Beat Kitchen Harmonic Synth vs Sequentia

BKS Harmonic is an additive synthesizer that builds sound from individual overtones, then gives you tools to shape, scan and filter them by harmony. Load it as an Audio Unit v3 inside AUM, GarageBand, Cubasis, Loopy Pro or any AUv3 host, or run it standalone. A TUNER THAT KNOWS ABOUT STRETCH 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 as you land on the pitch. It tunes against the stretch curve rather than equal temperament, so it follows a real instrument. Stretch shapes the overtones inside a note; Key Stretch makes the keyboard follow it, so octaves widen the way a piano's do. FOURTEEN TUNING SYSTEMS, AND A TEMPERAMENT EDITOR Equal and Just, five historical temperaments, and six from outside the European tradition including Maqam Rast, 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 you chose. Twelve bars show any system as cents away from equal; drag one to make the tuning yours, then copy it out as plain text. Tunings save with the preset. FIVE HUNDRED SCALES Searchable by alternate name: malkauns, nikriz, bhupali and freygish find the right set. THE PARTIALS ARE THE INSTRUMENT The partials display shows every overtone in your sound, and four tools work on it directly. FOLD sweeps upper partials below the fundamental, redistributing energy across harmonic layers — not a filter. The OVERTONE SCAN steps a spotlight through individual partials with triangle, saw or random patterns, and can visit only partials in the active scale. The HARMONIC GATE reinforces partials whose pitch class matches your chord and suppresses the rest: capture a chord, follow MIDI, split the keyboard, or pick the notes on the gate's own keys. SCULPT draws the level and pan of every partial, slides the curve up the grid as a formant, and locks partials in place while the rest moves. THE HARMONIC VOCODER Pass live input or a sample through the synth as an effect. Your sound travels through a bank of tuned peaking bells rather than being replaced by filtered noise: open the Air and the source stays dry, tighten it and the bands resonate into it. Key Track is the mode switch: on it plays as an instrument, off it is a fixed filter you can sweep. Aimed at a sample, the bands track that sample's spectrum as it evolves. One level-matched Blend control crossfades it against the oscillators. PULSE-WIDTH MODULATION 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. A preset in the Utility folder is ready to play. MODULATION A cog on almost every control, so the synth's own engine can drive nearly anything in the interface, including the display. Sources include velocity, envelopes, LFOs, how many notes you hold, how many oscillators sound, the synth's own output level, and Atmo, a shape driven by 84 years of barometric weather data from the Beat Kitchen Weather Sonification Project. Rates run from audio rate down to cycles that span years. THE SCOPE A stereoscope, oscilloscope, spectrum and a live per-partial display. Glow takes the trace from a hard line to a diffuse bloom, Colour sets the hue, Trace Speed and Dot set how it draws — and every one is a modulation target. Route velocity to Colour and the trace shifts as you play. LIVE INPUT A headphone button passes the side-chain straight to the output, so you can hear and see your input with nothing held: green when signal arrives, amber when a bus is connected but silent, red when nothing is. Resynth Speed locks a sample's playback speed to pitch, tape-style, or keeps them independent. Every control has a tooltip, presets work offline, and a harmony wheel follows what you play. One purchase, every update. Made by Beat Kitchen, a music production and teaching community.

Sequentia is a generative MIDI sequencer for synths, drum machines and modular. Add a module and it writes its own part: drums, basslines, arps, chords, melodies. Press Random and a full pattern is playing. Turn on Mutate and it keeps evolving while it runs. The pattern libraries are written for techno and acid, and the generative modules go further out than that. Seven finished demo tracks come with the app, to open and take apart. WHAT WRITES THE PARTS Drums, eight lanes, with the swing each genre actually has. Bass, sixteen styles from techno to dub to EBM. Acid, 303 lines that really slide. Chords and Arp, in your key, following each other. Stabs, from skank to rave. Piano, drawn by hand or written for you. Euclid, three rings at different lengths, drifting apart and landing together bars later. Rain, notes falling from a drizzle to a downpour. Bounce, physics balls playing your key off the walls. Sampler, your own loop, warped to the tempo and the key. Mod, LFOs that sweep your synth's knobs on their own. Vinyl, a record that turns while the rack plays. Mixer, to solo, mute and balance live. ONE STUDIO, YOUR WHOLE RIG Every module picks its own MIDI device and channel, so each machine gets its own part. MIDI over USB-C, Bluetooth or network. MIDI Clock keeps the gear in time. In Logic, Ableton and any other DAW the app is a MIDI source you can record straight onto a track. Leave the app and the music keeps playing, with the controls on your Lock Screen. MODULATE AND CONTROL YOUR HARDWARE Pick your machine from the library and its control map loads, ready to turn: over a hundred and thirty synths, grooveboxes and drum machines, every map read out of its own manual. Put an LFO on any of those knobs and it sweeps in time with the pattern. Arm the red R, turn a knob by hand, and the move becomes a loop locked to the bar. CC coming in works too, so a controller fires Random, Mutate, mutes and the transport. LIVE JAM Every module keeps pattern slots. Fill them as you go and switch on the bar, like clips. Live Performer is one pad for the whole rack: move a finger and every module answers at once with more density, new variations or a break. Fills, swing and humanize are a tap each, while everything runs. SCENES, AND A SET YOU CAN PLAY Save a section as a scene, put the scenes in order, and the timeline plays the set. Or switch scenes by hand while it runs. A project holds several racks, each with its own key and tempo, so a breakdown can sit lower and slower than the drop. ONE PROGRESSION, EVERYTHING FOLLOWS Write the chords once. The basslines, arps and stabs follow the changes. NO HARDWARE YET Every module plays through the app's own synth, free, so a whole track works with nothing attached. Load your own samples into the Sampler, or build a drum kit out of them. EVERYTHING IN ONE PROJECT Notes, patterns, scenes, samples, routing and arrangement live in one project that saves itself. Take the whole thing out in one step: the rack as MIDI, or every scene as its own folder, named so the session opens in your DAW making sense. Samples come with it if you want them. ON IPHONE AND IPAD One app for both. On the tablet the rack becomes a grid of cards you page through, three across on a 13 inch. Menus come in from the right and leave the instrument where it is. Open a module and it steps into the middle of the screen with its settings beside it. Landscape, for a stand and two hands. Turn iCloud on and the same projects, presets and samples are on both devices, in a Sequentia folder you can see in Files. Off until you switch it on. Sequentia is free, and so is the built in sound, Live Performer and CC Control. Sequentia Pro adds pattern slots, scenes, several racks, every drum style, your own libraries, unlimited projects and MIDI export. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://www.sequentia.studio/privacy