasn't music. People who say that are always judged as wrong, in the end.

I think a lot of the dislike is from simply not understanding many of the techniques. E.g. in second example, there's a bit where the melody is extremely staccato, but the note length isn't achieved from the keyed duration but by a flurry of other percussive notes overwhelming the compressor/normaliser. I guess without knowing that it might seem uninteresting. If you understand stuff like this you can appreciate the…

I could appreciate it if a person was playing it, but as it is I don't see any reason to be impressed. Anyone with music theory knowledge and the right software could make this. What's the point of cramming notes in if it doesn't take you somewhere.

I understand it. I have no appreciation for it. sorry.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#109

Post by bane » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

john61 wrote: post #77

tesseractive wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does that mean that piano music played on an insufficiently fancy piano is soulless as well?

I have a Kawai MP10 digital Piano and an old hand made analog Hofmann piano. If I play for example just the last Chord (6 Notes) of Chopin Prelude op. 28/4 on the Hofmann the music goes deep through every nerve. Nothing comparable happens on the Kawai even with very good speakers.

Bad musicians frequently blame the instruments.

Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

#110

Post by bane » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:53 AM UTC

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.

You're making the fundamental mistake that all notes that are written down are the same. A midi-file isn't a score, it's a recording of the playback of notes. A performer can sit down at a midi enabled Steinway Grand and record their performance into a midi file, then they can play back that exact performance on the same piano and it will sound identical to the original. If you were to listen to such a playback with your back turned, you would be unable to tell if the pianist was playing, or if the midi was.

Programming a machine to play something back in just the way the composer wanted is the same as performance. The composer get to become the performance artist interpreting and setting their own will, their "soul" as you want to call it, into the machine. So that their music is interpreted and heard exactly as they wished it to be. It's no different than if the composer were to perform their own compositions.

You may not like the instrument being used here, or the way in which the composer has expressed their intent in the recording, but it's exactly as they intended.