Take an already complex song, now increase the level of complexity by an order of 50. What do you have? Well, besides a great way to wake up on a Friday morning, you have Black MIDI!
It’s a form of music that counts the number of notes in a song in millions, when a typical pop song counts notes in the thousands, and it’s a trip. The music was recently detailed by Rhizome, an organization that is dedicated to the creation, presentation, and critique of tech-based artistic practices.
Black MIDI has been described by Gawker‘s Adrian Chen as evoking “a robotic squid with thousands of high-powered servo arms pounding a 360-degree piano inside the center of the sun,” seems about right.
The track above is “Bad Apple,” this version is from creator TheSuperMarioBros2. You’ll see 4.6 million notes flow before your eyes, see if you can keep count.
This isn’t for everyone, but when I heard it, I had to share it with you all. For some reason it reminds me of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” from my grade school music appreciation classes. Well, Apocalyptica’s version anyway…
