Black MIDI

Black MIDI is a music genre consisting of compositions that use MIDI files to create a song or a remix containing a large number of notes. People who make black MIDI files are known as

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’s work involving player pianos, in which he punched holes in piano rolls, creating extremely complex musical compositions in the same impossible, unplayable spirit of Black MIDI. It was uploaded to the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga in 2009, and public awareness of Black MIDI spread from Japan to China and Korea in the following two years. The Black MIDI community in Japan vanished and, 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 who versioned kakakakaito’s sheets and elaborated his own compositions and sheets. 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. 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 representation of the music, in which there are so many notes in proximity that the page looks nearly entirely black. The Guide to Black MIDI, however, denies this influence: “We believe that references to Conlon Nancarrow and piano rolls are too deep and .” Gawker’s Adrian Chen, Jason Kottke, and The Verge. It has garnered acclaim from journalists, bloggers and electronic musicians,

Genre family: 21st-century music genres, Internet music genres, Music genres