Synthesia Talk

I gather that with Synthesia, you need to find a midi song that has the content/chords/(notes) that you want to play.
Are there any songs or midi files or lessons that simply send a stream or sequence of jazz chord variations? probably one at a time in sequence?
Thanks,
-Craig

If you already know the jazz chords you're looking for, the Free Play section of Synthesia (available right off the title screen) could help you quiz yourself on them. It has a feature that shows the name of the chord you're currently playing.

Otherwise, something like an automated chord generator practice module would be a neat side project. I've wanted to get to something like that for a while.

Its easy to make your own.

Use free musescore and set your keyboard as midi input.

Then just play the chords, one chord per bar works fine.

Nicholas wrote:If you already know the jazz chords you're looking for, the Free Play section of Synthesia (available right off the title screen) could help you quiz yourself on them. It has a feature that shows the name of the chord you're currently playing.

Wondering why this chord display feature was added only to Free Play section, but not in midi file playback as well, as option to show or not. Either mixing all notes (without midi channel 10) or just from selected midi channels.

It would be a mess, most of the time. Maybe if it could be set to only include notes from a particular (say, left) hand. The melody line would throw the chord names off completely. You'd get a bunch of "add 13" and "add 9" type stuff each time a note changed in the right hand.

With the upcoming MusicXML work, there is some opportunity for having the chords encoded explicitly. That might be an interesting avenue to start showing more chord information.

Jumping on this topic: what's the best source you know to learn more about Jazz theory? I've always struggled with it and would appreciate any course or lesson with a lay approach