Playing the virtual piano

The virtual piano is an instrument you play rather than a score you write. Open it with the Piano button on the scores page (or press K there), or search “piano” in the command palette (^K) from inside a score. It is free, and it needs no account.

Each keyboard on the page is a desk, with its own instrument. You start with one; you can have up to four.

While it loads

The first time you open the piano, it downloads its sounds, about 30 MB. The desks are covered until the instruments are ready, with a bar showing how far the download has got, and the keys don’t play until then. Your browser keeps the sounds, so later visits are quicker. Changing an instrument can cover the desks again for a moment.

If the sounds can’t be downloaded, the cover says so. Check your connection and press Try again.

Play from the computer keyboard

The rows of your computer keyboard are the piano: a row of letter keys plays the white notes, and the row above it plays the black notes, from the keys sitting in the gaps where a piano has them. There are two layouts, chosen with Keys:

• Letter sheets — the layout used by the letter-notation music sheets published online, so a sheet written for it plays here as written. I is middle C. The notes run from Q, an octave below, along the top letter row and on along the bottom row.
• DAW — the layout music software uses. The bottom row (Z, S, X …) plays one octave and the top row (Q, 2, W …) the octave above, so you can play with two hands.

Labels chooses what is printed on the keys: the key to press, note names, solfège, or nothing. In browsers that can read your keyboard layout, such as Chrome and Edge, the labels match your own keycaps, so a non-US keyboard shows its own characters; elsewhere they show a US keyboard.

Every note played from the computer keyboard sounds at the same volume.

Play on screen

Click, tap or drag across the keys; dragging plays a glissando. Where you touch a key sets how loud it plays — nearer the front is louder. On a small screen, where the keys are too short for that, every note plays at one volume and the desk says Fixed velocity.

Choose the range

The small keyboard at the bottom shows all 88 keys, with a window over the part that is on screen. Drag the window to move it, or drag either end to show more or fewer keys. Each desk remembers its own window: the range shown is for the desk you are playing.

Moving the window changes what you see and touch, not what the computer keyboard plays — I stays middle C wherever the window is.

Move a desk’s octave

To move what the computer keyboard plays, use the desk’s − and + octave buttons. This moves the desk’s window with it, so the keys you press are still the keys you see.

Add desks and link them

Press + Desk to add another keyboard, up to four. Each desk has its own instrument; pick it from the menu at the left of the desk.

The computer keyboard and a MIDI keyboard play one desk at a time: the one you last touched, marked by a bar down its edge. Press F1, F2, F3 or F4 to switch to desks one to four, counted from the bottom of the stack. On screen, you play whichever desk you touch.

Turn on Link on a desk and it sounds along with whichever desk you play. Set the linked desk an octave up or down and one key plays octaves; give it a different instrument and one key plays both, such as strings under a piano. Linking follows each desk’s own octave, so the notes it adds are the ones its own keys would play.

Press × on a desk to remove it. On a phone, Remove desk is in the desk’s mixer menu.

Mix the desks

Each desk has Vol, Pan and Rev (reverb) controls. The Master and Reverb controls at the bottom set the level and room for the whole instrument. On a phone, a desk’s controls are behind its mixer button, and the master controls behind the one at the bottom.

The sustain pedal

Hold Space for the sustain pedal, or use the pedal on a MIDI keyboard. The Pedal light shows when it is down. The pedal has no effect on a drum desk.

Drums

Choose a drum kit or other percussion instrument and the desk becomes a grid of pads. The pads are laid out the way the keys are on your computer keyboard: the home row first, then the row above, then the row below. Each pad shows its key. A drum sound plays once when you strike it, however long you hold the key.

Play from a MIDI keyboard

Press MIDI to connect a MIDI keyboard. It plays the desk you have selected, along with any linked desks, and how hard you play sets the volume. MIDI needs Chrome or Edge on Windows, macOS, Linux or Android; on Safari and on iPhone and iPad the MIDI button does not appear. See Playing notes in from a MIDI keyboard for connecting a device.

What is remembered

Your desks, their instruments, links, octaves, ranges and mixer settings, and your choice of keys and labels, are kept in this browser, so the piano is as you left it next time. Nothing about the piano is stored in your scores.