''Synthesia'' is a piano keyboard trainer for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

IOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and Android which allows users to play a

MIDI keyboard A MIDI keyboard or controller keyboard is typically a piano-style electronic musical keyboard, often with other buttons, wheels and sliders, used for sending MIDI signals or commands over a USB or MIDI 5-pin cable to other musical devi ...

or use a

computer keyboard A computer keyboard is a peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. Replacing early punched cards and paper tape technology ...

in time to a

MIDI file MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

by following on-screen directions, much in the style of '' Keyboard Mania'' or ''

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of music rhythm game video games first released in November 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead, bass guitar, and rhythm guitar across numerous songs. Player ...

''. Additionally, Synthesia can be paired with

s that have illuminated keys, or with virtual

player piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...

on screen, which some people believe makes learning piano easier for beginners. It was originally named ''Piano Hero'', due to the similarity of gameplay with ''

''; this was until

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

(the owners of the rights to ''Guitar Hero'') sent a

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...

to the program's creator, Nicholas Piegdon.

History

Synthesia was started around 2006 by Nicholas Piegdon, and was originally named "Piano Hero". Hosted as an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project on

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, it was released under the

MIT license The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

. The program was originally for

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-only, but after a donation drive in early 2007, it was ported to

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. An open source fork for

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called Linthesia also exists, which is used as a base of other forks to fix compilation issues on recent Linux systems.

Cease and desist letter

In a letter dated 26 March 2007, Activision requested that Piegdon ''"immediately cease any and all use of the "Piano Hero" name in connection with the distribution and promotion of isvideo game and agree not to use such in the future"''. Piegdon responded by hosting a contest for a new name for the project, resulting in the name, Synthesia, suggested by Daniel Lawrence.

Continued development as closed-source project

After May 2012, Piegdon decided to stop releasing the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

, as he saw the potential commercial value of the program. However the last

release version 0.6.1b is still available for download. In the continued commercial version the basic functionality was still freeware. A "Learning Pack" key could be purchased to unlock the freemium additional features, such as a

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...

display mode. In December 2014, with Version 10 of Synthesia, the ability to use the program without purchasing it was removed, with the exception of several playable included demo MIDIs. However, an older version can still be downloaded, thus still being able to use the program for free.

Features

Synthesia has support for playing custom

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

and

MusicXML MusicXML is an XML-based file format for representing Western musical notation. The format iopen fully documented, and can be freely used under the W3C Community Final Specification Agreement. History MusicXML was invented by Michael Good and ini ...

files, as well as linking with

MIDI controller A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mos ...

s. Synthesia will rate the player's performance afterwards, and give a score which can be submitted to an online scoreboard. Synthesia also has a paid "Learning Pack" that allows users to view music in

musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...

, as well as multiple practice features, such as "Melody Practice" which pauses the piece whenever the user misses a note, and only continues when the right note is played.

References

External links