Beat Kitchen Harmony Wheel vs QUARK Play

The Beat Kitchen Harmony Wheel is a musician and producer toolkit — a tuner for chords and a measurement device for the vitals of the music in front of you. Point it at your mic or play it over MIDI, and it reads the harmony as it happens — the chord, the key, and the job that chord is doing. Works on piano, guitar, or recorded music with clear harmonic movement. It identifies each chord's role, not just its name, using the Beat Kitchen Ten Chord Toolkit (explained in the guidebook built into the app): the tonic (I) you keep coming back to, the IV that opens things up, the V that wants to resolve, a V/vi setting up a detour, a bVII pulled from the parallel minor. The matching wedge lights up as you play. What it does Hears chords from your mic in real time, right on your device — nothing leaves your phone Labels the wheel by function, not just by chord name: I, ii, IV, V, V/vi, bVII, and the rest Records what you played so you can study the path a progression took Tap any wedge to hear the chord Takes MIDI in, wired or over Bluetooth, with a built-in synth Locks to your key so the wheel orients to the music you're in A Learn tab that walks through what you're looking at If you've reached for a circle of fifths or a key finder before, you're in the same neighborhood — except this one works in real time, while the music is still playing. Producer Tools A tuner and a metronome, built for the studio. Check your tuning. Tap a tempo or let the mic detect it for you, then read it in BPM and in milliseconds for every subdivision — with your own click sound on each one. Watch the beat pulse from across the room and feel it in your pocket with haptics (iPhone). And because the wheel already reads your key in real time, it doubles as a key detector for DJs lining up harmonic transitions. Who it's for Producers, DJs, songwriters, students, and anyone who can tell a progression is doing something to them but can't always say what. You don't need to read music. You need to be curious about why a few chords in a row can move you. It's theory you can hear before you can spell it. Beat Kitchen is a school that teaches harmony by ear and by function first. Harmony Wheel puts that same way of listening on your phone.

QUARK Play easily transforms up to four iOS devices into a wireless, quadraphonic sound system. Place iPhones, iPads, and/or Macs around the space (or connect them to bluetooth speakers), hit play on the host device, and build a true, immersive surround sound environment anywhere. The Quadraphonic Universally Accessible Resource Kit (QUARK) is open source software used in Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and similar platforms to encode four channels of discrete audio into two channel (standard stereo) audio, then back to four channels again. This allows for the distribution of four-channel spatial recordings via widely accessible two-channel formats such as vinyl, cassette, and radio, as well as digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify, and Qobuz. QUARK is made possible by dublab & the National Endowment for the Arts.