Online Piano — Play a Virtual Piano Keyboard Free (88, 61 & 49 Keys)

A piano keyboard in three sizes

The chips above the keys choose how much keyboard you get. 88 keys is a full piano, A0 to C8: 52 white keys and 36 black. 61 keys, C2 to C7, is the usual home keyboard and the size this page opens on. 49 keys, C2 to C6, is a small keyboard with two octaves either side of middle C. All three share the same middle: a smaller board is a full piano with keys taken off both ends, never a different instrument.

A keyboard is wider than a phone at any size a finger can hit, so on a small screen it opens on middle C and the strip under the keys is the whole instrument in miniature. Drag along it, or tap anywhere on it, to move to another part of the keyboard; the lit window shows which keys are on screen. On a wide screen the 49 and 61-key boards fit whole and the strip only appears for the 88.

Finding your way around the keys

The pattern repeats every twelve keys: seven white, five black, and the black keys come in a group of two and then a group of three. That grouping is the map. The white key just left of any group of two black keys is a C, and the one just left of a group of three is an F; every other note is counted from those. Middle C — labelled C4 — is the C nearest the middle of a full piano, and it is where the right hand starts in almost every beginner piece.

The white keys are the notes of C major, C D E F G A B, and each black key is the sharp of the white key on its left. There is no black key between E and F or between B and C, because those pairs are already only a half step apart. The Labels menu prints the names on the keys as letters, as do re mi, as scale numbers, or not at all.

Playing it

On a touch screen, press a key and it sounds for as long as your finger stays down — a piano key holds its damper off the string until you let go. Every finger is its own key, so chords and two hands work as they do on the real thing, and sliding a finger along the keys plays a glissando, each key sounding as you cross it.

On a computer keyboard, the two rows of letters are laid out like two octaves of piano. Z X C V B N M are the white keys from middle C to B, and S D G H J, in the row above, are the black keys that sit between them. Q W E R T Y U I O P continue from the next C, with their black keys on 2 3 5 6 7 9 0. That is two and a half octaves under your hands, middle C to E6. The arrow keys move the whole map an octave lower or higher, which is how the left hand reaches the bass, and the small keycaps printed on the keys always show where the letters currently are. Switch them off with Keyboard letters under the instrument.

The sustain pedal is the button under the keys, or the space bar. While it is down every damper on the piano is lifted, so notes go on ringing after you let them go and run into each other; when it comes up they all stop together. Tap the button to hold the pedal and tap again to release it, or hold Space for as long as you want it down. It does nothing for the top 19 keys, which have no dampers on a real piano either and ring until they fade.

Songs, with letter notes

Press Play a song under the keyboard and pick one. All 36 public-domain songs in the library fit every size of keyboard here, because they are written from middle C upward, on the white keys wherever the tune allows. Each one also has a page of its own with the letter notes written out — the letters of the keys in order, phrase by phrase, to read, copy or print — and the Christmas songs are collected together.

Every song has three ways in. Play plays it and lights each key as it sounds. Practice lights the next key and waits for you to press it, for as long as you need. Play along drops a marker onto each key in time with the music, the way a piano game does, and tells you at the end how close you were; switch on wait for me and the song stops at every note until you find it.

The songs are the right hand — the melody on its own, which is the easy version and the place to start. 8 of them also have a left hand: Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Deck the Halls, O Come, All Ye Faithful, The First Noel, Up on the Housetop, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas and Auld Lang Syne. Choose Both hands under the song and three simple chords play underneath the tune, lit in blue an octave below middle C. In Practice and Play along you play the melody and the left hand is played for you as you go, so one hand can be learned at a time. The left hand is an arrangement made by rule from the melody — three chords, one hand position — and it is offered only for the tunes where a published harmonisation agrees with it; the song pages say how closely.

What the sound is made of

Nothing here is a recording, and nothing is downloaded. A piano note is built the first time you play it, from what a struck piano string does. The wire is thick and stiff, so its overtones are not exact multiples of the note: each one runs a little sharper than the last, which is why a piano does not sound like an organ playing the same pitch. Every overtone fades at its own rate, the high ones in a fraction of a second and the lowest over many seconds, so the tone darkens as it dies away. And the note decays in two stages — a quick drop in the first second, then a long quiet afterglow — which comes from the two or three strings of each note being a hair out of tune with each other.

All of that is modelled, along with the dull knock of the hammer and the dip in the overtones that comes from where the hammer hits the string. What is not measured is the exact balance between the parts, because there is no single correct piano to measure: it is a model of the physics rather than a copy of one instrument, and next to a recorded concert grand it will sound plainer. In return the first note plays at once, with no download, and every key sounds at exactly its pitch.

More instruments you can play here

The online accordion has the same keyboard for the right hand and a bass of ready-made chords for the left. The online marimba and xylophone lay their bars out exactly as a piano lays out its keys, and the online kalimba — the thumb piano — plays the same songs on steel tines.

Frequently asked questions

How do I play the piano with my computer keyboard?

The bottom row of letters, Z X C V B N M, is the white keys from middle C up to B, and S D G H J in the row above are the black keys between them — laid out the way the keys themselves are, with no letter between C and V because there is no black key between E and F. The top row, Q to P, is the next octave up, with its black keys on the number row. Together they reach from middle C to E6. The left and right arrow keys move both rows an octave down or up, and holding Space holds the sustain pedal.

What does the sustain pedal do?

Every key on a piano has a felt damper that drops onto its strings the moment you let the key go, which is why a note stops when your finger lifts. The sustain pedal raises all the dampers at once, so every note you play keeps ringing after you let go of it, and notes run into each other. Let the pedal up and they all stop together. Tap the pedal button to hold it down, tap again to release it, or hold Space on a keyboard.

Why do the highest notes keep ringing when I let go?

Because those keys have no dampers, here or on a real piano. The strings at the top are so short that they fall silent on their own within a second or so, and felt resting on them would only dull the tone, so piano makers leave the dampers off roughly the top octave and a half — the last 19 keys on the 88-key board here. The pedal makes no difference up there for the same reason.

Can I play chords, or with both hands?

Yes. Every finger on the screen is its own key, so three fingers down is a chord and two hands is two hands, and from a computer keyboard you can hold as many letters as your keyboard will report at once. 8 of the songs here also come with a simple left hand — Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Deck the Halls, O Come, All Ye Faithful, The First Noel, Up on the Housetop, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas and Auld Lang Syne — which you switch on with Both hands under the song.

Do I need 88 keys to learn piano?

Not to start. Nearly all beginner music, and every song on this page, sits inside the two octaves around middle C, which a 49-key board has with room to spare. A 61-key board covers almost everything written for two hands that is not concert repertoire. The full 88 keys matter once you play classical pieces that use the bottom octave or the very top — and they matter for touch, since an acoustic piano or a weighted digital one always has all of them.

What are the letters and do-re-mi on the keys?

They are two names for the same notes. The letters C D E F G A B are how notes are named in English, German and Dutch-speaking countries; do re mi fa sol la si are the names used in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese teaching, where do is always C. Pick either from the Labels menu, or None once you no longer need them. Every C also carries its octave number: C4 is middle C.

Is this a recording of a real piano?

No. Nothing is downloaded: each note is calculated the first time you play it, from what a piano string does when a felt hammer hits it — dozens of overtones that run slightly sharp of a pure harmonic series because the wire is stiff, each fading at its own rate, with the quick first decay and the long quiet afterglow a real piano note has. It is a model of the physics rather than a copy of one particular instrument, so it will not be mistaken for a concert grand, and the balance of its tone is modelled, not measured.

Piano songs, written out

Each of these opens the piano with the song loaded, and prints it as easy letter notes for the right hand, with do-re-mi under every note, with a check of which sizes and keys play it.

All 36 piano songs → · Christmas songs for piano →