How I use synthesia

Jul 7

by Scott

There is a trending piano-learning tool called Synthesia (based on the word synesthesia, which means the activation of a secondary sense when a first sense is stimulated. In music, this means seeing a particular color when a certain chord or note is heard), which has seen immense popularity on YouTube in the last 10 years. In a synthesia video, a piano keyboard is displayed at the bottom of the screen, while colored bars representing notes continuously scroll downward toward the keyboard. Piano learners match their hands and fingers to the corresponding notes as they scroll, and can even treat it as a game, where speed and accuracy provide points. Some creators use purely computer-based MIDI as their audio, while others show their hands playing the digital keyboard.

Although I don’t use synthesia as a learning tool, I do find it fascinating to see music represented visually in this manner, so I have been uploading many of our arrangements on our other YouTube channel, just for this type of video. Most creators of synthesia use a MIDI keyboard to record directly onto a computer, so that their recording has stored data for every note and rhythm. Since we made all of our recordings on a grand piano, I use our original audio recordings and line them up to a MIDI version (exported from my notation program) played through the synthesia app. It’s a complicated process, but I have found a reliable method and I have been enjoying making the videos!

A few fascinating synthesia videos from our collection to watch are:

Inazuma (6-hand piano with HayashiPiano, each of our parts is a different color)

Jaws Theme (the synthesia format really highlights the scariness of the music!)

Rush E (8-hands with Fanchen and Litening)