Piano Hero
Play along with falling notes
Choose your experience
Classic Mode
Fun & accessible for everyone
- 2 octaves · simple keys
- Catch the falling notes
- Combo multipliers
- Score & accuracy tracking
Pianist Mode
For serious musicians
- Full 88-key piano
- Diverse repertoire
- Hand practice mode
- Wait or scroll mode
What Piano Hero trains
A falling-note game is only useful if it measures the one thing sheet music alone cannot force you to do: arrive on time. Piano Hero grades every note against a timing window, so a passage that sounds roughly right and a passage that is genuinely in tempo do not earn the same score. It is a pulse and coordination exercise first, and a note-reading exercise second.
Classic Mode: steady time on three octaves
Classic Mode gives you a keyboard from C3 to B5 and generated melodies at four levels. Beginner and Easy stay on the white keys with plenty of air between notes. Medium and Hard bring in the black keys and occasional two-note chords, and the timing window tightens from 0.80 seconds down to 0.42 seconds, which is where sloppy rhythm starts to cost you. You begin with five lives, and eight perfect hits in a row give one back, up to twelve.
Pianist Mode: the full instrument
Pianist Mode opens all 88 keys, A0 to C8, and a repertoire sorted into four levels, from Fur Elise and Amazing Grace at the beginner end to Chopin's Ballade No. 1 at the top. Work through a piece in Listen, Wait or Scroll, isolate the right or left hand while the other plays itself, take the tempo anywhere between 1 and 300 percent, and switch the voice between grand piano, electric piano, organ and synthesizer. Each note lands as Perfect, Good or OK inside a half-second window, or counts as a miss.
Who it suits
Classic Mode needs no reading ability at all: every falling note carries both the key to press and the note name, so it teaches the pairing while you play. Pianist Mode assumes you already know where the notes are and want to play real pieces, which makes it a useful bridge for anyone who reads slowly but plays by ear.
When you keep missing
Drop the tempo before you change anything else. Most missed notes in Pianist Mode are not reading errors, they are a hand that is late because the passage was never played slowly enough to be automatic. Then isolate the hand that is causing the trouble, and only put them back together once each one is comfortable on its own. If it is the reading rather than the timing that breaks down, the falling bars will not fix it: work the notes on the sight-reading trainer or follow the graded lessons in Learn, then come back here for the tempo.
Questions about Piano Hero
Do I need a MIDI keyboard to play Piano Hero?
No. Both modes work with the computer keyboard or by tapping the piano drawn on screen. A MIDI keyboard mostly buys you real key resistance and precise timing. Web MIDI works in Chrome and Edge on desktop and Android; Safari on iPhone and iPad does not support it, so use the on-screen keys there. A sustain pedal sending CC 64 is picked up automatically.
What is the difference between Listen, Wait and Scroll?
Listen plays the piece for you so you can hear the shape before touching a key. Wait, the default, freezes the score at each note until you play the correct one, so you can work at your own pace. Scroll runs at the chosen tempo and does not stop, which is the mode that actually tests you.
Can I practice one hand at a time?
Yes, in Pianist Mode. The Hands control switches between both hands, right hand only and left hand only. The hand you are not playing is performed for you and drawn in grey, so you keep hearing the full texture while you drill one part.
Are my scores saved?
Classic Mode keeps your best score for each difficulty, your session count and your running accuracy average in this browser. They are local, so clearing site data for PianoMode resets them, and they do not follow you to another device.
Which keys do I press on a computer keyboard?
In Classic Mode the bottom row Z X C V B N M plays the white keys C3 to B3, the row A W S E D F T G Y H U J covers C4 to B4 including the sharps, and the keys from K rightward carry on up to B5. In Pianist Mode the layout is QWERTY only: the home row A S D F G H J plays the white keys C3 to B3, W E T Y U are the sharps above them, and K is middle C.
