Conlon Nancarrow and Black MIDI

Conlon Nancarrow and impossible music

In an earlier MIDI history blog, we talked about the strange symbiotic relationship between player pianos and MIDI. But one of the things we didn’t talk about was Conlon Nancarrow, the 20th century American composer who lived most of his life in Mexico and wrote most of his pieces for player pianos because the music was impossible for humans to play.  Here is a really nice overview from Adam Neely. 

Black MIDI – Is it music, art, both or just kids trying to break their computer?

In 2011 a Japanese Youtube named kakakakaito1998 uploaded the first Black MIDI file. 

Black MIDI is a strange combination of music, visuals created by notation or often with the use of a music learning game called Synthesia.  The idea is to put so many notes in the pieces that the notes themselves become a type of synthesis and also create stunning visual effects. 

This original video has over 220,000 views, but that’s small compared to something like Bad Apple from the Blacker -SuperMariobros2.  This video has over a million views and over 8 million notes!. 

Black MIDI continues to rise in popularity, Look at this trend from Google about Black MIDI searches. 

Below are links to several article about Black MIDI that provided information for this article, links to some of the more famous Black MIDI YouTube channels and a link to the Synthesia game.  Maybe you’d like to try Black MIDI for yourself!