MIDI keyboards

A MIDI keyboard is a piano keyboard that sends your computer a message for every key you press: which key, how hard, and when. It makes no sound of its own. Chordzy listens to those messages, plays the notes, and grades what you played against the music on screen. You do not need one to start: the on-screen keys work without it. A real keyboard is what trains your hands, though.

Shops call the same thing a MIDI controller, a MIDI keyboard controller, or a USB MIDI keyboard. A digital piano with a USB port counts too. This page covers what to buy, how to plug it in, and why a browser sometimes refuses to see it.

A full-size piano has 88 keys. Many MIDI keyboards have fewer, and every key you do not have is a piece of music you cannot play as written. 61 keys covers most beginner pieces. 25 does not.

The other thing to check is how the keys feel. Keyboards sold as "hammer-weighted", "fully weighted" or something similar are harder to press, because they copy the mechanism inside an acoustic piano. That is a feature, and it is worth starting on. Playing weighted keys builds the gentle strength your hands need to play fluidly and with real dynamics. A light plastic key never asks for it.

The best keyboard for learning piano is 88 weighted keys with a USB port. Everything after that is budget. If you are buying one for Chordzy, four things matter, in this order.

1. Keys. 88 if you have the room and the budget, 61 if you do not. Weighted if you can, for the reasons above.
2. A USB port for a computer. Almost every keyboard sold today has one. On the back panel it is labeled USB to Host, USB Computer or "USB MIDI". A keyboard with only the old five-pin MIDI socket needs a separate USB MIDI interface.
3. Velocity. Nearly all keyboards send how hard you pressed, and Chordzy uses that for dynamics. A toy keyboard may not.
4. A pedal socket. Not needed on day one. Wanted by month three.

You do not need weighted keys to start learning. Any keyboard that sends velocity will teach you to read music and find the notes, and plenty of players spend a first year on one. What an unweighted keyboard costs you is control: light keys feel the same whether you lean on them or brush them, so your fingers get no feedback about how loud a note came out, and the first hour on a real piano feels like pushing through sand. If the choice is 88 unweighted keys or 61 weighted ones at the same price, take the weighted ones.

Bluetooth MIDI keyboards work too, but the pairing happens in your operating system before any browser can see them. USB skips all of that. When in doubt, buy the cable.

The Roland FP-10 is where to look first if you have space for 88 weighted keys. The keys use Roland's PHA-4 Standard action, which Roland also puts in the higher-end FP-30. Low notes press heavier than high ones, the way they do on an acoustic piano. Plug it into a computer and it sends USB MIDI, or pair it for Bluetooth MIDI, and a pedal switch comes with it. What you give up is portability. It weighs 12.6 kg and needs its AC adaptor. Its Bluetooth also carries MIDI only, so it will not play songs from your phone through its speakers.

The Casio CDP-S160 is the cheaper way to get 88 weighted keys, and Piano Dreamers names it the budget pick among beginner pianos. The keys use Casio's Scaled Hammer Action II. Plug it into a computer with USB and it sends MIDI like any other keyboard here, and a damper pedal comes with it. What you give up is everything else. There is no Bluetooth, and it has 10 sounds. If you want a practice piano for reading and playing music, that is plenty. If you want to experiment with sounds, look further.

The Casio PX-S1100 is 88 weighted keys in a body 232 mm deep, and Piano Dreamers calls it the slimmest digital piano on the market. It weighs 11.2 kg and can run on 6 AA batteries for about 4 hours, so it plays where there is no wall socket. Its USB port works as a MIDI connection to a computer, and the WU-BT10 adapter in the box adds Bluetooth MIDI. The catch is the keys. They feel lighter than most of its rivals, and reviewers are divided on them. If the piano lives in one room, the heavier keys of a desk model will teach your fingers more.

Plug the keyboard into the computer with a USB cable and switch it on before you open Chordzy. Press Connect MIDI keyboard and say yes when the browser asks. When it works, that is the entire process. The rest of this page is for when it does not.

Two things trip people up more than everything else combined.

The port. Many keyboards have two USB sockets. The one that talks to a computer is usually marked USB to Host or USB Computer. The other, USB to Device, is for memory sticks, and no browser will ever see it.

The cable. A lot of cheap USB cables carry power and nothing else; there are no data wires inside. They look identical to the good ones. If the keyboard lights up but nothing appears on screen, swap the cable before you touch anything else.

If Chordzy still says it cannot see your keyboard, find your browser below.

Chordzy runs in every modern browser. The lessons, the sheet music and the on-screen keys are the same everywhere. Reading a real keyboard is a separate question, and the answer depends on one browser feature: Web MIDI.

Your device is almost never the problem. iPhones and iPads have talked to MIDI hardware for years through Core MIDI, and plenty of native apps use it. What some browsers lack is the API that hands it to a web page.

Safari has never shipped Web MIDI, on a Mac or on an iPhone. Apple's stated reason is fingerprinting: a MIDI device reports identifiers that could be used to recognize you again. That is true, and the result is that your piano cannot talk to your browser. There is no setting and no feature flag. Nothing on your end can fix it.

On an iPhone or iPad the same goes for Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Apple requires every browser there to run on Safari's engine, so they inherit the gap along with it, whatever the icon says.

Real keys on an iPhone or iPad

There is one way, and it is not Safari. Web MIDI Browser (on the App Store, by Takashi Mizuhiki) is a browser built for exactly this gap. It implements Web MIDI itself on top of iOS's own MIDI stack, Bluetooth MIDI included. Open Chordzy inside it and a connected keyboard just works.

It is a third-party app we do not control, so call it a workaround rather than a recommendation. It is also the only way to use a hardware keyboard with the website on iOS.

The short version

• On a computer: Chrome, Edge, Opera or Firefox. On a Mac, Safari is the one browser that will not do this. The others all will.
• On Android: Chrome, Edge or Opera. Firefox for Android has not shipped Web MIDI.
• On an iPhone or iPad: the on-screen keys work in any browser. For a real keyboard, use Web MIDI Browser.

The day Apple ships Web MIDI, this page changes.

The first time you press Connect MIDI keyboard, the browser asks whether Chordzy may use your MIDI devices. Dismiss that prompt, or press Block, and the browser remembers. From then on it refuses silently. Your keyboard can be plugged in, switched on and working perfectly, and Chordzy sees nothing.

The tell is the line under the button. If it says MIDI access is blocked, this is your problem, and nothing you do to the keyboard will change it.

Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave on a computer

1. Click the icon at the left of the address bar. Depending on your version it is a sliders icon or a padlock.
2. Choose Site settings.
3. Find MIDI devices and set it to Allow.
4. Reload the page and press Connect MIDI keyboard again.

Or paste chrome://settings/content/midiDevices into the address bar to go straight there, and remove chordzy.com from the "Not allowed" list.

Chrome on Android

1. Tap the ⋮ menu, then the ⓘ icon beside the address.
2. Tap Permissions, then MIDI devices, then Allow.
3. Reload and try again.

A phone also needs a USB OTG adapter between it and the keyboard's cable. Some phones cannot power a keyboard that has no supply of its own. If the keyboard's lights stay off, that is what happened.

Firefox on a computer, version 108 and later

1. Click the padlock in the address bar.
2. Under Permissions, find MIDI and clear the blocked setting.
3. Reload the page and try again.

Firefox asks again every session unless you tick Remember this decision.

Safari, and any browser on an iPhone or iPad

There is no permission to grant. Safari has no Web MIDI at all, and every browser on iOS runs on Safari's engine. A hardware keyboard on an iPhone or iPad goes through the Web MIDI Browser app; see which browsers can see a keyboard.

MIDI is allowed and it still cannot see the keyboard

• Close any other program that uses the keyboard. On Windows especially, a DAW or a synth app can hold the MIDI port open, and then nothing else can read it, your browser included.
• Unplug the keyboard, reload the page, then plug it back in.
• Try the keyboard's other USB port, and a different cable (see plugging it in).
• Restart the browser. A keyboard plugged in after the browser had already refused permission sometimes needs a fresh start before it appears.

Some keyboards light up their own keys, and Chordzy can light the notes you play next on a ROLI Piano M, LUMI Keys or Casio LK-S250. The lights go out through Light output in the Speakers settings, a separate choice from the sound output. Silence points at the sound output. Dark keys point at the light output.

Piano keyboards with light-up keys covers the setup, the colors and which models have been tested.

Chordzy can hand its notes to a DAW such as Logic, GarageBand or Ableton Live and stay quiet itself. Open the Speakers settings and change Sound output from Chordzy synthesizer to a MIDI port. From then on the instrument on your DAW's armed track plays every note Chordzy would have played: the prompt, the backing part, the metronome and the on-screen keys. Your grade does not change, because grading reads your keyboard and never the sound.

In the Mac app

The app makes its own MIDI port, called Chordzy. Pick Chordzy (MIDI port for your DAW) under Sound output. Then, in Logic, GarageBand or Ableton, set Chordzy as the input of an instrument track and arm that track.

On Windows

The Windows app cannot make a port of its own, so it needs a virtual cable. Install loopMIDI, made by Tobias Erichsen, and create one port in it. Pick that port under Sound output in Chordzy, and pick it again as the track's input in your DAW.

In a browser

A web page can send to a port that already exists. It cannot create one.

1. On a Mac, open Audio MIDI Setup, choose Show MIDI Studio from the Window menu, double-click the IAC Driver and tick Device is online. On Windows, make a loopMIDI port as above.
2. On the Speakers tab, press Connect MIDI and allow MIDI when the browser asks.
3. Pick the IAC or loopMIDI port under Sound output, and the same port as the track's input in your DAW.

Safari has no Web MIDI, so none of this works there.

Sending your own keyboard too

Once a MIDI port is picked, a switch appears: Also send my keyboard's notes to the DAW. On a Mac you can usually leave it off. The DAW already hears your keyboard directly. On Windows it starts switched on, because there a keyboard that Chordzy is reading cannot be read by anything else at the same time, and that includes your DAW.

Latency

Set the DAW's audio buffer to 128 samples or less, or every note you press reaches your ears noticeably late. What you hear has no effect on how Chordzy grades you.