STRING MODULE — a physical string with its own controls: Force, Ring, Body, Damp, Overblow, Modes and Break. OVERBLOW — push a string past its limit and it breaks into a higher register, the way a flute or a bottle does. It is a real break, not a fade. Lean in further and it climbs the harmonic series: octave, twelfth, double octave. Force sets how hard it breaks. BOW AND PLUCK — play the string by hand. Drag the bow, or click to place it; speed sets force. A stab re-attacks a note already ringing. CAPTURE — hold a chord and it stays silent until you strum it with the bow or a pluck, like an autoharp. Held notes show as dots on the keys. Hold Capture while you play to set the string's default pitch. SCOPE — the trace holds its position, and the window follows the note: one cycle at the bottom of the keyboard, more as you climb. ANALYSER — faster to react, low harmonics resolve separately, and the dense top of the spectrum reads as a shape instead of hash. PARTIALS AND FOLD IN THE POP-OUT — both now have full-size controls when the Partials panel is opened, for routing and adjustment by finger. Also: sliders no longer draw their handle over their own label, controls stay usable in small plug-in windows, and general fixes and improvements throughout.

MEASURE A REAL INSTRUMENT Press listen and Harmonic analyses what you play at it instead of its own output. It reports the pitch it hears, every partial's departure in cents, its level, and B — the single number piano technicians use to describe how stiff a string is, and the number that generates a whole stretch curve. Press A or B to keep that reading. The departures and the levels are both stored, the stretch detent moves to the instrument you just measured, and Sculpt can take the same slot's levels. So you can measure your own piano and play in its tuning. THE STRETCH DISPLAY A new view in the scope draws one note's overtones against the keys they land near, on a shared frequency axis. Each tooth's length is how far that partial sits from its pure harmonic, and the yellow line marks where the two systems meet. Hover any tooth for the partial, its departure, its key's departure, and the gap between them. Drag either comb by its handle to bend it — right stretches, left compresses through zero into negative. A lock ties the keyboard's curve to the overtones', and unlocked the two move independently, so the keyboard can compress while the strings stretch. Detents snap to an upright, a grand, a concert grand, or a loaded sample's own measured stiffness. Teeth, Dither and Grid control the drawing. Arm to solo, then hover a tooth to hear that one partial on its own. A SECOND CONVERGE Click the CONVERGE label. Going up, Converge 2 gathers the whole series onto the highest audible partial rather than spreading it without limit, so the spacing stays even and nothing runs past the sample rate. Going down, both laws gather toward the lowest partial, but Converge 2 arrives sooner. Set the Clamp ceiling first — that is what it gathers onto. Saved with the preset. A KEYED EXCITER The resonant engine's exciter can follow the keyboard, giving every voice its own carrier at that voice's pitch instead of one shared source. UNDO Undo and redo, including the first edit of a session. AN FX BUTTON One press applies the resonant-reverb recipe: audio in, live, full resynthesis, Sculpt on, fully resonant blend, excited by the loaded sample. Press it again and every value it touched goes back exactly as it was. THE TUNER Target mode latches a reference note and defeats the synth, so you hear only the thing you are tuning. It names the incoming pitch, and it now holds through the attack of a bass note — the part of a piano note where the reading matters most. SMALLER THINGS A slider label that is also a switch is outlined, so you can see which labels do something when you click them. The preset name field opens with the name selected, and has an x to clear it. Output volume is a mark on the level meter, opposite the limiter's. Shift bypasses and Option removes, everywhere. FIXED Sample playback is cleaner: no burst of level at the end of a read, no clicks while scrubbing, and notes are no longer cut short. Solo and mute reach the resonant engine as well as the additive one. IF YOU MISSED THE LAST UPDATE Key Stretch makes the keyboard follow the same curve the overtones do, so octaves widen the way a real piano's do. Fourteen tuning systems: equal and just, five historical temperaments, and six from outside the European tradition. The Temperament slider morphs between just and whichever system you chose rather than switching between them. A twelve-bar editor shows any system as cents away from equal - drag a bar to make it your own, and copy and paste move a whole tuning as plain text. The scale library passes five hundred entries and is searchable by alternate name. Type malkauns, nikriz or freygish and you land on the right set.

A TUNER THAT FOLLOWS A REAL INSTRUMENT Tune mode turns the scope into a tuner. It names the note it hears and shows how far sharp or flat it is in cents, with a ring that closes in as you land on the pitch. It tunes against the stretch curve rather than equal temperament, so it can follow a piano instead of an idealised one, and it works on anything you put through the input. KEY STRETCH Stretch has always shaped the overtones inside each note. Key Stretch makes the keyboard follow the same curve, so octaves widen the way a real piano's do. Detents for upright, grand and concert. FOURTEEN TUNING SYSTEMS Equal and Just, five historical temperaments (Pythagorean, meantone, Werckmeister, Kirnberger, Vallotti), and six from outside the European tradition: Maqam Rast, Maqam Bayati, Turkish Rast, Slendro, Pelog and the Harmonic Series. The Temperament slider is a morph, not a switch. Fully left is Just, fully right is whichever system you chose, and its name sits on the slider. Tap the name to change it. A TEMPERAMENT EDITOR Twelve bars show any system as cents away from equal: sharp above the midline, flat below, the exact value under each bar. Step through the systems and see what actually separates them. Drag a bar to make the tuning your own. Starting from Werckmeister and bending two notes is one gesture. Copy and paste move a whole tuning as plain text, so you can keep one in a note or send it to someone. Bar one is always the root, and the tuning rotates with the key. Tunings save with the preset. FIVE HUNDRED SCALES The scale library passes five hundred entries and is searchable by alternate name. Type malkauns, nikriz, bhupali or freygish and you land on the right set, even where it is a familiar mode under another name. New sets with all their modes: Todi, Malkauns, Hamsadhwani, Kalavati, Lalit, Pelog, Iwato, Enigmatic. PULSE-WIDTH MODULATION, THE OLD FASHIONED WAY Source 2 Phase spans a full cycle with detents at 90 and 180 degrees, and Phase, Pan and Blend are modulation destinations. Set the core to a saw and Source 2 to a saw: the two ramps subtract, which is what a pulse wave is, and the phase between them sets the duty cycle. Modulate it and you have PWM, built the way it was intended, with sawtooths. There is a preset in the Utility folder ready to play. GETTING AROUND Every module pop-up carries its name in a button at the top. Tap it to jump straight to another module, or use the arrows beside it to page through them. The keyboard stays live under a pop-up, and so do Latch and Panic, so you can hold a chord and edit with both hands. Deleting the last preset in a folder now removes the folder. FIXED Latch is now saved with the preset. Sculpt A and B shapes survive a preset recall. Saving a recalled preset updates it instead of making a copy. Sculpt partial levels respond more accurately. Double-click a Sculpt pan bar to centre it. Solo Partials, Mute Partials and Solo (view) are legible. Two of the three were below the minimum contrast for small text. An input bus that a host declares but does not feed could be chosen over the one carrying audio. The input meter in the standalone app. Touches landing in the wrong place on smaller iPads.

The Harmonic Vocoder - The resonator has been rebuilt as a vocoder. Your sound passes THROUGH a bank of tuned peaking bells rather than being replaced by filtered noise. Wide Air leaves the source dry; tighten it and the bands resonate into it, reaching a comb at the narrowest settings. - Key Track is the mode switch. On, the bands follow the keyboard and it plays as an instrument — chords, transposition, the Harmonic Gate, all of it. Off, it is a fixed filter you can sweep. - Point it at a loaded sample and the bands track that sample's spectrum as it evolves, so the resonance follows the sound instead of freezing a single moment of it. - It sits on the same Blend control as the oscillators, level-matched, so you can crossfade between additive synthesis and vocoding without the loudness moving. - Every synth control now reaches it: Transpose, Detune, Re-Excite, the Overtone Scan, Extended Fold and the Harmonic Gate all shape the vocoder exactly as they shape the oscillators. Input Monitor - A headphone button on the Live control passes the incoming side-chain straight to the output, so you can hear and see your input on the scope with no notes held. Green when signal is arriving, amber when a bus is connected but silent, red when nothing is connected. Set up a side-chain without guessing. The scope - Scope Glow: a hard line through to a diffuse gas-tube bloom. - Scope Colour: sets the hue, and the line, dot, trail, oscilloscope and spectrum all follow it. - All five scope controls are modulation targets, each with its own mod cog. Route Velocity to Scope Colour and the trace shifts colour with how hard you play. Modulation - Mod targets throughout the synth. Almost every control now carries a cog, so the synth's own engine can drive nearly anything in the interface — including the scope itself. - Out Level is a new modulation source: the synth's own output, fast to rise and slow to fall, so loud notes read as a pulse you can route anywhere. - Extreme ranges, from sub-atomic frequencies to earth weather patterns: LFO rates run from audio rate down to cycles that span years. BKS Harmonic now incorporates data from the popular Beat Kitchen Weather Sonification Project. Learn more on our website. Also new - Click the keys in the Harmonic Gate to choose which notes it gates against. No MIDI keyboard needed, and the selection saves with the preset. - Resynth Speed: lock a sample's playback speed to pitch, tape-style, or keep the two independent. Performance - The interface no longer freezes while monitoring live input. Worst frame: 3.6 seconds to 19ms. - Playing a note no longer overruns the host's deadline — the cause of dropouts and sync errors. - A third of the audio thread was spent comparing parameter names. That work is gone. - The scope draws as one figure — line, glow and trail from a single geometry, in curves rather than thousands of segments — so it stays smooth and locked together as pitch moves. Fixed - Blend no longer silences the synth when Sculpt is off (critical in 1.6.7). - Loading a sample no longer guts the resonator. - Folding no longer jumps an octave; lower octaves fade in. - The resonators are cleaner: steeper bands, less noise between harmonics, less bubbling. - The Harmonic Gate is consistent from note to note, and attenuates bands instead of deleting them. - A chord no longer makes the oscillators louder than the resonators. - Notes no longer click, or start loud and drop. - A deep transpose no longer makes the resonators disappear. - The oscillator meter no longer reads as maxed out when nothing is limiting.

New - Source 2 Pan: a stereo control that positions and widens Source 2 across the field (a rotation, not just a level balance), so left and right can carry distinct signal. - Stereoscope figures now hold: the Lissajous scope reads the signal before the DC blocker, so a held level parks the figure at a fixed point instead of snapping back to centre. The FFT and oscilloscope are unchanged. - Sculpt "Polarity Tri" reset: flips every other partial to 180 degrees (the triangle sign pattern) in one tap. Improved - One visual language for every waveform: the LFO shapes, Source 2 waves and sources, the Audio-In poly-LFO shapes, and the Sculpt Air sources now all use the same glyph set. - Source 2 shows a preview of the active source, with the source chooser unfolding over it. - Cleaner layout on landscape iPad: module controls no longer stretch edge to edge. - Saving a preset: the name field now shows a cursor, and you can name a new folder as you create it. - Sculpt: double-click a pan bar to centre it. - The version now sits as a line inside the Settings module instead of overlapping it. - Overtone Scan wave buttons show their waveform. Fixed - Blank screen on open: the plugin no longer comes up blank in some AUv3 hosts until you tap — it paints immediately on show. - Additional smaller fixes throughout.

New: - BKS Harmonic loads as an audio effect in hosts like AUM and Loopy Pro and processes incoming audio through the full engine. - A Partials view in the scope shows the per-partial output as you play. - Scope views are selected from a drop-down. - Presets download once and stay available offline. Fixed: - Switching to HD no longer leaves the partials above 24 at full volume on older presets. - HD and Extended Fold work independently again. - Formant sweeps are smoother, and the Morph slider no longer pops at the triangle detent.

BKS Harmonic can now run as an audio effect — load it on audio or instrument tracks in AUM, Loopy Pro, and Logic. New Formant control: sweep the partials into vowel-like shapes and lock the ones you want in place. A reworked Sculpt panel — the action buttons moved into their own row for an unobstructed drawing surface, with clearer pan editing (a center-detent bar and Center / Saw / Tri pan presets), a Copy-to A/B picker, and smoother touch editing. MPE support for per-note expression. Fixes: resolved a bug where editing Sculpt could collapse the stereo image to mono (panning now stays as you set it), and smoothed Formant sweeps (removed a faint clicking).

In our most ambitious update yet, BKS Harmonic now operates as a real-time audio effect, allowing you to mutate overtones and focus on hidden harmony inside anything you feed into its sidechain input. Fold, Sculpt, Overtone Scan, and Freeze all work on what you feed it, in full stereo. Also new: • Formant slides the whole overtone series up or down as a clean offset, with a finer response down low and a smoother attack so fast moves don't pop. The Overtone Scan follows it. • Paint the stereo field. Sculpt sets each partial's left-to-right position with the same gesture that draws the spectrum, and it saves with the patch. Width runs from mono up to a wide side-only image. • Morph between any two shapes. Copy a shape into a morph slot and cross-fade between pairs that don't sit next to each other. • Audition your samples — tap the play button on the Audio-In filename to hear the raw trimmed file without taking the patch apart. • Tap a partial to mute it. Overtone Scan skips muted partials, which makes the scan handy for shaping arps. • Smaller things: one-tap phase and pan resets, finer touch editing, and presets that save their sample with them. Fixes: the Bend Range slider works again (it was stuck at ±7), and a stray 293 Hz sub-tone is gone. Existing patches pick up the new panning on their own, and owners get the update free. Thanks to our testers (incl. Gav of Gavinski's Tutorials, Rolf, Fliiva, Josephine, Alee, Jon, Standish, and Christian).

Movement you can see, modulation you can read. Thanks as always to everyone playing and sending notes. This one is about seeing and steering the motion in your sound. New - LFO 2 is now per-voice — each held note runs its own copy, so chords shimmer and evolve independently instead of in lockstep (opt-in per route). - Motion in the partials matrix — held notes leave a live per-voice dot and fading trail, and a routed LFO traces its orbit, so you can watch modulation move the sound. - Modulation you can read at a glance — every mod source carries its own color and a tag for the module it lives in; tap the tag to jump to it. The Poly LFO now pulses at its rate in the picker. - Re-synth is now modulatable — route anything to the dry/re-synth blend. - Show help by default — a Settings toggle to keep or hide the scope's help readout. Fixed - Turning off Latch now stops the note and any noise it was making. - Tightened crowding in the Audio In panel and the top bar. - Partials hover-solo now starts off by default.

New - Poly LFO: a per-voice LFO that slowly scrubs through a frozen sound's spectrum for evolving, living pads. Choose the shape, rate, and depth, run it once per note or loop it, and route its Scrub Rate/Depth from the mod matrix. - Key Track for the sampler: play a loaded sound at one fixed pitch across the whole keyboard so a chord layers the same texture (drones, pads), or leave it on for a classic pitch-tracking sampler. - Fold now reaches below the fundamental on resynthesis for real sub-octave weight. - Save or share a preset together with its sound as a single bundle; a note marks presets that carry audio. - The spectral-freeze scrub (Rate and Depth) is now a mod-matrix destination. Improved - Redesigned Audio-In / sampler that fits one screen, with Freeze and Poly LFO up front and compact pitch controls. - A clear "Saved" confirmation whenever you save a preset, save a sample, or export a bundle. - A more playable Freeze: a lit Freeze button, an Off / 1-Shot / Loop mode, and a labelled Freeze Position. - Wider audio-file support and smoother sample loading inside a host. Fixed - More reliable free-trial and purchase handling. - Your Output level now governs the resynthesis / resonant layers. - Loading a sample no longer greys out in certain states, plus a couple of pop-up interaction fixes.

Thanks again to everyone sending feedback — one of you caught something important. Fixes • If you bought BK Harmonic before it went free, the app now correctly recognizes your original purchase and unlocks the full version automatically — no Restore, no re-purchase. (A longtime supporter reported being asked to pay again; thank you for the catch.) New & improved • During your free trial, premium modules now show a small PRO badge — so you can see at a glance which ones become a 10-second preview after the trial versus the always-free core synth. Under the hood • Sculpt bars are harder to knock out of place — a stray tap sets to 100%, and you drag past a marked unity line to push into the boost range. • "Freeze" is labelled consistently in the Audio In module. • Fixed a stray highlight that could stay lit after Overtone Scan was switched off. Keep it coming — more on the way.

Thanks to everyone who sent feedback — this update is almost all your suggestions. Fixes • Loading an audio file now works inside a host (AUv3) — the file picker was silently failing as a plugin. Fixed. (Thanks to the reviewer who flagged it.) • Sculpt double-tap is reversible — a second double-tap restores a flattened curve. • The Matrix "partials" readout now shows the real number of partials. • Expanded module pop-ups no longer close when you just miss the on/off toggle. New & improved • Report a Problem right from the app — Settings → Get Help. • Clearer free / trial status in Settings, and Restore Purchases now confirms what happened. • Brighter scope labels, and the high-contrast look is now the default. Keep it coming — more on the way.

Beat Kitchen Harmonic is now free to download. The core synth is free forever — the partials matrix, amp envelope, 400+ scale tuning, output, and full preset save & recall. Premium modules unlock with a 7-day free trial, then a one-time $7.99. No subscription. Already own the app? You keep everything, automatically — nothing to tap. New this release: • Source 2 band filter — one dual-thumb slider for lowpass, highpass, or bandpass • Freeze mod destination — sweep the Audio-In freeze point with an LFO or envelope • High-contrast accessibility toggle • Open Guidebook, Restore Purchases, and Unlock Full Version in Settings Plus a big batch of tester-driven fixes: AUv3 Key/Scale pickers work inside a host, corrected LFO2/scanner sync labels, save-safe Morph, bigger tap targets, and more. A true AUv3 — load it as a plugin in your host, or play it standalone.

Fixes and polish: - Key and Scale selectors now work in the AUv3 (running inside a host) - Bigger, easier-to-tap Gin/Tonic and Partials/Fold controls - Modulating the Sculpt Morph now works and saves correctly - Clearer LFO2 depth indicator - Smoother preset sharing

Presets are now real files you can organize. - Save sounds into folders and find them in the Files app - Open presets others share with you - Sampled presets keep their recorded audio - A cleaner Save screen - Source 2 now has its own Cutoff and Resonance filter you can modulate

Fixes for the iOS preset browser and file handling: the preset list no longer gets stuck filtered (with a clear button), the on-screen wheel no longer blocks the patch selector, Harmonic now appears when sharing audio files, and a new in-app Library browser lists your saved and imported samples. Plus the latest synth improvements.

Fixes a critical issue in 1.3.0 where the Audio Unit (AUv3) did not load in host apps and the app reverted to an older build. This update restores full AUv3 support in your DAW plus the latest features (audio record/import, expanded editor, sharing).

HD — our biggest update yet. The engine opens all the way up to 128 partials, with a zoomable editor so you can still shape a single partial by hand. New: record or import audio — capture a sound from the world around you, or load a file, straight into the harmonic engine and bring it to life as additive tone. Plus Extended Fold to blend the HD upper partials in and out, even levels across the whole keyboard, smoother pitch glides, and a classic view anytime you turn HD off.

Sculpt lets you draw the level of every harmonic by hand. In 1.2 you can hold two of those drawn spectra in an A and a B slot and morph between them: draw a bright, buzzy shape and a hollow one, then slide or automate across. That is direct control of the overtone series, one partial at a time. The rest of 1.2: - Presets are rebuilt into a real library. Search them, favorite them, file them into folders and sub-folders. Save and name your own on iPad, share one in a tap, and submit your best to be considered for the built-in set. - The modulation matrix is legible now, and you route it with your fingers: tap to connect, hold to set the amount. - The tighter editors (envelopes, sculpt, the matrix) open to a full-screen view when you need room. - A live per-partial Hz readout, a filter that now shapes the noise layer too, and an auto-gain that holds levels even across patches. Plus a round of fixes and iPad cleanup.

BKS Harmonic now works as an audio plugin. Load it as an instrument in Logic for iPad or GarageBand and play it right inside your session. It also records what you play — the on-screen keyboard and the harmony wheel send straight to your track as MIDI, notes and chords and finger-slides (MPE) included. Plus a browsable library of 400+ scales to play in, and fixes throughout. Brought to you by Beat Kitchen, your favorite music production community.