Piano course for beginners

Yes. Every task plays on the on-screen keyboard or on your computer keys — the letters are written right on the keys. Posture and fingering stick better on real keys, so when you get an instrument, go through stage one again — it is always open.

Connect the instrument to a computer or an Android phone with a USB cable and press “MIDI keyboard” in any task — the browser asks for permission. It works in Chrome and Edge; on iPhone, iPad and in Safari Apple has not enabled Web MIDI, so play through the microphone or on screen there. If the instrument makes its own sound, turn “Page sound” off to avoid double sound.

Yes: press “Piano in the room” in a task and put your phone on the piano’s lid. The course recognizes single notes and chords by their sound. In tempo tasks the microphone is a little late, so the course allows a wider spread; rhythm is checked most precisely on screen, computer keys and MIDI.

In English the seven notes are named with the letters A to G, and the same letters name chords — C, F, G, Am. Other countries sing Do, Re, Mi; the lesson “How chords are named” shows how the two systems match.

In wait mode the course lights up the next note and waits until you press it: that is how fingers and notes are learned. In tempo the metronome clicks and notes fall onto the keyboard: each one has to land on its beat. If it is too fast, the “Slower” button drops the tempo by a quarter.

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy with both hands, Ah vous dirai-je, maman (the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle) with a left-hand accompaniment in chords, the opening of the Minuet in G from Anna Magdalena Bach’s notebook, and Frère Jacques as a canon where the left hand enters two bars after the right. All of them are in the public domain; the arrangements are the course’s own.