Synthesia was started around 2006 by Nicholas Piegdon, and was originally named "Piano Hero". Hosted as an open-source project on SourceForge, it was released under the MIT license.
The program was originally for Windows-only, but after a donation drive in early 2007, it was ported to Mac OS X.[3] An open-source fork for Linux called Linthesia also exists, which is used as a base of other forks to fix compilation issues on recent Linux systems.[4]
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 [his] video game and agree not to use such in the future".[5] Piegdon responded by hosting a contest for a new name for the project, resulting in the name, Synthesia, suggested by Daniel Lawrence.[6]
Continued development as closed-source project
After May 2012, Piegdon decided to stop releasing the source code, as he saw the potential commercial value of the program, but the last open-source 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 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, but 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 and MusicXML files, as well as linking with MIDI controllers. 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, 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.[7]
