Sheet music player

How to use it

Paste your music into the box, or press Open a file. The player works out what kind of music it is, draws it as sheet music, and the Play button starts it. The note being played turns orange, and the page scrolls along with the music. Click any note to start from there.

• Speed slows the music down to a quarter of its speed, or doubles it, without changing the pitch. The score’s own tempo marking is 100%.
• Key moves the whole piece up or down a semitone at a time. The score is rewritten in the new key too, so you can read it there.
• Loop starts again from the top when it reaches the end. Click adds a metronome tick on every beat (it’s switched off for music that changes tempo or time signature part-way through).
• When the music has more than one part, such as a right and left hand, you can switch each one off and play along with the other. Chord symbols written above an ABC tune ("G", "D7") are played as a soft backing, which you can switch off too.
• MIDI downloads the music as a .mid file for GarageBand, Logic, MuseScore or any other music app.

What you can paste

ABC notation

ABC is a way of writing music as plain text, and it’s how tens of thousands of folk and traditional tunes are shared online. Each tune starts with a few header lines (X: number, T: title, M: time signature, L: note length, K: key), then the notes: C D E F G A B from middle C upwards, lowercase c d e for the octave above, a number after a note to make it longer and | for bar lines. A file with several tunes in it gives you a list to choose from.

MusicXML

MusicXML is the file format notation programs use to swap scores. In MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale or Dorico it’s usually under File → Export. Choose MusicXML, then open the file here (compressed .mxl files work too) or paste its text into the box. Every part is played on the piano, and drum parts are left out.

Letter notes

The simple note names you see in beginner songbooks and on piano tutorial sites, such as E D C D E E E. Each note is one beat. Add a - after a note (or on its own) to hold it a beat longer, # or b for sharps and flats (F#, Bb), a number to choose the octave (C4 is middle C, C5 the C above it), r for a one-beat rest, | for a bar line and square brackets for a chord ([C E G]). Without a number, each note usually goes to the octave nearest the note before it, kept near the middle of the keyboard, which is what a tune usually does. A line with no bar lines gets one every four beats. Lines that aren’t notes, like a title or the words, are skipped.