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Virtual piano
A piano you can play with a mouse, a touchscreen or your computer keyboard — two octaves on a larger screen, one on a phone. Hold several keys for a chord, move up and down an octave at a time, and turn on sustain to let notes ring.
Virtual piano
Press a key to play. Hold several for a chord.
Computer keyboard: A–' play the white keys, W E T Y U O P the black keys, Z/X change octave.Use the octave buttons to reach higher and lower notes.
Playing from the computer keyboard
The layout is the one most music software uses, so if you have played notes from a laptop before it will already be familiar. The middle row of letters plays the white keys, starting from C; the row above plays the black keys, sitting in the gaps where a piano’s black keys are.
| Row | Keys | Plays |
|---|---|---|
| Middle row | A S D F G H J K L ; ' | C D E F G A B C D E F |
| Top row | W E T Y U O P | C♯ D♯ F♯ G♯ A♯ C♯ D♯ |
| Bottom row | Z X | Octave down, octave up |
Keys are matched by position, not by letter, so the shape is the same on AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards; the piano shows your own keyboard’s letters where the browser reports them. Shortcuts with Cmd, Ctrl or Alt are left alone, and nothing plays while you are typing in the search box.
Finding your way around
Every C is labelled with its octave number. Middle C is C4, the note the piano starts on. The black keys come in groups of two and three, and C is always the white key just to the left of a group of two — which is how pianists find it without looking at labels.
From one key to the next, black or white, is a semitone. Twelve semitones make an octave, and the note an octave up has the same name at double the frequency. The semitones and tones lesson explains why E to F and B to C have no black key between them.
Using it without a mouse
Tab moves to the keyboard, the arrow keys move between piano keys, and Enter or Space plays the one in focus for as long as you hold it. Each key is announced by its note name and octave. The octave and sustain buttons are ordinary buttons with their shortcuts in their names.
The sound is synthesised in your browser rather than recorded, so there is nothing to download and it works offline once the page has loaded. Nothing plays until you press a key.