Free demo
Free piano sight-reading test
Four bars, one attempt. A freshly generated phrase, a count-in, and a click that will not wait for you — then a breakdown of what actually went wrong. Nothing is saved because you are not signed in; create a free account to keep a skill profile and a streak.
Preview routine
Work through this every time. It is what separates a confident first attempt from a hesitant one.
- Key signatureWhich sharps or flats apply — and does the signature change part-way?
- Meter & tempoHow many beats per bar, and how fast is the click?
- Hand positionFind the first note and settle your hand before beat one.
- Rhythm hazardsSpot the busiest bar now, not when you arrive at it.
- PatternsScales, arpeggios and repeats — name the shapes you can see.
- ShapeWhere does the line rise, fall and resolve?
This passage
- Progression
- I – iii – IV – I
- Shapes
- Neighbour tones, Scale fragments
- Widest leap
- 2 semitones
- Input
- On-screen piano
Timing offset 10ms ·
What this test measures
A single accuracy percentage cannot tell you what to practise, because playing a wrong note and playing the right note a beat late are different problems with different fixes. The run is scored across five weighted dimensions instead, and the one that scored worst is your bottleneck.
- Rhythm30%
- Did your notes land when they were written to land?
- Pitch25%
- Were they the right notes, in the right octave?
- Continuity20%
- Did you keep moving, or were there gaps?
- Structure15%
- Did the strong beats and the shape of the phrase survive?
- Recovery10%
- After a mistake, how quickly were you back with the beat?
Rhythm and continuity together outweigh pitch, deliberately. A wrong note played in time is a better performance than a right note that arrives after the music has moved on — and a reader who stops to find the correct note is rehearsing the one habit that ruins performances.
How the test works
Preview
The phrase appears with its key, meter and tempo. Use the countdown to scan for hand position, rhythm, patterns and anything awkward — not to start reading bar one.
Play it once
After the count-in the click starts and does not stop. Miss something, let it go, and keep playing. Use a MIDI keyboard, your microphone and a real piano, or the on-screen keyboard.
Read the diagnosis
Your five scores, your biggest bottleneck, your strongest dimension, and the specific drill to practise next.
The phrase is generated fresh every time, so there is nothing to memorise and no way to game the result. Playing again gives you music you have not seen — which is the only way to test reading rather than recall.
Before you play
- No account, no download and no card. Nothing from this run is saved.
- A MIDI keyboard gives the most trustworthy rhythm scoring, over USB in Chrome or Edge. Microphone input works with any acoustic or digital piano, and the audio is analysed inside your browser rather than uploaded.
- No instrument nearby is fine — the on-screen keyboard works with a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen.
- This drill is four bars of quarter notes in C major at 60bpm, which is the first entry in the graded catalogue. It is meant to be easy; the point is to see which dimension breaks first.
Once you know your bottleneck
Each of these guides is free and needs no account.