A virtual piano keyboard is very convenient, particularly when you don’t have access to an actual music keyboard. It’s also great for piano and other music students. I have listed a few online piano keyboard software recommendations below. You can check them out and choose the one that works for you.
My top recommendation is the virtual piano at bgfl.org. (UPDATE: This is no longer available. Go the the other options below.) This is a pretty useful online keyboard. It gives you several voice options: piano, organ. saxophone, flute, pan pipes, strings, guitar, steel drums and double bass. Just click on the various notes to hear the sound. You can also play the keyboard via your computer keyboard itself. The various notes have been assigned to certain keys on your computer keyboard. The keyboard consists of 18 notes (one and a half octaves). Highly Recommended: Click here for the BEST piano/keyboard course I’ve come across online.
I particularly like the chord mode feature. You simply click on “CHORD MODE” and click on various notes to form a chord, then click on “PLAY CHORD” and the chord plays.
Another great feature on this virtual piano keyboard is the drum feature. There’s a total of 6 looped drum beat patterns to choose from.
Overall, this is a great virtual keyboard piano.
My second choice is the online piano keyboard at Method Behind The Music. This one has a total of 32 notes, 14 more than the one I mentioned earlier. You can play it by clicking on the various keyboard keys or you can press corresponding keys on your computer keyboard to play one octave. While the one at bgfl.com comes with 9 voices to choose from, this one simply comes with piano. I like the option of turning the key names and keyboard keys on and off. As can be seen, it doesn’t come with as many features, but overall, this is a very useful virtual keyboard piano.
If you’re looking for a free online piano keyboard with more keys, you can try the virtual piano keyboard at cmagics.com. This one mimics a 5 octave electronic keyboard and comes with a total of 61 keys, 36 white, 25 black. You can click on the various keys to play the keyboard or you can press the corresponding keys on your computer. To play the black keys you need to enable press “Caps Lock” on your keyboard. You can enable or disable sustain mode with the “Ctrl” key. On the site, they promise to add other features in the future, namely a recording function and different types of music.
Free piano keyboard program download
While some piano keyboards are strictly online based, some of them can be downloaded to your computer. A google search for “virtual midi piano keyboard” will reveal quite a few options. One popular one is the virtual MIDI piano keyboard at sourceforge.net. VMPK is a MIDI event generator and receiver. It doesn’t actually produce its own sounds. You can use it to drive a MIDI synthesizer (either hardware or software, internal or external). It makes use of the computer’s alphanumeric keyboard and the mouse. This virtual MIDI piano keyboard is for Linux, Windows and OSX and is based on Qt4 and RtMIDI. While I have done lots of reading about VMPK, I haven’t actually tried it out so I can’t make a recommendation. Please let me know your thoughts if you’ve tried it out.
Further Reading:
Best Free Computer Keyboard Piano Review
These virtual piano keyboards are the next best companion (next to a real piano/keyboard) when learning to play the piano. Are you interested in learning to play? Click here to learn to play keyboards and piano (with Piano For All).