Zen Harmonium
Harmonium, free in your browser
Play a harmonium online with a mouse, touch or your computer keyboard. The keys play one recorded Harmonium sound, chords included, and the drawn bellows and stops don't change it. The full-app link opens Play or Zen Piano on Harmonium too.
How to play
Click, tap or use a pen on any key, or play from your computer keyboard. On a touchscreen, several fingers play a chord together.
With a mouse, the keys show their computer-key labels. Typing in a field, or holding Ctrl, Alt or Meta, plays nothing.
Choose Song, then press Play, and Canon And Gigue In D Major, P.37 plays on the harmonium by itself. Melody plays its tune, and Classic VP plays a Virtual Piano letter sheet of it.
Its sheet in the Zen Library is in the public domain.
A held key sounds until its recording ends, after seven to ten seconds depending on the key, so a chord rings that long while you hold it. Let go sooner and the note fades out.
Only the keys on screen play, one to three octaves depending on the screen.
The harmonium
How harmoniums are built and played, with sources.
Reeds
A harmonium is a reed organ, also called a pump organ. Air pumped through its bellows passes over thin metal reeds, which vibrate in their frames. Alexandre Debain patented his reed organ under the name harmonium in the early 1840s.
Hand harmonium
Indian craftsmen made a much smaller harmonium from European designs. It rests on the floor, and its bellows are pumped with the left hand.
Stops
An Indian harmonium has banks of brass reeds, bellows, air stops (some for drones) and a keyboard like a piano's with fewer keys. Some models add an octave coupler, which links a note to another, usually the same note an octave above or below.
Music
In South Asia, the harmonium is most widely used to accompany singers. It plays in qawwali, in Hindu and Sikh devotional music such as bhajan and kirtan, in ghazal, and in North Indian classical singing such as khyal.
This page plays one recorded Harmonium sound on its keys. The bellows and stops drawn on wider screens are only a picture, and none of them changes the sound.
Before you play
About playing here, and what the full app adds.
No. The virtual harmonium runs online in your browser, with nothing to install and no account.
Sound starts with your first press. If the sound is still loading, the keys say so, and your next presses play once it's ready. If it can't load, a Try again button appears.
Yes. Press several computer keys together, or touch several keys at once on a touchscreen. A mouse plays one key at a time.
This page plays one recorded Harmonium sound, and no control on it changes that sound. The stops and bellows drawn on wider screens are only a picture. See “Stops and drones” above for what a real harmonium's stops do.
Its sheet in the Zen Library is in the public domain. Song plays it on the Harmonium sound, as its tune or as a Virtual Piano letter sheet.
Yes. On a phone, the keys fill the screen and several fingers play a chord together. Sound and Settings are in the toolbar, or in the header when the phone is sideways.
Songs and recording. Play, on a computer with a mouse or trackpad, has 16 instruments, 61 keys from C2 to C7, and three ways to learn a song: Magic Play, Demo and Practice.