piano Digital Piano App

Online Honky Tonk Piano

Honky Tonk Intensity

Mrs Mills
Afternoon Saloon
Two Bourbons Down
Bar Brawl

Play our online honky-tonk piano, and use the interface to choose which level of honky-tonk intensity you’d like to hear.

You can play by clicking on the notes with your mouse (or tapping with your fingers if you’re using a touch device like a phone or tablet), and by using the keys on your Qwerty keyboard. It’s also compatible with USB Midi device, simply plug it in and start playing.

What is the honky tonk sound?

When a key on a piano note is pressed, a hammer strikes against usually three separate strings to produce a characteristic piano sound.

If these strings aren’t kept regularly tuned by a professional piano tuner, they will slowly start to slip out of tune and that results in a sound that’s commonly referred to as a “honky tonk” sound.

You can hear a perfect example of the honky-tonk piano sound in this clip from the Lego Movie (2014), in a scene set in a wild west saloon. The pianist is playing a musical piece on a honky-tonk piano in the stride piano style, which is characterised by a left hand that plays a bass note on beats 1 and 3, and then a chord on beats 2 and 4, while the right hand plays the melody.

The sound is very commonly associated with saloons of the Wild West because many of these bars had pianos for entertainment, but they were rarely kept in good condition or regularly tuned which resulted in them having the honky tonk sound.

Our online piano on this page has 4 degrees of honky tonk intensity, which are explained in the table below.

Honky Tonk Intensity Scale

Label	Intensity	Description
Mrs Mills	10%	A slightly subtle detuned chorus effect. Perhaps not immediately obvious to an untrained ear. Named after the famous Mrs Mills piano used on several Beatles songs.
Afternoon Saloon	50%	The quintessential honky tonk sound. Imagine walking through a set of swinging batwing doors, on a sunny afternoon in a frontier town in the late 1880s.
Two Bourbons Down	75%	A very prominent detuned chorus effect. Everyone is having a good time and the music is flowing.
Bar Brawl	100%	It's the end of the night, and people have had too much liquor. The pianist is in full stride and dodging chairs and fists, as a bar brawl breaks out.

Mrs Mills Piano

One of the most famous pianos with a honky tonk sound is the Mrs Mills Piano, a vintage upright Steinway piano, which is found in Abbey Road Studios in London. It is named after Gladys Mills, an English pianist who frequently recorded on the piano at the studios.

The Beatles recorded many of their hit songs at the same studios, and you can hear it on tracks such as Lady Madonna and Penny Lane. The piano is deliberately kept slightly detuned to give it its distinctive chorus sound.

Share your thoughts

Let us know in the comments below - do you enjoy playing the Honky Tonk Piano? And what is your favourite level of honky-tonk intensity?