Free Play has some major improvements in Synthesia 10.9:
- Choose a key signature to get more chord information.
- More comprehensive recording.
- Multiple input instruments.
- Control more settings (like style volume) from the new gear menu.
- See much more in the Free Play Update dev blog.
Labels have also been improved:
- More control over the look/positioning of labels.
- New "next note" marker animation.
- Major label performance improvement (for better battery life and fewer stutters).
- See much more in the Labels Update dev blog.
As usual, there's lots of additional polish, fixes, and optimization work that has also made it into Synthesia 10.9. Enjoy!
MusicXML files can now be opened by Synthesia!
For now, none of the additional musical information (vs. a MIDI file) is being used when drawing sheet music. But MusicXML files should load, play, and sound correct. We'll be using the newly available musical information to improve the sheet music over the next several updates. If you spot something that doesn't sound correct, please let us know!
What's new in Synthesia 10.8:
- MusicXML file loading.
- Reworked full-screen sheet music navigation. (Watch the video.)
- The song list should load about 100x faster.
- Apple silicon support on macOS.
- Many other fixes and improvements.
Synthesia has been around since before apps were called apps. Over the years, my favorite thing has been learning the different ways it has impacted the lives of its users.
Recently YouTube collected and showcased a number of stories about videos that have done the same for users of their platform. One of those stories was about a Japanese seaweed farmer that used videos of songs played in Synthesia to achieve his dreams of becoming a pianist.
It's a great story that you can watch, here. (It's in Japanese, so you may need to click the CC button at the lower-right to turn on subtitles.)
Hearing from so many of you over the years has brought no end to the gratification this project has given me. Thank you for going on this journey with me and thank you for using Synthesia!
- Nicholas