Have you ever been listening to a normal song and thought, "I really wish this normal song had 280 million notes and took up 1.1 terabytes of data and was literally unplayable on any computer?" Of course, you're only human. Black MIDI is the hypnotic madness you've been craving. Subscribe for new episodes every Thursday: http://bit.ly/19jUASK --------- Links: 中学生と小学生がネクロファンタジアの楽譜を真黒にしてみた: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKtrMQBNzZQ 30th Anniversary of MIDI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xz7r6KnTbI Roland MIDI system from the 80's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGrgOg0UDug Synthesia - Super Mario Bros Theme (Kyle Landry): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmu1YEb9X6w MIDITrail: Bad Apple!! 7.67 million notes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K11kU8vH-4 Piano From Above- Necrofantasia 4.5 million!: http://youtu.be/WclkCkFA0QU Touhou 08 stage 6 Lunatic Kaguya Perfect run?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR3vgodIzqY 東方妖々夢 Perfect Cherry Blossom - Phantasm (Part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1EdoR8mdY8 ~IMPOSSIBLE MIDI~ MIDITrail - Necrofantasia 1,700,000 Note Black Remix by Pianokid0051: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMRr2v-6fz4 [Black MIDI] Synthesia: "What does the Fox Say?" 1.1 Million Notes - The Fox - Ylvis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MOUsDox-zQ Bad apple 4.6 MILLION!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I906a5msynw Shanghai Teahouse~Chinese 3 Million!!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uHF1mqV2XY Synthesia Jingle Bells 100k Remix Black MIDI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPI2OLgOK2s ---------- Watch another episode of This Exists: Video games with pop stars are insane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNhoUFS3IP8&list;=UUnc8DxbEb6rzOCk3vea8wrw&feature;=c4-overview The Hobbit is more hip-hop and satanic than you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLPAshELOOo&list;=UUnc8DxbEb6rzOCk3vea8wrw ---------- Have you ever been listening to a normal song and thought, "I really wish this normal song had 280 million notes and took up 1.1 terabytes of data and was literally unplayable on any computer?" Of course, you're only human. MIDI is a shared language that lets electronic instruments communicate with computers, developed in the early 1980s to provide a technical standard in the burgeoning field of digital music. MIDI used to sound like this. Now MIDI is literally at the core of all pop music -- it's how keyboards and laptops and samplers make Katy Perry records. It's how your ring tone works. It's how you use a tiny plastic guitar to play the "Freebird" solo on Expert. It's basically digital music air. It is in everything. Black MIDI is a sequenced MIDI file so dense with notes, it literally just appears to be jet black. So instead of sounding like this - It sounds like this - Uploaded on February 6th, 2011, that piece of hypnotic mayhem from kakakakaito1998 is the first-ever Black MIDI. Although these files were being traded online as early as 2009 in Japan, kakakakaito1998 an original "blacker." Because naturally his subculture has bad-ass lingo. These songs are created -- or "blacked" as the bad-ass lingo goes -- by initially layering multiple MIDI files on top of each other, shortening the notes, and then presumably offering some sacrifice to the pagan Gods of yore because seriously this shit is insane and no one who does it seems eager to divulge the secret sauce. The visual side of black MIDI is as mesmerizing as the notes themselves -- of which that song has 7.67 million. There is an element of technical braggadocio and one ups-manship to not only the number of notes, but the presentation. The description of that video is simply "My graphics card has enough memory to run this without invisible notes :D." Why? Why? Why? Bullet hell. The most popular blackened MIDIs all originate with the Touhou project, a one-man enterprise that has seen the release of 21 bullet hell games in as many years. The quintessential Japanese shoot 'em ups, Touhou games feature an unending reign of enemy fire and big tunes. That, for example, is a 2003 Touhou game called Perfect Cherry Blossom. And this is "Necrofantasia," a popular song from Perfect Cherry Blossom. In fact, the 10 largest black MIDIs, according to the Impossible Music Wiki's leaderboard, are all Touhou project songs. But it's YouTube so of course someone did "What Does the Fox Say." But in the end, the best part of any of these songs is when the computer just gives up and barfs pure black. That was Jingle Bells. When Adrian Chen wrote about black MIDI for Gawker, he joked that we should expect Rihanna to be stealing it within three months. What do you think? Could this blow up all weirdly mainstream like sea punk? Like us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe for new episodes of This Exists every week. Happy blacking. Subscribe for new episodes every Thursday: http://bit.ly/19jUASK

• published: 16 Jan 2014
• views: 2552