The Internet: it’s still doing crazy things with MIDI.

Just in the last few days, we’ve seen MIDI musical inventions go freshly viral. And keep reading even if you’ve seen some of that, as we’ve got a little bonus for you to get in on the fun.

It started with producer Aleksander Vinter, aka Savant – whose work extends to popular game scores. He created patterns like this one that double both as recognizable picture (a bird, reminiscent of vintage text art), and as compelling musical figuration. Behold:

See / hear more:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/SavantOfficial/about/?ref=page_internal
https://www.youtube.com/user/winterpiss/featured

That led YouTube star Andrew Huang to go full unicorn:

And naturally, the Internet started freaking out:

The Internet Is Freaking Out Over This Song Made from a Unicorn Drawing [Creators Project]

Alexander Huang also gave us a clever tutorial, of course, so you can try this yourself:

What makes this particularly unique is really that the musical patterns generated are all tonal – doodling images that double as contrapuntal fantasy. But maybe that leaves you wanting something more, well, primal.

Erson Rybod writes CDM to share his own tool for just that. (He even gives us a quick bio, “i have no face, i also like to play with hacks.” Our kinda person/alien/thing/whatever, Erson is.

Erson urges us to “see no evil” (really, that’s in the email) but to download a free Mac-compatible app for making your own black MIDI:

i uploaded my diy app i made to turn any picture into midi file (black midi)
you can download it here i also puted a midi exemple with aliens 🙂

And wow – it sounds great with aliens!

Have at it:
â–’â–“â–“_ ERSON RYBOD MIDI engine.dmg

http://ersonrybod.tumblr.com/

More Erson:
https://soundcloud.com/ersonrybod/bromancefriends-radio-mix-220714

Hmm, CDM black MIDI compilation? I’d do it. I have to think what the most obscure format we could release on — compact cassette is so bourgeois.

Enjoy! And… keep the MIDI hacks coming.