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Pure Tones

Type to Play Music.

An svg depicting a qwerty keyboard, color-coded and labelled to show what musical note each button plays.

There are lots of online keyboard pianos out there, but I wanted one where:

  1. The sounds are pure tones - sine waves - so I can play around with harmonics.
  2. The sounds are sustained as long as the key is held down.
  3. The notes are laid out in a way that “feels right” on a qwerty keyboard, instead of just trying to copy the layout of a piano.

For best results, use the following:

  • a Chromium browser, like Edge, Brave, or Chrome (for the beeps to sound right)
  • a keyboard with n-key rollover (a standard laptop keyboard won't be able to play certain chords)
  • a US QWERTY keyboard (lest all the buttons lie in the wrong places)
Keyboard images modified from this original by Wikimedia user Tomiĉo. Licensed under (CC BY-SA 4.0)