I've been working on a hit of a draft now... here's what I have so far. This is a draft of the first portion of the article, talking about how I got into the impossible music genre and the steps on making one. The second portion will about why I chose to do one of the Pokémon Theme Song, and the third will be links to materials and helpful resources
It's not too long ago that I got involved in the impossible music genre (around the beginning of this year) which is also known by its fancy name, Black MIDIs. The name derives from the fact that MIDIs are a type of computer music file, storing information about the specific notes of the song, the tempo; what you would find in a song. The "black" part from its name indicates toward that if the notes from the MIDI were put onto a piece of manuscript paper, the psper would appear completely black, due to the sheer amount of notes in the MIDI.
I first found this type of music on YouTube, specifically the Hardest Piano Song in Synthesia by Super Enguana Pianist. It was so amazing, utilizing techniques such as playing all 88 keys at once to create a percussion like effect with the piano and artzy stuff, like the diamonds. From there, through recommended videos and such I found the official Black MIDI fanbase on Google Plus. That's when I started to get involved in this "blacking" (a term coined for making music impossible) scene. After half a year studying the unique styles of other blackers and getting to know the software a bit better, I set off to make my first Black MIDI, that of the Undertale theme Asgore. The Pokémon Theme Song Black MIDI that I made is my second Black MIDI.
A common misconception of Black MIDIs is that it is all about the quantity of notes versus the quality of the sound, which is definitely not true. There are many styles out there, ranging from spammy ones, loaded with a bunch of visual art composed of notes (such as the almost 200 million notes The Nuker 3) and quality ones around 100,000 notes, focusing on how well the audio sounds while preserving the qualities of a Black MIDI, such having drum beats composed out of playing multiple keys at once, glissandos across the keyboard, strums, art (specifically diamond shaped art), and crash points.
Another common misconception about Black MIDIs is that they sound fake-ish, which can be seen in different points of view. Black MIDIs, being impossible, will always have a fake ring to it, with the drum beats, strums too fast to be played by humans, and the piano screech sounds at crash points. However, the ring of the sound depends all on the soundfont. Soundfonts come in a variety of forms, the most popular being sf2 and sfz. I personally prefer the sfz format file, being easy to edit via a text editor (the filtering and note releases) and it supporting true stereo and dynamic filtering (which llmorphs the way the key sounds to sound realistic for different dynamics) wins me over. In fact, these soundfonts, when used with normal MIDIs that are playable by a human, can sound quite realistic. Additionally, although most Black MIDIs do feature exclusively piano due to its naturally expansive key ranges, there are Black MIDIs out there that involve different instruments or a combination of them from violins to flutes.
The process of making a Black MIDI took me a while to get used to. The main outline of the steps is as follows:
1. You need a program to make the Black MIDI. I'd suggest Domino, it being free to use and easy to use as well. The latest version is in Japanese, but the functions are about the same as the older English translation version, which you can understand after a but of usage on the English one. The main reason to get the latest version is because it fixes a lot of the tempo bugs and works with pedals. Otherwise, a good alternative for a MIDI making program is FL Studio, though beware that it is not free and does require you to purchase it to save your work as a project file, otherwise you have to save it as a MIDI and reimport it when you want to work on it, which is a bit annoying. It is also quite bulky for a program needing to be installed and such, while Domino is a portable program that is only a couple megabytes large. I haven't worked with FL, so I can't give you pointers on using that program unfortunately.
2. Make the base of the song. Most Black MIDIs are based on other songs, so you would need a transcription of the song, which will serve as the base of the Black MIDI as you add crazy elements to it later. Being perfect pitch and able to hear notes definitely does help in this step. It actually took me quite a while to learn the layout of Domino and work with it, even though it looks simple. Some pointers here, tempo changing can be done by switching to the conductor track. The other tracks are used for the notes. The numbers going across the top show you the measure numbers of the song, like any normal piece of sheet music. To add a note you simply click on the grid and you can drag it anywhere to get to the correct key and to the correct measure number and position. Just like the way you alter the size of an image in PowerPoint, you can change the duration of the note. A value of 480 is one quarter note, and the rest can be figured out based on that. And something important that I did not know when I made my first Black MIDI...the quantization setting is important. It helps to turn it on, so notes snap into place instead of them being in free form all over the measures. You can set it to different values, such as to a quarter note or 32nd note. What this means is that when you drag the note, you will now be altering the note's position by a specific number of quarter notes (or 32nds) when you drag the note which will lead to accuracy in the note's position. You can also have fun with the dynamics, drawing lines of crescendos and decrescendos using the tool on the bottom. There's also many other tricks amd gimmicks out there in the program, and I find experimentation the best way to learn how to use the program. When I first started making my first Black MIDI, there was no guide like this and I learned completely through experimentation, taking note of what happened when I clicked that or that. I find it real rewarding to have figured all of this out myself through exploration and curiosity, even though jt took months to do so. Don't give up because you don't understand how to use the program! I promise you'll learn how, if you persist and continue trying!
3. Once you have the basic backbone of the song completed (the melody and its accompanying parts), it's time to impossify the song. Don't be intimidated by the note count. 100,000 notes does not mean you have to click 100,000 times. In fact, mostly a Black MIDI is made with countermelodies copypasted over and over in different ways and forms. The same goes for the glissandos, crash points, drum beats, etc. To be honest, it is very hard to come up with the different ways that you can "remix" a song into a Black MIDI, especially on your first one, so I recommend downloading some MIDIs by experienced Black MIDI artists and taking some inspiration from their style. ScubDomino, BusiedGem, and EpreTroll are all artists with amazing styles and ideas.
4. Most people don't all after they've finished their Black MIDI. Since Black MIDIs partly contain visual elements, videos are made of them and shared on the media. There are multiple ways to get the audio of your MIDI. One of the most popular ways is to render the audio using the program, Keppy's MIDI Converter. Basically self explanatory, you load the MIDI, a soundfont, and then click the render button which then exports an audio file that you can later use for your video.
Videos consist of a playback of the MIDI on a virtual piano roll program usually, such as Synthesia or Piano From Above. Piano From Above is my suggestion as it is free and lags less, but Synthesia does have killer graphics for anyone that wants to buy it. And to record the playback as a video, there are many different screen recording softwares out there - I personally prefer OBS Studio, as it is free, contains no watermark, and is portable as well. Then of course, you make the video in a video editor.
