Beat Kitchen Harmonic Synth

BKS Harmonic is our twist on additive synthesis — we call it harmonic synthesis. It's a wildly flexible creative tool, capable of lush, airy pads and glitchy sound design, built on an engine made to visualize and teach how sound works.

Harmonic sidesteps traditional filters entirely: you shape the overtone series by hand, drawing each partial's pitch, level, and place in the stereo field.

It starts with Fold. Folding turns the harmonic series upside down — moving upper partials below the fundamental so a thin, bright tone gains weight, body, and a sub that wasn't there before. Small amounts thicken a sound; larger amounts rebuild it from the bottom up. With nearly limitless modulation and routing and 454 scales and modes to work with, the overtone series becomes a harmonic playground.

In addition to being a wild synthesizer, Harmonic now operates as an audio effect. Feed it an imported sample, a live mic, a guitar, or a track: play chords and hear them resonate inside your own sound, or set moving, panning vectors that turn what you play into harmonies you haven't heard yet. Fold, Sculpt, Overtone Scan, and Freeze all work on what you feed in.

Harmonic's engine is visual and hands-on. Drag the partials to reshape the spectrum and watch them respond as modulation moves through them, while the scopes and meters track the sound as it changes.

Runs on its own or as an AUv3 plug-in in AUM, GarageBand, Cubasis, Loopy Pro, and other hosts.

BKS Harmonic is a sound designer's secret weapon, a mad scientist's playground, and a fun, musical way to play with the overtone series.

Beat Kitchen is a producer's space where music nerds meet live every week, learn, and play with stuff like this.