[sheepdestroyer]

Tau ("the Song with 6.28318 Million Notes") is an extreme example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0gyQMJHQ78

I like the "no arts" version that removes silent notes, as it makes it more enjoyable (for me!) to follow what's happening : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcfmPZVqVtw

However, one other interesting aspect of a song like Tau is the "performance" of playing these note-heavy midis. You are effectively recording a live performance of your computer processing/performing the midi file, it is not like playing a recording.

This implies that for a good portion of black midi history, it was not possible for most computers to play those files without screen freezes, heavy skipping notes, and then recovering after the hard portion has passed.

It was/is necessary to overclock CPUs to avoid or minimize these artifacts on songs like Tau.

And it can be said that screen freezes/note skips are integral parts of the performance. At least that's my take and I really do enjoy seeing the computer almost giving up to then recover and finish the song.

[alisonatwork]

Thanks for sharing the "no arts" version, that makes this whole post make a lot more sense to me. It reminds me a lot of the effects we used mod tracker days, where rapidly retriggering a note with a short attack could create a new timbre that fulfilled a different musical role to the original sample. I seem to recall "compos" or challenges in the scene where a restriction might be to create a whole song with just one sample (or even just one channel), so you'd make heavy use of effects like retriggers, arpeggios, tremelos and pitch bends to try create something interesting.

It's fun when you hear the effect in commercial music too. For a while it only really showed up in stuff by IDM producers trying to sound weird, but then it got more mainstream and nowadays you hear it in everything from techno to dubstep and even pop.

I wonder if these black MIDI artists require a specific sample set to be used for playback, so they can control how the waveforms interact. I also wonder how much they use velocity, aftertouch, modwheel etc to shape the sound, or if (for example) the percussive effects are just a result of careful stacking.

[Rochus]

> This implies that for a good portion of black midi history, it was not possible for most computers to play those files without screen freezes, heavy skipping notes, and then recovering after the hard portion has passed.

Right. And this still applies today. And anyway: I bet > 98% of all listeners would not notice the difference between 6 millions or only 1000 notes, even when the system was capable of playing every specified note. The whole thing is just a crazy gimmick with no practical use.

[klipt]

It's a work of art like any other. It has Tau*million notes and was released on Tau day. There are other references to Tau scattered throughout the video.

[ivraatiems]

That was way more pleasant to listen to than I ever would have imagined it'd be. Thanks for sharing! This is definitely a bona fide work of art in my book.

[maze-le]

Its like watching a 'shoot em up' lets play from the early 90ies...

[galangalalgol]

Would master boot record fall into this genre? I always thought it had too many notes to be legitimate midi.

[joveian]

I wondered about that too once you mentioned it and remembered that he recently mentioned that he live streams his compositions on YouTube, although in private videos, and that he made a few public but unlisted with a list on his server. I'm not sure he wants the list easily searchable but if you follow him on Bandcamp and scroll down to June 15th, 2022, there is a link:

https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/community

I looked for a bit and no, although he does use a lot of short notes. Most of the complexity is in the samples (which I guess is the usual way :) ). Or the instruments I should say, I'm guessing those are primarily sample based. He uses Cubase 8, Massive VST, and Superior Drummer 3.