Live MIDI Art

I remember seeing some incredible MIDI Art on YouTube years ago and thinking to myself - Man it would be SO AWESOME to try and create something like that live - record the notes from a MIDI keyboard in one take as opposed to drawing them one by one with a mouse. However, I was so busy with other things at the time (and it seemed like such a daunting undertaking) that I never really attempted it. That is, until last month.

I was feeling hyped for the upcoming Metroid game and I made a video where I draw Metroid MIDI art with my keyboard - it took me a few days of experimentation and practice to get it down but it was a lot of fun. My intention was to do it once and then get back to my regular performance videos - but the response was really great, so I decided to make a Zelda themed one as well.

What happened next completely caught me by surprise - the Zelda video did incredibly well (especially on TikTok) amassing hundreds of thousands of views within a few hours. I received TONS of requests for more MIDI art. So since then, I’ve published a bunch of these videos (with many more on the way), and the last couple have surpassed one million views on TikTok. I mean… Wow. I still can’t believe it!

I would like to point out that I’m not the first to do live MIDI art - Jacob Collier did a couple of videos where he draws text on his screen this way, and he definitely inspired and motivated me to finally give that idea I had years ago a shot. There may have been others who attempted it before as well that I’m unaware of. Regardless, I’m having a BLAST making these, I’m SUPER grateful for the amazing support and response, and I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon.

Watch a YouTube playlist of my live MIDI art here: