The AudioTheory software library will be expanding soon with the upcoming release of AudioTheory Piano Keys. This new piece of music theory software takes all the cool features you know and love form AudioTheory Guitars but reworks them it into a piano-focused package.

Yes, the idea for AudioTheory Piano Keys started a while back as an obvious expansion of the series – AudioTheory Guitars has an extensive library of interactive chords and providing the same thing for piano chords makes a lot of sense.

However, with AudioTheory Guitars you've also got the fretboard component and other tools optimised for transposition. My goal has been to provide piano-specific tools along these lines, so AudioTheory Piano Keys will be launching with a couple of brand new innovative features designed for visually explaining how the music you're playing works.

The first of these is the Scale Wheel. This is a circular diagram that visually shows how notes fit into scales. This works by locking the root note of the scale to the 12 o'clock position allowing the focus to be on the relationship between the notes.

It's a really useful way to understand how all scales of the same type follow the same pattern. The root note meanwhile is interchangeable and can be adjusted by spinning the wheel around as desired.

The idea here is to show how a note that's played fits into two scales at the same time. And also in real time! This is one of the application's more advanced features, but once you've got your head around the concept, it's an extremely powerful tool for helping write new songs or playing captivating progressions when improvising.

This works by having a second row of notes above the main piano. You can load the song key to the main display and then this second row shows the scale for the note that is currently being pressed. By default this filters against both scales, essentially meaning that the second row is showing you the subsection of notes that are both in the main song key and also in the key of the current note being played.

Of course alongside this you have all the useful features for note highlighting, viewing and playing scales and chords, and customising the application view as with AudioTheory Guitars.

Currently there is no finalised launch date as I'm still implementing the finishing touches, however things are on track to launch Summer/ Autumn 2021. Please look forward to this upcoming release!