abradbur – Looking Outwards – 11

For this Looking Outwards I wanted to find some musical pieces that couldn’t be reproduced with physical instruments and would instead need to be played entirely electronically. I started out looking for some artists who had perhaps made a specialized synthesizer when I came across an artist that, although utilizing a program that they hadn’t created themselves, they instead created a new genre of music. “Black Midi” is a music genre defined in that if you were to write the sheet music of a song in that genre, you would end up with a black piece of paper because so many notes are played in the song. It’s not just the magnitude of the music that makes Black Midi so interesting, but also the visual aspect of it. Rendering the notes in such a way that in video the music is mesmerizing to look at. “Pi, The Song With 3.1415 Million Notes” by TheSuperMarioBros2 on Youtube, is a particularly mesmerizing piece. Uploaded on March 14, 2015, the visuals include the symbol of Pi itself, morse code, and swirling visuals composed of the notes on Synthesia. It’s truly impressive, and while the music may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I find it enjoyable. It’s like video game music.

(The song duration is also 3:14)