Chromatic Keyboard
Choose the white keys. Discover a new way to name and play the same twelve pitches.
Pick your white keys
Select any pitches below. The first white key becomes A, the next becomes B, and so on, in ascending pitch order.
How it works
Each selected pitch gets a white key. Every remaining semitone gets its own black key between the neighboring white keys, even when that means several black keys together. Large gaps make the keys wider to keep every pitch playable. Adjacent selected semitones have no black key between them.
A sharp raises a custom white key by one semitone; a flat lowers it by one. A double sharp raises it by two, and a double flat lowers it by two. Each black key shows both names: the sharp name from the white key below and the flat name from the white key above. The shorter spelling is shown first; ties prefer sharps. These are your custom names, not conventional staff notation. The smaller concert-pitch labels and the readout always show what actually sounds.
| Concert pitch | Custom name | Key |
|---|---|---|
| B♭ | A | White |
| B | A♯ / B♭ | Black |
| C | B | White |
| C♯ | B♯ / C♭♭ | Black |
| D | C♭ / B♯♯ | Black |
| D♯ | C | White |
| E | C♯ / D♭×3 | Black |
| F | C♯♯ / D♭♭ | Black |
| F♯ | D♭ / C♯×3 | Black |
| G | D | White |
| G♯ | D♯ / A♭♭ | Black |
| A | A♭ / D♯♯ | Black |
The next B♭ starts the same custom alphabet again, one octave higher. If you select more than seven white pitches, the alphabet extends through H–L. Gaps can be larger than a double accidental can describe: ♯×3 means three semitones sharp, ♭×4 means four semitones flat. With just one white pitch, the flat name refers to the next octave’s occurrence of that same letter.
Playing
Click or touch and hold a key; slide across keys to play a run. Multiple touches or computer keys can make chords. The small keycaps map the first two chromatic octaves to Z S X D C V G B H N J M · Q 2 W 3 E R 5 T 6 Y 7 U · I. Tab to any piano key and hold Enter or Space to play it. Moving focus away releases that key. On a phone, swipe the space below the keys or use the horizontal scrollbar to move along the keyboard.
Sound begins after a key press, as required by your browser. The tone is synthesized locally, not a sampled piano. Tuning stays at twelve-tone equal temperament with concert A4 = 440 Hz. Changing the layout releases held notes. Stop all notes, leaving the tab, and changing browser focus also release notes. Layouts stay in this page while open and are not saved to an account.