Fitting that both the examples are of Touhou song remixes, as Touhou is kind of the video game equivalent of black MIDI (shoot em up with ridiculous amounts of projectiles) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmMDqub_UKA
The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
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Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
A piano piece requiring 3 hands isn't impossible to play. You just need a second person to help you play it. ;)
Or you can help yourself with your foot, like Jason D. Williams occasionally does.
That's called an Organ
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijQWm4H-zBU&noredirect=1
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#33The way I see this is another form of additive synthesis, with poor (technical) sound quality and less control/expressiveness¹. I'd guess a lot of music would appear "black" if represented as MIDI sequence for a pure sine-wave synthesizer.
[1] not to disparage it too much as an artform. Art forms from what the artist able to with the medium of choice, and the choice of medium does not it make it automatically better or worse
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#34I almost like it, but it just has... it has... too many notes. Yes, that's exactly it. Too many notes.
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#35As 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".
When you say "playable by humans," what do you mean? If you mean "physically capable of being played by a human" then I'd say that a large majority of popular music right now is unplayable by humans, simply due to the sheer amount of digital production that goes into them. Many genres of electronic music fit in this category, but while being "unplayable," all clearly have an author (the composer/producer) and an inte…
As Frank Zappa said music notation is like a recipe.
He also said eating the recipe is crazy.
Hearing computer played notes is like eating the recipe.
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#36As 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".
Pianos don't have souls, either. Maybe I'd understand your complaint if it was about computer composition of music, but this is just using the computer as an instrument. Would you say flute players can't play music "with soul" because they aren't directly whistling the noises? Why not? How is that qualitatively different from using a computer to play your composition?
Handmade Pianos have souls.
The soul of the technician that built it.
This is why the best Pianos like Bösendorfer and Steinways are still built manually.
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#37As 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…
Ever played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor? 4 well separated simultaneous note groups in a couple of places. That makes it theoretically impossible to play...
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.
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor? 4 well separated simultaneous note groups in a couple of places. That makes it theoretically impossible to play...
Igudesman & Joo have their own way of playing stuff like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKKlhYF53w
I love these guys. Saw them live once. :)
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#39As 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".
Obligatory quote:
"If I hear one more person who comes up to me and complains about "computer music has no soul" then I will go furious, you know. 'Cause of course the computer is just a tool. And if there is no soul in computer music then it's because nobody put it there and that's not the computer's role. It's the role of the songwriter. He puts down his soul in the song if he wants to. A guitar will never write a song and a computer will never write a song. These are just tools." -- Björk
That said, I'm not a fan of those particular songs either; less would be more IMHO. But many of my all time favourite songs are chip tunes... some compositions (!) simply don't need additional "soul" added to them, they work just fine played by a robot.
Re: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
#40This reminds me of the kind of stuff I made while screwing around in Scream Tracker as a teenager 20 years ago. The difference is I recognized that it was garbage that nobody would want to listen to.