Online Piano (Virtual Piano Keyboard)

About the Online Piano (Virtual Piano Keyboard)

Play a real grand piano in your browser: all 88 keys, A0 to C8, with the mouse, several fingers on a touch screen, the computer keyboard (the letters are printed on the keys) or a MIDI keyboard. The sound is the Salamander Grand Piano, a Yamaha C5 recorded note by note, in two loudness layers — a soft touch sounds softer and darker, as on a real piano, instead of just quieter.

For learners the keys can show letter names (C D E), solfège (Do Re Mi) or Indian sargam (Sa Re Ga, from any Sa), and the page marks every key of a chord or scale, spells its notes correctly and names the chord you are holding. Record what you play, play it back, and download it as a WAV audio file or a MIDI file.

Common uses

• Picking out a melody by ear, or trying a tune before you play it on a real instrument.
• Learning where the notes, chords and scales are, with letter names, solfège or sargam on the keys.
• Practising sargam and alankars from your own Sa when no harmonium or keyboard is at hand.
• Checking which chord a set of notes makes, and hearing its inversions.
• Recording a quick idea and taking it into a music program as a MIDI file, or sharing it as audio.

The computer keyboard

The two letter rows are laid out like a piano: the bottom row of each pair is the white keys and the row above it the black keys.

• Lower octave: Z = C, S = C♯, X = D, D = D♯, C = E, V = F, G = F♯, B = G, H = G♯, N = A, J = A♯, M = B; then , L . ; / carry on to the E above.
• Upper octave: Q = C, 2 = C♯, W = D, 3 = D♯, E = E, R = F, 5 = F♯, T = G, 6 = G♯, Y = A, 7 = A♯, U = B; then I 9 O 0 P [ = ] go up to the G above.
• ← → move both rows by an octave, from A0 – G2 at the bottom to C6 – C8 at the top.

The page reads keys by their position, so on an AZERTY or QWERTZ keyboard the same physical keys play the same notes; in Chrome, Edge and Opera the keys show the characters printed on your own keyboard. Many computer keyboards register only a few keys at once, so large chords on the letter keys can drop notes — use the mouse, touch or a MIDI keyboard for those.

The piano sound

Each key plays the nearest of 30 recorded notes (one every minor third from A0 to C8), with the tuning corrections that come with the Salamander Grand Piano V3, pitched by at most a semitone. Medium and Hard use the loud recording (velocity layer 12 of 16); Soft uses the soft one (layer 7), which is downloaded only when you choose it. A MIDI keyboard blends the two layers by how hard you play.

To keep the download small, the recordings are shortened with a fade-out: the lowest keys after 12 seconds, the middle after 8 to 10 seconds, while the top keys ring out in full. Room sound adds a light reverb; switch it off for a dry, close sound. Once the sound has loaded, the browser keeps it, so the piano also works offline.

Sargam and solfège on the keys

Sargam names the twelve swaras from the Sa you choose: Sa, re, Re, ga, Ga, Ma, Ma′, Pa, dha, Dha, ni, Ni. Lower-case re, ga, dha and ni are the komal (flat) swaras and Ma′ is tivra (sharp) Ma. A dot below the name marks the mandra (lower) saptak and a dot above the taar (upper) saptak; the madhya (middle) saptak starts at the Sa from middle C up to the B above it (with Sa on C, middle C itself). Two dots go one more octave out.

Solfège uses fixed Do, as in most of Europe and Latin America: Do is always C, Re is D, and so on to Si.

Recording, WAV and MIDI

A recording keeps every key you press, how hard (the touch, or a MIDI keyboard’s velocity) and the sustain pedal, timed to the millisecond. It stays on this device until you clear it or record again.

• MIDI file: a Standard MIDI File (format 0) at 120 beats a minute and 480 ticks a beat, with the notes, their velocities and the pedal (controller 64) for Acoustic Grand Piano. It opens in notation programs, music apps and digital audio workstations, which can change the instrument or tempo.
• WAV file: 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo, rendered in your browser with the same piano, volume and room sound you hear, plus three seconds for the last notes to ring out. Up to 5 minutes; for longer takes use the MIDI file.

When a key feels late

A key starts its sound on the browser’s audio clock as soon as it is pressed. Delay you can hear comes from the way out: Bluetooth headphones and speakers add a clearly noticeable delay, while wired headphones and built-in speakers respond much faster. If notes feel late, try wired headphones, and close other tabs that play sound.

Limitations

• A mouse, a touch screen and a computer keyboard cannot tell how hard a key is pressed: their loudness is the Touch setting. Only a MIDI keyboard sends real velocity.
• Notes are shortened to save download size: a key held with the pedal fades out after 8–12 seconds in the lower and middle range instead of ringing for half a minute as on a real piano.
• The sustain pedal is either down or up (no half-pedalling), and there is no soft or sostenuto pedal.
• Web MIDI is not available in Safari or on iPhone and iPad, so a MIDI keyboard cannot be connected there.
• WAV files can be made for recordings up to 5 minutes long; any recording (up to 30 minutes) can be downloaded as MIDI.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. Downloads the piano sound from MySmartCoPilot the first time you play (about 1.9 MB, and 1.7 MB more if you choose a soft touch); then it works offline. What you play never leaves your device.