Time & date
Online piano
Press keys on your computer keyboard, click or tap the piano, or plug in a MIDI keyboard — the grand piano sound loads on your first note.
A S D F G H J K L ; ' play white keys · W E T Y U O P ] play black keys · Z / X change octave · hold Space to sustain
Record
Press Record and play. Nothing leaves your browser.
Need a steady beat? Open the metronome in another tab.
MIDI keyboard
Plug in a USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard, then press Connect. Velocity and the sustain pedal (CC 64) are supported.
Play from letters
Traditional French melody (18th century), with simple left-hand chords.
How the letter notation works
- Each character is a key:
1–0,q–p,a–landz–mare the 36 white keys from C2 to C7, sotis middle C. An upper-case letter or a shifted digit (!@$%^*() is the black key just above. [tuo]is a chord played together;[t u o], with spaces inside, rolls it quickly.- Letters written together (
tyu) are one step apart. Each space adds a step, each|adds two, and a line break counts as a space. Any other character is skipped.
Piano sound: samples from the Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm (Yamaha C5), licensed under CC BY 3.0; trimmed, shortened and compressed for the web by ZumaTools (details).
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there a delay between pressing a key and hearing it?
Part of the delay comes from your device's audio output, which the tool shows as “Output latency” once the sound has started. Bluetooth headphones and speakers add the most — typically well over 100 ms — so use wired headphones or the built-in speakers when you play. Closing other tabs and apps that play audio helps, and a touch screen adds a little input delay of its own. A USB MIDI keyboard with wired headphones is the most responsive setup. Loading is not a factor after the first note: the samples stay in memory while the page is open.
Which computer keys play which notes?
In the default two-row layout the home row plays white keys — A is C, S is D, D is E and so on up to the apostrophe — and the row above plays the black keys: W is C♯, E is D♯, T is F♯, Y is G♯, U is A♯, then O, P and ] in the next octave. That covers an octave and a half; Z and X shift it by an octave. The layout follows key positions rather than letters, so on QWERTZ and AZERTY keyboards the same places play the same notes, while the labels on the keys show US letters. The Letter sheets layout instead maps 1–0, Q–P, A–L and Z–M to 36 white keys from C2, with Shift for the black keys, to match letter-notation piano sheets.
What do the letters in piano sheets mean?
Many online piano sheets write each note as the computer key that plays it in a 61-key letter layout: 1 is C2, t is middle C (C4), p is A4 and m is C7, and an upper-case letter or shifted digit is the black key just above. Letters inside square brackets, like [tuo], are played together as a chord. Timing is only approximate in these sheets; this tool plays letters written together one step apart, adds a step for every space, two for every “|” and treats a line break as a space. The example songs are public-domain melodies transcribed for this tool.
Can I use a MIDI keyboard?
Yes, in browsers that support Web MIDI: Chrome, Edge and Opera on computers and Android, and Firefox on computers, which asks you to approve MIDI access first. Safari and every browser on iPhone and iPad do not support Web MIDI. Connect the keyboard by USB or Bluetooth, press Connect MIDI keyboard and allow access. Note velocity and the sustain pedal (controller 64) are used, and keyboards plugged in later are picked up automatically.
How do I record and save what I play?
Press Record, play, and press Stop. The recording keeps every note from the computer keyboard, mouse, touch screen and MIDI keyboard, with its velocity and the sustain pedal, and starts at your first note. WAV renders it with the same piano sound to a 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo audio file. MIDI saves a standard MIDI file at 120 BPM that you can open in MuseScore, GarageBand, Logic, FL Studio or any other DAW. Recordings stop automatically after 15 minutes and are not kept after you leave the page, so download them first.
Where does the piano sound come from?
It uses recordings of a real Yamaha C5 grand piano from the Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm, released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Thirty notes, one every three semitones from A0 to C8, are loaded when you first play (about 1.6 MB), and the notes in between are made by playing the nearest recording slightly faster or slower. Softer notes are also made a little darker, as on a real piano. If the samples cannot load, a simpler synthesised piano plays instead.
About this tool
This online piano turns the browser into a playable keyboard with a real sampled grand piano. Choose a 61-key keyboard (C2 to C7) or the full 88 keys (A0 to C8), and play it with the computer keyboard, the mouse, a touch screen — with several fingers at once — or a USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard. On a phone the keyboard scrolls sideways and keeps the keys large enough to hit, and the labels can show the note names, the computer key for each note, or nothing at all.
Two computer-keyboard layouts are available. The two-row layout places the white keys on A S D F G H J K L and the black keys on the row above, like the keys of a piano, with Z and X to move up and down by octaves. The letter-sheet layout matches the notation used by many online piano sheets, where t is middle C and Shift plays the black keys. Space works as the sustain pedal in both, and the Sustain button can hold it down for you.
The Play from letters panel reads that letter notation: paste a sheet, or start from one of the included public-domain melodies — Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Ode to Joy, the opening of Für Elise, Happy Birthday to You and Frère Jacques. Play performs it at the tempo you set with the keys lighting up, and Step through shows the next key or chord in amber and waits for you to play it, which makes it a simple way to learn a tune by ear and by sight.
Everything runs in your browser. The piano samples are downloaded from this site when you first play and the sound is made with the Web Audio API; nothing you play is uploaded. Recordings capture every note with its velocity and the sustain pedal, and can be played back or downloaded as a WAV file, rendered faster than real time, or as a standard MIDI file. For practice with a steady pulse, keep the metronome open in another tab.