What to play on a new MIDI keyboard
You unboxed it, you plugged it in, you played the demo, and now you are sitting in front of 88 keys with no idea what to do.
Here are twelve pieces, ordered from easiest to hardest, with the real numbers attached. Note count, length, and the busiest 25 seconds of each one measured in notes per second. That last figure is the one that actually predicts whether a piece will feel impossible, and almost nobody publishes it.
You need a MIDI keyboard and Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Opera on a desktop or laptop. Safari does not support Web MIDI, and no browser on iPhone or iPad does either, because Apple requires them all to use Safari's engine. Full requirements.
Start here, first week
Gnossienne No. 1 is the surprise on this list. Six and a half minutes and only 755 notes, because Satie wrote it with almost nothing happening at once. It is the gentlest famous piece in the library and it sounds far harder than it plays. It has its own page if you want the detail.
Second week
Note what happens between the first group and this one. The note counts roughly double but the peak density barely moves. That is the difference between more notes and faster notes, and it is why Für Elise is approachable at 1,041 notes while a piece with a similar count can be unplayable. Chopin's Prelude Op. 28 No. 12 is 1,243 notes, roughly the same number, and it peaks at 27.2 notes per second instead of 9.2.
When you want to work at something
The one to aim at
176 beats per minute, right hand in semiquavers against a left hand in triplets. It is the piece most self-taught pianists point at as the moment it got serious. The numbers are here.
How to actually practise these
Play one hand. Klaviero plays the other. Learn the right hand against the recording until it is automatic, swap, then put them together. This is faster than both hands from the start and it is not close.
Then use Practice mode, where the chart waits for you, until you know the notes. Then switch to Rhythm mode, where it does not wait and misses count. The score only means something in the second one.
Where the numbers come from
Every piece above is in Klaviero, and every figure is measured from its chart rather than estimated. The full catalogue is at all 315 pieces, and if you want to see how these twelve sit against the hardest things in the library, that is ranked here.