A practice room in your browser
Learn the keys.
Not just the pattern.
Most piano apps score you on hitting coloured bars as they land. You get quick wins and, a year later, you still cannot read a page of music. This one grades your notes, your timing and your reading separately, so you can see which of the three you are actually improving.
Free to start, nothing to pay, no trial countdown · works with any MIDI keyboard · nothing to install
Play it. Click the keys, or use your A to K row.
Three ways in
Start where you actually are
No placement quiz and nothing to pay. Pick the one that sounds like you and start straight away.
Your first five minutes
One octave, six short steps, no jargon. Find middle C, name the white keys, and play a real tune by the end of it.
Start here → 02 / SOME BASICSChords, scales and time
See any chord or scale drawn on the keyboard and hear it. Keep time with a tap-tempo metronome. Test how fast you can name a key.
Open the tools → 03 / COMING BACKPlay a real piece again
Both hands, proper fingering, a grand staff, and a reading score that tells you honestly whether it went in.
Open the practice room →The pieces
Whole pieces, not locked previews
Everything here is out of copyright, which is exactly why we can give you all of it instead of the first sixteen bars.
How it works
Three scores, not one
Did you play the right key?
The obvious one, and the only one most apps measure. Useful, but it is the easiest of the three to fake by memorising where the bars fall.
Did you play it when you should have?
Graded separately, because right notes at the wrong moment is the single most common thing that makes self-taught playing sound self-taught.
Could you do it from the page?
Switch on read mode and the falling notes disappear, leaving the staff. Anything you play then counts towards your literacy score. Nothing else counts, and if you cannot read the staff yet, start here.
Underneath sit the tools you would expect: wait mode holds the music until your fingers arrive, loop any run of bars, practise one hand while the other plays itself, slow the tempo to a crawl, transpose, count in, and use the sustain pedal on your own keyboard.
Two things it does that nothing else free does. It watches which bars you keep fluffing and offers to loop them for you, the way a teacher would. And it plays your own attempt straight back to you, so you can hear your timing rather than take our word for it.
Learn the basics
Piano keys, explained simply
A piano keyboard is one pattern of twelve keys repeated over and over: seven white and five black. Once you can see the pattern, the whole instrument stops looking like a wall of identical strips.
The black keys are grouped in twos and threes. Find any group of two black keys, and the white key immediately to the left of them is C. That single landmark is enough to find every other note.
From C, the white keys run C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and then you are back at C an octave higher. The black keys are the sharps and flats sitting between them. Middle C is simply the C nearest the middle of the instrument, and it is where almost every beginner piece puts your right thumb.
That repeating layout is also why chords and scales are worth learning as shapes rather than as lists of letters. A shape you learn in one octave works in all of them.
Find the two black keys, then click the white key to their left.
Nothing to get wrong. Click any key and it will tell you its name.
Walk me through it properlyWhat is free here
The paywall, and where it usually sits
Typical piano apps run about £90 to £150 a year, and the features below are almost always on the paid side of the line. None of them cost anything to run in a browser, which is why they are all switched on here.
| Feature | Typical piano app | Learn Piano Keys |
|---|---|---|
| Full lesson path | Two courses, then paid | All of it |
| Wait mode | Paid | Free |
| Loop a section | Paid | Free |
| Practise hands separately | Paid | Free |
| Slow the tempo down | Paid | Free |
| Fingering on every note | Often missing entirely | Free |
| Grand staff alongside the guide | Paid, or tablet only | Free |
| Metronome and tap tempo | Sold as a separate app | Free |
| Chord finder and scale explorer | Paid, or a separate app | Free |
| Lessons on reading the stave | Paid, or a separate app | Free |
| Note trainer you play, not just name | Rarely offered | Free |
| Rhythm graded separately | Rarely measured at all | Free |
| Reading measured separately | Not offered | Free |
| MIDI keyboard support | Paid on some plans | Free |
| Sustain pedal read from your keyboard | Paid, where offered at all | Free |
| Hear your own attempt played back | Not offered | Free |
| Trouble spots found for you | Not offered | Free |
| Transpose to another key | Paid | Free |
| Carry on where you stopped | Rarely offered | Free, every piece and every tool |
| Streak and best scores kept | Requires an account | Free, kept on your device |
| Email to keep practising | Yes | Yes, after three sessions |
| Card details | Usually required for the trial | Never asked for |
Questions
Before you start
Do I need a real piano?
No. You can play with your computer keys or by clicking the on-screen keyboard, and everything still works, including the scoring. A MIDI keyboard is better because it sends the exact note and the exact moment you pressed it, so the timing score means something. Any digital piano with a USB socket will do.
I have never touched a piano. Where do I begin?
Start with the five minute walkthrough for absolute beginners. It uses one octave rather than the full keyboard, shows one instruction at a time, and does not let you move on until you have actually played the thing it asked for. At the end of it you will have played the opening of a real tune.
Why can I not learn current pop songs here?
Because arrangements of songs still in copyright have to be licensed title by title from the publisher, and those licences are what the paid apps are really charging you for. Rather than charge you for that, this site sticks to music that is out of copyright, where we can give you the complete piece rather than a locked preview.
Can I learn to read music here?
Yes, and this part of the site is free and asks nothing of you at all. The how to read music page covers the stave, the treble and bass clefs, middle C, ledger lines, sharps and flats and note lengths, with playable diagrams throughout. It ends with a note trainer that shows a note and waits for you to play it on a real keyboard rather than just asking you to name it.
What is the literacy score actually measuring?
Only the notes you played with the falling guide switched off, reading from the staff. It is deliberately harder to move than the other two numbers. If your note accuracy is high and your literacy score is not, you are memorising positions rather than reading music, which is the thing most people discover far too late.
I have an acoustic piano and no MIDI. Can I still use it?
Yes. Switch on the microphone option and it will follow what you play. Be aware of the honest limitation: it listens to one note at a time, so it will not read chords and it will struggle with fast passages or a noisy room. It is good enough for single line practice and for the reading drills. If you can borrow a MIDI cable, everything works better.
Does it remember my progress?
Yes. Your practice streak, your session minutes and your best scores for each piece are stored in your own browser on the device you are using, not on our servers. That part happens whether or not you sign up. Clearing your browser data clears it, and there is a button on the practice tracker to clear it yourself.
Why do you ask for an email in the practice room?
After three sessions in the practice room you are asked for an email address so we can tell you when new pieces, lessons and tools are added. Signing up is free, nothing is charged and no card details are requested. The beginner walkthrough, all four tools and the practice tracker stay open whether you sign up or not.
Does it work on a phone?
It runs, and you can tap the keys, but a phone screen is too narrow to show a useful stretch of the keyboard. The beginner walkthrough is fine on a phone because it only uses one octave. For the practice room, a tablet propped on the music desk or a laptop is a much better experience.
Will it always be free?
The tools on this site are free and there is no trial clock on them. So no worries.
Does my playing get sent anywhere?
No. The scoring, the sound and the notation all run inside your browser. Nothing you play leaves your device.