Rainbow Piano FAQ

A1: A colourful piano that runs in your browser, for players of every age. It has nine instruments, 46 songs to learn with falling notes and backing chords, two music games (Echo and Note hunt), six chord pads, seven beats to play along with, a recorder that saves sound files, and stickers that mark your progress. You play it by touch, with a computer keyboard or with a MIDI keyboard.

A2: Nothing. It is free, with no registration and no limit. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, it is supported by advertising.

A3: No. Open the page in a modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera) on a phone, tablet or computer. Settings, stars and recordings are kept in that browser, so there is nothing to sign in to.

A4: No. Every sound is made inside your browser as you play, and your playing, recordings, stars and settings stay in this browser on this device. A recording leaves the device only when you save it as a sound file yourself. The page itself loads the site's ads and analytics, as every page on the site does; the Privacy Policy explains those, and what you play is never part of them.

A5: Anyone who wants to play: complete beginners who follow the colours, learners practising songs and finger exercises at their own speed, and players who want a quick keyboard in the browser, with or without a MIDI keyboard. The cartoon note creatures and stickers are there to make practice more fun, and can be left alone by anyone who just wants to play.

A6: Yes. Several fingers can play at once, and sliding along the keys plays every note on the way. On a narrow screen the piano shows fewer keys; the arrows under the keys move up or down an octave, Key size under Settings fits more keys, and Big piano fills the whole screen with the keys.

A7: Piano, music box, xylophone, guitar, flute, organ, robot, singing animals and drums. Each is made live in the browser, so nothing is downloaded. With Animals, each of the twelve notes is a different animal (cat, duck, dog, cow, elephant, frog, pig, goat, sheep, monkey, lion and bird) singing at the key's pitch, so tunes still work. With Drums, each key is a drum sound such as kick, snare, clap or cymbal.

A8: While you use the piano (after a click or tap on it) and are not typing in a box: A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, ; and ' play the white keys and W, E, T, Y, U, O and P the black keys, as on a real keyboard. Z and X move the letters one octave down or up, and the keys on screen follow when they must; in a song or a game the letters start where most of its notes are, and Z and X still move them. Holding Space keeps notes ringing. Settings can show the letters on the keys. Elsewhere on the page these keys do what they always do.

A9: Yes, in browsers that support MIDI keyboards, such as Chrome and Edge on a computer. Connect a USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard, open Play and press Use a MIDI keyboard; the browser may ask you first. Its keys play with their own loudness and its sustain pedal holds notes. If you play a note that is off screen, the piano moves to show it. Browsers without MIDI support say so under the button.

A10: Hold notes keeps notes ringing after you let go, like a piano's pedal (Space does the same while held). Beat plays a click, pop, rock, disco, waltz or dhol rhythm at the speed you set, from 60 to 160 beats a minute, to play along with; it stops when you start a song or a game, or leave the page. The six chord pads (C, F, G, A minor, D minor and E minor) play three notes and a bass note together while you hold them.

A11: When you hold three or more keys that make a chord, the piano names it: major, minor, seven, major seven, minor seven, diminished, augmented, sus two or sus four. The name uses Do Re Mi when you chose those note names, and letters otherwise. Chord names show on the Play and Record tabs.

A12: Each note you play sends up a little creature in that note's colour, which floats into the night sky and shows the note's name. Settings can let them stay at the keys instead of floating, and with reduced motion set on your device they do not float.

A13: There are 46: 31 folk tunes and classics, such as Twinkle Twinkle, Ode to Joy, Jingle Bells, Amazing Grace, Silent Night and easy versions of Für Elise, Pachelbel's Canon and the Minuet in G; four Indian songs, such as Raghupati Raghav and Sa Re Ga Ma; and eleven finger practice pieces, from scales and arpeggios to thumb crossing and Hanon Exercise 1. Each is marked Easy, Medium or Hard. All of them are traditional or long out of copyright.

A14: Listen first plays the song with the keys lighting up. Step by step waits on each note until you press the glowing key, so you can go at your own pace; pressing the first glowing key starts it. Play in time counts in three clicks and keeps the beat: each note you hit within about a tenth of a second is Perfect, within about a fifth Good, and a note you miss falls past as Missed.

A15: In Step by step, three stars for at most one slip in ten notes, two for at most one slip in three, one for finishing. In Play in time, Good counts 70 percent of a Perfect: 85 percent or more of the song gives three stars, 60 percent two, anything less one. Listen first gives no stars. Your best stars stay on the song's card.

A16: Every song gets an accompaniment worked out from its tune: for each bar or half bar the piano picks the chord that fits the melody notes best. Canon has its own written chords. Backing chords can be turned off under the keys while you learn.

A17: Yes. Speed under the keys has Slow (half speed), Steady, Normal and Fast. Changing it takes the song back to its beginning.

A18: In the finger practice pieces, the numbers are fingers: 1 is the thumb, 2 the index finger, and so on to 5, the little finger, as in printed piano music.

A19: The piano plays a short row of notes, then you play them back. Every round adds one more note, and the notes come a little faster. You have three tries in a game. Choose Three (Do, Mi and Sol), Five (Do to Sol) or Eight notes (Do to high Do); your best for each is kept.

A20: Yes. The piano above the games is the controller for both of them, whichever way you play it: touch, mouse, computer keys or a MIDI keyboard.

A21: Find the key that matches what you see or hear, ten notes in a round: a coloured creature, a note name, a note on a treble staff or only its sound. For colours, names and sounds any octave of the note counts; on the staff, only the exact key. After two wrong tries the right key glows. Only notes found on the first try count towards the score.

A22: Open Record and press Record under the keys; the recording starts with your first note and stops when you press Stop, after three minutes or after 4,000 notes. It records the notes you play, with their timing, loudness and instrument, not a microphone. Each recording is saved as My song with a number, which you can rename.

A23: Press Save sound file on the recording. The piano plays it into a WAV file (CD quality, stereo) with your room echo setting, in a few seconds for a short tune (a full 3-minute recording took about 17 seconds on a computer in our test), and your browser saves it to your downloads. You can then keep it, play it anywhere or send it to someone.

A24: Learn it opens a recording on the Songs tab like any other song, with falling notes, so you can learn a tune someone recorded for you. Recordings also appear under My recordings in the song list.

A25: Yes. Each note keeps the instrument it was played with, so a recording can start on the piano and end on the drums, and plays back and saves the same way.

A26: Up to 30 in this browser. With 30 kept, Record tells you first that the new one will take the place of the oldest and names it, so you can stop and save that one as a sound file before it goes. All the tools on the site share the browser's small storage, so the recordings together may use about a megabyte; when that is used up, a recording stops by itself and keeps what you played, and deleting an old one makes room again. If the browser refuses to save at all, a recording stays until the page closes and can still be saved as a sound file.

A27: Key colours (rainbow, or black and white with a small coloured dot), key size (big, medium or small; smaller keys fit more notes), showing computer keyboard letters on the keys, letting the note creatures float into the sky, the volume and the room echo (off, small room or big hall). Note names (Do Re Mi, C D E, Sa Re Ga, numbers or none) are under the keys. The light or dark look follows the site's theme button.

A28: Settings, stars, scores, stickers and recordings are kept in this browser's storage on this device; nothing is saved on a first visit until you play or change something. Clear stars and stickers, under Settings, resets the stars, game scores, stickers and the note count after you confirm; recordings and settings stay. Clearing the browser's site data deletes everything.

A29: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni is the Indian sargam: the lower-case re, ga, dha and ni are the flat (komal) notes on the black keys, and Ma' the sharp (tivra) Ma. 1 2 3 numbers the notes of the scale from Do, with a sharp sign on the black keys, as in numbered music notation.

A30: There are 24, each with its own task, such as playing 100 notes, trying five instruments, holding a chord, finishing five songs, three stars on a song, echoing ten notes or playing on seven different days. Locked stickers show how to get them, and a dot on the Stickers tab marks a new one. The Stickers tab also shows the notes played, the days of music, the songs finished and the longest Echo.