Synthesia shows incorrect notes

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synthesiauser123
Posts: 1

Post by synthesiauser123 »

Hello,
I'm very satisfied Synthesia user - the app is amazing and it helped me learn the piano a lot, I love it!

I'm having few issues with some piano pieces though - it seems the Synthesia app is not processing the MIDI files correctly and shows incorrect notes. What I mean by that is that let's say there is a C note to be played in the left hand/bass clef (as written in the original piece and in the MIDI file) - Synthesia will show this C note to be played in the right hand/treble clef. With this bug I cannot practice a piece with Synthesia because it completely messes up the notes and it becomes a different piece (note-wise). I tried to "convert left/right hand" feature in Synthesia but that's not the solution because the notes are still displayed incorrectly (bass-C as treble-C etc).

Is there some way to fix that? I opened the MIDI file in 2 different MIDI editors (MacOS GaragreBand and MuseScore) and they both show correct, original notes. But when imported to Synthesia I can see multiple bass-clef notes shown as treble-clef notes.

I would really appreciate the help, this bug is blocking me from learning some amazing piano pieces :(

Thank you!


I'm attaching 2 screenshots: the correct piano notes, and "synthesia" piano notes.
Original (the same representation in MacOS GarageBand and few other 3rd party apps):
original-Aphex_Twin__Avril_th.png
original-Aphex_Twin__Avril_th.png (76.9 KiB) Viewed 2715 times
Synthesia, incorrect representation of the notes:
synthesia-Aphex_Twin__Avril_th_-_Synthesia_10_8_5687.png
synthesia-Aphex_Twin__Avril_th_-_Synthesia_10_8_5687.png (150.47 KiB) Viewed 2715 times
Tested on:
OS:
Darwin MacBook-Pro.local 21.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 21.3.0: Wed Jan 5 21:37:58 PST 2022; root:xnu-8019.80.24~20/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Synthesia: 10.8.5687 for MacOS but also for iPad (most recent version).
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Sorry for the trouble. This is a known limitation of the sheet music engine in the app. It's also been the most frequent complaint we've received about it.

As we get closer to Synthesia 11's dramatic sheet music improvements, I'll be tackling some of the roadblocks between here and there. Today the sheet music engine doesn't know how to change the clef on a staff and it doesn't know anything about 8va or 8vb, so if we tried to force a part/hand with a very wide range to a particular staff right now, the best it would be able to do is add way too many ledger lines. Once it can do things like clef changes or 8va/8vb, we'll be able to get parts locked to a staff.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

I don't know how far you are planning to go with octave transpositions and clefs but, just to make a note of them, there are such things as:
  • 15ma/15mb
  • 8va/8vb and 15ma/15mb applied to clefs
  • movable clef, most often seen as the alto clef bracketing the third line of the staff
  • baritone clef, F ("bass") clef centered on the third line of the staff
That is not an exhaustive list of things that exist in this particular dark and musty corner of music notation. All of these are uncommon and, particularly with regard to piano music, probably not something that would be badly missed.
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Yeah, as usual my plan is to cross bridges as we come to them. Today's sheet music covers maybe 50-60% of situations in a vaguely usable way (and probably less than 20% of those are displayed in a way that could be charitably described as "correct"). If MusicXML support (insofar as the subset of it as I am able to implement for the initial Synthesia 11 release) is able to bump either of those numbers appreciably, that will already be a huge win.

My guess will be that the "correct" category should nearly catch up to the "supported at all" percentage, and that both will end up around 80-90% (with any luck). Beyond that, it'll be a case-by-case basis before adding any of the more exotic/ancient notations.

Anytime I peer into the dark and musty corners, there's always a bit of anxiety. You can visit just about any page from chapter 4 on the left of this list and see something Synthesia will never have, but I agree most of it won't be badly missed.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Yikes! This nicely summarizes why being able to handle everything possible in musical notation is pretty close to impossible:

SMuFL is a specification that provides a standard way of mapping the thousands of musical symbols required by conventional music notation...
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
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