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How to make Black MIDIs ​

The steps below only cover about exporting a newly created composition you want to create to a MIDI file. This does not talk about in-depth musical composition and theoretical analysis and application of the genre. For that, you may head here.

Download a MIDI editor ​

Firstly, find a space within your computer (hard drive) where you have at least a gigabyte to spare. But if you can't, then maybe at least spare 10 megabytes to be able to use a MIDI editor.

Domino (Windows, freeware, English (v1.43); Japanese (v1.44) x86 (stable); Japanese (v1.45), x64 (beta))

Currently the fastest and lightweight freeware MIDI editor known to man. Its user interface looks like the classic Windows Forms appearance. It features custom keybindings, nifty method of MIDI device integrations, various piano roll tools and key scaling highlights, Onion Skin, etc. However, it refuses to load MIDIs that have multi-tracked channels.[1] It was originally in Japanese with unofficial translations distributed from various sources of the web.

REAPER (Windows; macOS; GNU/Linux, freemium, proprietary)

A complete DAW available with an evaluation license. Simply, imagine Domino, but it actually produces audio by itself, can run VSTs, and has a dark theme that's pleasing to the eyes.[2] Its advantage point is its music notation editing layout.

FL Studio (Windows; macOS, trial, proprietary)

Another complete DAW available with trial usage, which can also be used as a MIDI editor.[3][4] Its advantage point is it has the best UX among these three. Its piano roll performance is also slightly more optimized than REAPER (with the older version at least).

FL Studio Mobile (Android, iOS, proprietary)

It's FL Studio, but mobile, so it's implied there's some handicap and limits to features such as the notorious tempo changes.

Install the MIDI editor ​

To install the program you have picked, you either directly run the .exe file directly, or run the installer for it. For Android, Google Play Store and App Store will give provision on getting it to work on your devices.

The next section contains links to detailed installation instructions for some MIDI editors.

Start blacking ​

You are almost done with setting things up and pretty much ready to go blacking. To cap it off, here are some boosters to help you have a nice experience when blacking MIDIs:

Becoming the very best blacker in the world ​

[5] There is no such thing as the best way to make a Black MIDI (at least as what agreed upon). There are certain ways to black which a particular sum of population find acceptable/satisfactory or 'of quality', that are very loosely defined in the community. One notorious concept of blacking a MIDI known as Korean style is heavily cited as 'quality' due to its author's intricate attention to details when making it. What makes a Black MIDI Korean style is already debatable, making every other Black MIDIs very hard to categorize, and even if it is done so, it almost always meets a vague criteria. The community would often say terminologies like phrases, but what is a phrase?

There are a lot of things to cover and question about crafting a Black MIDI, and making discussions about it often ends up with no concrete conclusions, but filled with valid learnings which helps a lot in improving blacking skills. With that said, here are some articles about making Black MIDIs:

Footnotes ​

  1. You may use fof-bad to split tracks containing notes from multiple channels. ★

  2. REAPER is significantly less performant than Domino, especially as more layers of notes are on the screen. ★

  3. FL Studio is significantly less performant than Domino, especially as its version increases. ★

  4. FL Studio cannot have multiple time signature markers on its piano roll prior version 20. ★

  5. This section should be improved. ★