Fortepiano
A Tiny Piano for Your Mac
Open it and play — your keyboard is the instrument. Record takes, export MIDI or audio, and replay them through 50 instruments.
See it play
Screenshots
Your keyboard is the piano
The home row is the white keys, the row above is the black keys — the same Musical Typing layout GarageBand uses, without opening a DAW. Z and X shift octaves, C and V adjust touch, and Space is a real sustain pedal. Keys are mapped by physical position, so any keyboard layout works.
50 instruments. 5 megabytes.
Grand piano, electric pianos, harpsichord, organs, guitars, basses, strings, brass, and synths — powered by the General MIDI sound bank already built into macOS. Fortepiano ships zero audio samples, which is why it's tiny and opens instantly. Cycle instruments from the keys with [ and ] without stopping playing.
Record once, export twice
- No dead air — the take clock starts at your first note, not when you hit record
- Notes and audio captured together — every take exports as MIDI or as sound
- MIDI opens in GarageBand, Logic, or Ableton with every note editable (Pro)
- WAV and M4A export for the takes you just want to share
- Replay through any instrument — record on piano, hear it as harpsichord (Pro)
Private by design
No accounts, no ads, no analytics, no network. Nothing you play leaves your Mac unless you export it. The App Privacy label says "Data Not Collected" because there is genuinely nothing to collect.
Free and Pro
Free includes all eight pianos, recording, and WAV/M4A export. Fortepiano Pro — a one-time $4.99 purchase, not a subscription — unlocks all 50 instruments, MIDI export, and replay-through-any-instrument.
Why "Fortepiano"? The fortepiano was the original piano — the first keyboard that could play both loud (forte) and soft (piano). This one fits in your menu bar's shadow.