Screenshot from: «HD Touhou EoSD Extra No Deaths Flandre», uploaded to YouTube.

The Aesthetic Qualities of Black MIDI and Its Relationship with a Distinct Community

Blog Post

In this blog post, you’ll discover how Black MIDI aligns with the Touhou gaming community through remixes and shared aesthetics. Read about how the challenging note structures in Black MIDI mirror the complexity of bullet hell games, and how both foster vibrant online communities dedicated to skill mastery and sharing techniques.

Even prior to the emergence of Black MIDI, it was popular within the community of Touhou games and Touhou related songs to create elaborate remixes of songs from these games. In this regard, Black MIDI aligns with the expectations of this particular community. The aesthetic of vertical scrolling 2D shooting games extends to multiple levels within the aesthetics of Black MIDI.

The following section highlights some aspects of these games in order to link them to the aesthetics of Black MIDI:

The Intense Challenge

Bullet hell games offer a high level of difficulty, with players facing overwhelming numbers of bullets and obstacles on screen. This challenge can be likened to the task of benchmarking the computer to handle an exceptionally large number of MIDI notes.

Replay Value

Bullet hell games frequently offer various difficulty levels, hidden secrets, and unlockable content, encouraging players to replay levels and enhance their skills. This correlates with the practice of continually rendering newer versions of the same song with higher note counts in Black MIDI compositions.

The Visual and Sonic Representation

Bullet hell games are renowned for their mesmerizing visual effects and intricate bullet patterns, which serve as a sonic representation. Both can be likened to the auditory image of rapid, repetitive notes and chords, as well as the visual representations generated by programs like Synthesia.

The Skill Mastery

Success in bullet hell games requires precise timing, quick reflexes, and strategic planning. Players must learn enemy patterns, memorize level layouts, and hone their skills to overcome increasingly difficult challenges. This parallels the skill of tuning and optimizing the computer for Black MIDI composition.

Online Community

Bullet hell games have a dedicated community of players who share strategies, tips, and high scores online. On online platforms such as Niconico (known before 2012 as Nico Nico Douga) and YouTube, blackers exchange details about their computer specifications and the software they use. They freely share their MIDI files for others to create new blackened scores and even request assistance from blackers with more powerful CPUs (Central Processing Units) to render MIDIs that may not function on their own systems. This illustrates how Black MIDI has developed within a digital community interconnected through specific online platforms. Escape and Relaxation Despite their demanding gameplay, bullet hell games can offer a sense of escapism and relaxation for certain players. Immersing oneself in fast-paced action and intense gameplay can provide a temporary reprieve from real-world stressors, allowing players to fully engage with the game’s immersive world. Similarly, listening to Black MIDI can evoke a comparable experience. It can be likened to an intoxicating sensation where one surrenders to the overwhelming auditory complexity, as their perception becomes incapable of processing everything.

Summarizing, one can say that the aesthetics of Black are characterized by visual complexity, musical intensity, community engagement, and shared cultural references.

This blog post is part of the Norient Online Special Hyperplexia, an expansion of the performance project of the same name by composer and pianist Stefan Schultze. The Special was funded by Bern Academy of the Arts HKB.

Biography

Stefan Schultze (*1979, Germany) is a composer and pianist and one of the most multifaceted and original musicians to come out of the German jazz scene. Schultze studied piano and composition in Cologne and New York. He occupies the interface between new music, improvisation, and jazz. His artistic projects cover a spectrum of compositions for small and large ensembles, from leading larger ensemble formations to initiating and producing projects on national and international stages. His compositions explore and translate music from a myriad of contexts, opening new sonic territories and transcending genres. Follow him on his website, Bandcamp, or Instagram.

Published on June 18, 2024

Last updated on June 24, 2024

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Screenshot from: «Fastest MIDI Notes: 1 to 8192th», uploaded to YouTube by the author.

Exploring Black MIDI: Resolutions, Techniques, and Thresholds

Blog Post

by Stefan Schultze

In this blog post, you’ll learn about Black MIDI’s complexity and the technical challenges involved in creating these dense musical compositions. Discover insights into MIDI resolution in DAWs like Ableton Live.

When asked what exactly Black MIDI is, Black MIDI composer TheTrustedComputer answered in an interview for Vice:

«Black MIDI has been around since 2009. It actually falls under a remix category, rather than [a genre] of electronic music. The term ‹Black MIDI› was derived from a sheet music being ‹blacked out› by tons of notes. The MIDI part is MIDI, nothing special about it. I believe all that came from the idea of these ‹bullet hell› games.»

Giving advice to someone trying to make Black MIDI songs, he states:

«Blacking songs is really complex and cannot be explained in a few sentences. When you do attempt to black a song, make sure the notes maintain the melody, harmony, chords, progressions, and anything music-related. Modify these notes to make the notes even shorter (…). In fact, MIDI has the ability to have extremely short notes – up to 65,536th notes!»

These quotes by TheTrustedComputer made me want to find out more about potential MIDI resolutions within a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and techniques for portraying a large number of MIDI notes. Within these dense Black MIDI songs, it’s crucial for the melody to remain perceptible, distinguishing them from, for example, MIDI art challenges, where you also hear a lot of glitch and noise sounds at the threshold or transition from very fast notes to noise or newly emerging frequencies.

Let’s do the math: in early Black Midi versions, it took an average of about 100 notes per second to reach 21,000 notes for 3:30 minutes. To reach the 1 million mark, you need about 4,700 notes per second, and to reach the 12 million mark, you need an average of 57,000 notes per second to fill 3:30 minutes of music.

The Experiment: Testing Out Ableton Live

I aimed to identify the smallest grid size usable in my DAW, Ableton Live Suite 11. The smallest grid size, denoted as 16384T (T for triplet), encompasses 24,576 potential notes within a quarter note. Beyond this, you can draw even shorter notes by turning off the grid in Ableton’s piano roll.

However, it’s crucial to recognize that MIDI export capabilities in Ableton differ. As per Ableton’s user manual: «Live exports MIDI files with a resolution of 96 ppq, which means a 16th note can be divided into 24 steps. All MIDI events are shifted to this grid accordingly when exported.» Consequently, MIDI export permits granularity up to 1/256T, equating to 384 notes per quarter note.

But, if we were to work on Ableton’s smallest grid and fill up every possible note with a single line, you would end up with approximately 5,160,960 notes. The following video shows how to set Ableton Live’s Piano Roll Editor to the smallest grid, what that means in numbers, and how to work off-grid in this resolution.

Additionally, I aimed to determine the threshold at which a fast-scale run transitions from discernible pitches to noise or glitch. Here, you can listen to a digital piano playing from 1 note per 1 4/4 bar in 60 bpm to 8,192 notes in the same duration.

The next video compares three different digital piano sounds that interpret the MIDI data of five versions of fast scale runs in different tempi:

In the realm of digital music, Black MIDI emerges as a phenomenon that not only challenges conventional notions but also probes the very limits of human perception and technological possibility.

To conclude the article, I have highlighted some aspects that could lead to further questions for discussion and reflection.

Challenging Perceptions

Is Black MIDI challenging the listeners’ expectations and possibilities of perception? Does it question the specification of the human listener?

Listener vs. Machine

Is Black MIDI intended for a human listener, or could one argue that the listener is the computer? While computers can decode patterns with precision, the human listener has a different way of reacting to the thresholds of perception. Should we aim to compose things that challenge the computer? Should we aim to notate in a way that the computer is challenged?

Redefined Roles

Does Black MIDI question the role of the composer/creator and the medium of notation? Is there a paradigm shift towards editing in digital music? To create music, do we have to regard ourselves as composers?

Benchmark Test

Could Black MIDI be compared to a benchmark test of what is possible to render visually and musically on a system? With each rendering pushing the boundaries of computational power, it becomes linked to the evolution of technology in music creation.

Exploring Dysfunction and the Virtuosity of Digital Music

What is virtuosity in digital music? Where does dysfunction and overuse transcend into something new, and can dysfunction become a catalyst for innovation?

This blog post is part of the Norient Online Special Hyperplexia, an expansion of the performance project of the same name by composer and pianist Stefan Schultze. The Special was funded by Bern Academy of the Arts HKB.