You do not need a piano to learn music theory

The most common reason people put off learning music theory is "I don't have a piano." You do not need one. Theory is about relationships between notes, and any keyboard that lets you press the right note at the right moment will teach you those relationships. Here are the three ways PlayTheory lessons can be played, and when each one makes sense.

The on-screen piano

Every lesson ends in a piano at the bottom of the screen. Tap or click the keys and the lesson hears you. This is the fastest way to start: nothing to buy, nothing to plug in, works on a phone, a tablet or a laptop.

It is good for understanding. It is less good for building finger habits, because a mouse pointer or a thumb is not a hand on keys. For the first modules, that is fine.

Your computer keyboard

The home row of your keyboard is a piano: A S D F G H J K play the white keys from C to the next C, and the row above plays the black keys. It feels closer to real playing than clicking, because you use several fingers and you do not look at the keys.

Try it on this page's first chord: press A, then D, then G. That is C, E and G.

A MIDI keyboard

A MIDI keyboard is a small piano-style controller that plugs into a laptop with one USB cable. It has no sound of its own; the computer makes the sound. Two-octave models are inexpensive and fit in a bag.

This is the one to get once you know you are staying. Real keys under your fingers turn every lesson into practice, and the app hears exactly what you played, note for note. In PlayTheory, MIDI support is part of Pro; plug the keyboard in and it works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox.

Which one should you start with?

Start today with whatever is in front of you. Move to a MIDI keyboard when you notice that you want to play the ideas, not only understand them. That moment usually arrives somewhere in the chords module.