I’m building the piano reference I needed when I was learning.

Origin

Why I built piano.org

When I started learning piano, I felt overwhelmed. There was so much to know and no clear place to start.

So I went looking. In middle school I’d go to the library and check out every book I could find on music theory and learning the piano. And I asked questions of every pianist I ever met, trying to understand what they could do that I couldn’t.

This site even existed back then, under a different owner. But it was the early days of the internet, and the technology wasn’t there yet for the kind of tools I was after.

The playing

Where the music comes from

I’ve played most of my life. I studied jazz piano with Ted Howe, a former Berklee professor and Summit Records artist, and I sat in on Berklee workshops and worked through their online ear-training courses.

I’ve played a lot of rooms. Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta. Disney’s EPCOT. A long residency at Von Maur. The dinosaur hall at Fernbank.

I’ve taught, too. Interactive-media courses at The Art Institutes, and private piano students on the side. For a while I sold pianos at Piano Distributors, the Southeast’s largest Yamaha dealer, and got to know every instrument from a starter digital to a concert grand.

The site

What makes piano.org different

Every chord, scale, and mode page has a keyboard you can actually use. Watch the notes light up. Hear them played. Toggle the fingering. Read it on the staff. All in one place.

Every page here is built to help you understand what’s going on under your hands, not just copy the shapes.

The build

Where the tools come from

I’ve spent my career around technology, too. A Computer Graphics degree from Purdue, years working with databases, a day job in e-commerce. That’s the part that let me take this on.

So I could finally build the tools I kept looking for, instead of just reading about them. piano.org gets made on nights and weekends, one piece at a time.

Connect

Follow along

Follow piano.org at @pianodotorg on Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. You’ll find me on LinkedIn.