Settings

Turn this on for a digital or acoustic piano and Plinky stops playing your notes back at you. Everything Plinky plays by itself — Listen, the metronome, the other hand — carries on. Off by default, since most keyboards make no sound of their own.

Sends each note as Plinky plays it, so a sound module can play along on its own voice. Off by default. If your keyboard is lighting its keys, Plinky sends this on a different channel so the two don't get in each other's way.

No piano? These keys play the notes. Tap a note, then press the key you'd like it on — or keep the standard layout with Reset.

Hold Shift to play two octaves higher, so the two rows reach four octaves in all.

Listen eases into the end of a phrase, lets the last bar breathe, and brings the tune out a hair ahead of the accompaniment — the way a pianist does. Off, every note lands exactly on the beat.

How much of the room you hear around the piano. Turn it down if the sound feels smeared on a phone speaker.

Sets the reading aids together — pick where you are, then fine-tune any of them below.

Each notehead takes a colour from its name — every C red, every D orange, and so on — so you can read by hue while the names sink in.

Writes C, Am, G7 above the staff wherever the notes make a chord clear, so a bar reads as the shape it is built on — and a shape you know from one piece is the same in the next.

Some pieces are written for piano and a singer or another instrument. Their part stays out of the way unless you'd like to see and hear it alongside yours.

Take the inner notes out of every piece, so a hard one is playable while your hands catch up. A thinned run counts as practice, but the piece itself is only learned when you play it as written.

The notes to come stack above the keys and fall onto them as you play, so you can see which key is next.

The piece reads as one line that scrolls as you play, instead of stacked rows.

Numbers the first bar of each row, so a passage is easy to find. Turn it off for a cleaner staff.

Forces this many bars onto each row for bigger notation; Auto fits them to your screen.

Magnifies the whole score for bigger, easier-to-read notes — handy on a small screen, or when you're starting out.

Beams join fast notes into beat groups. Hide them to read one note at a time while you're learning; Auto shows them on harder pieces, where the grouping helps.

A translucent replay of your best run on this piece plays alongside you.

Play by ear: the notes start hidden and reveal as you find them — green when you get one, red when the tries run out. Have a listen first, then play back what you heard.

A wrong key always flashes red. This sets when the correct key lights up — keeping it hidden leaves the reading to you.

Note names printed on the keys while you learn where they live. "Just C" marks only the C keys — the white key left of each pair of black keys — as a landmark to orient by.

Two traditions name the last white key of each octave differently. Plinky starts with the one your language uses — pick the other if it's the one you learned.

Try it! This little piano shows your choice.

Clicks per beat — 1 on the beat, 2 for eighths, 3 for triplets, 4 for sixteenths.

A score counts as learned once a run reaches this grade, which schedules it for review. Lower the bar to mark scores learned sooner.

Your grades never drop — pieces just lose their shine until you refresh them. The kind default.

How many due pieces a review session offers in one go, so it stays a finishable batch rather than a pile.

Fetches every page on each visit, about a megabyte when a new version ships, so nothing is missing when you practise without a connection. Pieces you open are kept as you go.