Five drills on one playable keyboard. Name the lit key, find a named note, build an interval from a root, and spell whole scales and chords with your own hands. Every key sounds.
The piano keyboard is the clearest picture of music theory ever built. Every semitone is one key to the right, so an interval is a distance you can count, and a chord is a shape you can see. Even if the piano is not your instrument, knowing the layout makes every other theory topic easier — which is why conservatories teach keyboard skills to guitarists and singers too.
Black keys come in groups of two and three. C is always the white key immediately left of a group of two; F is always the white key immediately left of a group of three. Fix those two and the rest fall into place without counting from the end of the keyboard.
Name the key is reading: a key lights up, you say what it is. Find the note is playing: you are given a name and have to hit every place it appears. They are different skills and both are needed, so alternate between them rather than staying in the comfortable one.
The Interval, Scale and Chord modes ask you to construct rather than recognise — the harder half of theory practice, and the half most free drills skip. You are given a root and a name; you click the notes. A major third is always four semitones, a minor seventh always ten, from every root, so what you learn transfers immediately.
| Interval | Semitones | Chord | Formula |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major 3rd | 4 | Major triad | 0 · 4 · 7 |
| Minor 3rd | 3 | Minor triad | 0 · 3 · 7 |
| Perfect 5th | 7 | Dominant 7th | 0 · 4 · 7 · 10 |
| Minor 7th | 10 | Major 7th | 0 · 4 · 7 · 11 |
When the keyboard is automatic, take the same material to the page with the Sight-Reading Trainer, to the ear with the Chord & Scale Ear Trainer, and to the guitar with the Fretboard Trainer. For a free-play keyboard with no questions asked, use the Virtual Piano. The theory behind all of it is laid out step by step in the Music Theory Fundamentals path.