Black MIDI is music, impossible to be played by human hands, on say a piano, because it is so note dense. Indeed the fact that it is so note dense means if these songs were written with normal music notation on a few sheets of paper, the sheets would be black with notes. That’s where the term black comes from.
With MIDI it is possible to program many, many notes so some black MIDI compositions play a million notes over the time of a 4 minute song. Read this excellent article on the subject and even hear some of these compositions.
But there is sort of a competition amongst the black MIDI composers to play the most note dense songs, or the blackest of the black MIDI. I have an idea to get myself into the middle of this competition.
First of all, I am a supporter of fat chords as I said in this article, so I am a bit of a fan of black MIDI.
Bends are allowed in music. A bend will play the infinity of notes between two different, in tune notes. Your ear won’t hear all the gradations possible but it will hear a lot of them. So bends allow a huge number of new notes.
Even fat chords don’t play the whole chromatic scale. But in the interest of blackest MIDI, I think we ought to use chords that do use the whole chromatic scale.
But if I want all the new notes I’ve added to black MIDI, won’t a machine that plays them be expensive?
Well excuse me if I take my $1.50 to the laundry room and dry some clothes. The white noise of the dryer includes all those extra notes from bends and the fattest chords. That can be the basis of the song and the clothes flopping around can be the melody.
I have now written one of the blackest of all black MIDI songs. I challenge anyone to make a blacker song. Or more of a white noise song -your pick.
