# Piano sound and volume

A sampled piano plays every key you press, with its own volume, separate from the metronome — and a gong when the drill moves to a new key.

## A piano in the browser

Every key you press, on a MIDI keyboard or on the screen, plays a recorded piano note. The samples cover six octaves, from C1 to C7, and several notes can sound at once, so chords ring as chords.

This matters most with a MIDI controller that has no speakers of its own: the app becomes its sound. If your keyboard has speakers, you can turn the app’s piano off in Preferences with **Play piano sound when pressing keys** and hear only the instrument.

## The sound settings

The **Audio** section of [Preferences](https://pianokitty.com/preferences) holds all of it. The piano and the metronome have separate volume sliders, from 0 to 100, so the click never drowns out the chords, or the other way round. Zero silences either one.

**Audio feedback on key change** plays a gong when the key changes on its own: when a scale drill walks through all the keys, or when a progression moves on after its repeats. You hear the change without looking at the screen.

How the metronome counts — a click, a flashing tempo number, or both — is on the [metronome page](https://pianokitty.com/features/tempo).

![The Audio section of Preferences: piano sound and the key-change gong ticked, the piano volume at 70, the metronome volume at 50, and the metronome style set to audio and visual.](https://pianokitty.com/features/en/sound/settings.webp)

## When the browser keeps quiet

Browsers do not let a page play sound until you have clicked or pressed something on it. Until then, the speaker icon in the practice screen’s bottom bar is highlighted and says the sound is muted by the browser. Click it once and the piano plays. Any other click or key press on the page does the same.

> No sound at all? Check that the page is not muted in the browser tab, then that the piano volume in Preferences is above zero.

## Hear it

- Try it: [Audio preferences](https://pianokitty.com/preferences): Piano sound, volumes and the gong.
- Try it: [Play a few chords](https://pianokitty.com/app?subject=chords&ct=0&inv=0): Major triads, root position.

Related: [Plug your piano in](https://pianokitty.com/features/midi.md), [The metronome, and the ladder](https://pianokitty.com/features/tempo.md), [Look, sound and comfort](https://pianokitty.com/features/look-and-feel.md)

Source: https://pianokitty.com/features/sound