Virtual piano
A real grand piano in your browser. Play with your fingers, your computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and see the name of every chord as you play it.
Piano sound: Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm, CC BY 3.0 (trimmed and re-encoded).
How to play
Tap or click the keys. On a phone or tablet you can press several keys at once, and sliding a finger along the keyboard plays a glissando. Where you touch a key matters a little: near the front edge the note is louder, up near the black keys it is softer, a bit like striking a real key harder or more gently.
On a computer, two rows of letters play two octaves. The bottom row plays the white keys of the lower octave, with the keys just above it for the black notes; the top row and the number keys do the same one octave higher. The small captions on the keys show exactly which letter plays which note; switch them off with the Keys button. The arrow keys move the whole keyboard an octave left or right, and Space switches the sustain pedal on and off.
| Computer keys | What they play |
|---|---|
| ZSXDCVGBHNJM | Lower octave: C to B, black keys on the home row |
| Q2W3ER5T6Y7U | Upper octave: C to B, black keys on the number row |
| ←→ | Move the keyboard one octave down / up |
| Space | Sustain pedal on / off |
| Shift+key | A louder note (accent) |
The label switch writes the note names on the keys: letters, solfège (Do, Re, Mi…) or nothing at all once you know your way around. Every C carries its octave number, so you can always find middle C (C4), the C closest to the middle of a real 88-key piano.
Your first piano chords
New to the piano? Start with three chords: C major, F major and G major. Play each with the right-hand fingers 1, 3 and 5 (thumb, middle, little finger), keeping one white key between the fingers. Then add A minor: with these four chords you can already accompany a great many tunes. Each card opens the chord’s page with its inversions, fingering and sound.
Find chords as you play
Hold down two or more keys and the display names the chord: major, minor, sevenths, suspended, diminished, augmented, sixths, ninths and more. Inversions are recognised too: play E, G and C with E at the bottom and you see C/E, the first inversion of C major. Tap the chord name to open its page with every inversion, the fingering and the sound.
This helps when you work out a chord by ear, when you stumble on a lovely sound and want to know what it is, and when you simply want to check that your hand is on the chord you meant to play. When you let go, the last chord stays on the display so you can still tap it.
Connect a MIDI keyboard
Plug a USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard into your computer and press Connect MIDI keyboard. Your browser asks once for permission; after that the keys light up as you play, and how hard you strike a key sets how loud the note sounds. A sustain pedal plugged into your keyboard works as well.
Web MIDI works in Chrome, Edge and Opera on computers and on Android. Safari and the browsers on iPhone and iPad do not support it yet. We only ask for MIDI access when you press the button, and nothing you play ever leaves your device.
Record and save as MIDI
Press Record, play, then press Stop. Play listens back to your take, and the .mid button saves it as a standard MIDI file that opens in any music program or notation editor, where you can change the sound, fix wrong notes or print the music. The recording stays in your browser until you leave the page; we never upload it.
About the piano sound
The sound is the Salamander Grand Piano: a concert grand recorded note by note at two loudness levels by Alexander Holm and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. We trimmed the samples and re-encoded them so the whole piano loads in a few seconds. Until they arrive, a light synthesised piano plays instead, so your first note is never silent. Up to 32 notes can ring at once; past that, the oldest note fades out.
Questions
Is the virtual piano free?
Yes. There is no sign-up, no app to install and no time limit.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, with several fingers at once. Turn the phone sideways to see two and a half octaves instead of one and a half, and use the arrows to move up and down the keyboard.
Why can’t I hear anything?
Check that your phone is not on silent, that the volume is up, and tap a key once: browsers only allow sound after you touch the page. On iPhone, the ring/silent switch can mute web audio.
Can I play with a sustain pedal?
Yes. Use the Sustain button or the Space bar, or connect a MIDI keyboard with a pedal plugged in.
Does the piano have all 88 keys?
Yes. The screen shows four octaves on a computer and fewer on a phone; the arrows move the view across the whole range, from the lowest A to the highest C.