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Beat Kitchen Grand

A sampled Mason & Hamlin grand, recorded at Beat Kitchen. AU and VST3, macOS.

This is not a free download, and installing it is not enough to use it.

Beat Kitchen Grand is in closed testing. The piano stays silent until it is activated, and it can only be activated by a tester who has been given access. There is no trial, and no public release yet.

If you install it without a tester account, it will load and make no sound.

Getting access

Testing is invite-only while the instrument is being finished. Ask in the Beat Kitchen Discord if you would like to be considered. Access is granted by hand, one person at a time, and the number is deliberately small.

If you already have access

Download for macOS 1.6 GB · always the current version

The installer contains the AU, the VST3 and the sample library. Install it, open the plugin in your DAW, and type your Discord username in the activation panel. A six-digit code is posted to a private thread in the Beat Kitchen Discord support channel; enter it and the piano loads. Each tester can use three machines.

Have Discord open before you press the button — the code expires after ten minutes.

If the installer will not open

The download link is signed and stops working about an hour after you click it. A slow connection, or pausing and resuming, can end the transfer early — and a half-finished installer still looks like a normal file in Finder. It just refuses to open, or fails partway through.

Check the size. A complete download is 1,700,566,161 bytes (1.6 GB in Finder). If yours is smaller, that is the whole problem.

Fix it by clicking the download link again rather than resuming the old one. Resuming reuses the expired link and fails the same way.

To be certain, in Terminal:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/BKS-MH-Piano-0.4.0-beta-macOS.pkg

It should print bfa50fcccf11b46e5e885352d12deb9b3d9fa0384d1d60f75313f33bf6dc6044.

Already installed an earlier build? Run the installer again. It replaces the previous version in place, and your projects and activation carry over.

Plugin-only downloads, for testers who already have the sample library installed: AU · VST3

Beat Kitchen At-A-Glance

Beat Ktichen Calendar

See the full calendar
Recent Resident Gyms
- THEORY-GYM: Worked through the chord changes to "Sweet Lorraine" (B♭ jazz standard), mapping the full A-section progression and identifying the harmonic devices that create its characteristic chromatic motion — including secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, diminished passing chords, and the use of the iii chord as a stand-in for the I. Also addressed left-hand piano voicing technique: how shells (thirds and sevenths), tenths, and the "drop assassination" vs. "sneak attack" approach connect directly to the voice leading inside those changes.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed a hip-hop track built around stutter edits and an Aretha Franklin piano sample, with discussion of lo-fi authenticity, kitsch production aesthetics, and how to commit to a retro sound without tipping into parody. Explored stutter-editing techniques in Logic Pro — including the Beat Breaker plugin and manual cut-based approaches — and compared them to a buffer override plugin used by one of the students. Also searched Logic Pro's legacy instrument library for a Farfisa organ sound to illustrate a tonal direction for a separate piece in progress.
- OFFICE HOURS: Covered lead sheet and chart-writing fundamentals — including form notation, repeat signs, segno/coda navigation, and fitting a full arrangement onto a single page — using a Michelle (Beatles/jazz standard) chart as a worked example. Discussed drum kit curation workflows in Logic Pro, specifically how to audition and assemble multiple kits before committing sounds to Drum Machine Designer. Also ran a live vocal review session, listening for pitch offenses in two harmony parts drawn from a live dress rehearsal recording.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Covered guitar reverb gating techniques, including sidechaining and region-based approaches for controlling reverb tails in performance and post-production contexts. Worked through Logic Pro flex pitch and audio quantization workflows, with a focus on how to isolate regions before applying flex to avoid unintended timing drift. Also examined the lead sheet for the Beatles' "Michelle" — its chord content, key ambiguity, and the form notation (D.S. al Coda, repeat signs, segno) required to navigate it on a single page.
- OFFICE HOURS: Worked through a song revision with Christian, focusing on song structure, melodic differentiation between sections, harmonic rhythm, and the "cotter pin" problem — the moment where a pre-chorus and chorus share nearly identical chord progressions and melodic contours, making the transition between them feel stagnant rather than like a lift. Also covered a Logic Pro SMPTE-lock technique for safely halving tempo without displacing regions, and addressed a mixer visibility bug.
- THEORY-GYM: We explored the jazz "real book" tradition — the corpus of standards, show tunes, and select pop songs that jazz musicians have historically drawn from — and examined why certain non-jazz songs earn a place in that lexicon. Using Michelle (Beatles), Yesterday (Beatles), and a Stevie Wonder song as case studies, we analyzed what harmonic features make a song attractive to jazz interpretation: four-note chord voicings, two-five-one progressions, stand-ins and substitutions for the five chord, and the absence of a dominant chorus structure. We also walked through how to read a lead sheet, including repeat signs, codas, and D.S. al Coda navigation.
- OFFICE HOURS: Worked through a live demo build of a custom synthesizer instrument, exploring string partial modeling, formant locking, and granular playback modes. Covered the acoustics of formants — how resonant peaks define vowel sounds and how locking formants enables pitch-independent vowel shaping. Also explored routing limitations when combining live audio input, sample playback, and the vocoder-style excitation path, identifying a specific bypass architecture needed to resolve the conflict.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed submitted beats from multiple students, including pieces by Paul and John, and spent extended time on detailed feedback for Josephine's track. Also demonstrated formant shifting using a custom-built plugin called Harmonic, walking through how formant sculpting and spectral shifting work in practice.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Covered bass-line thinking and how to approach bass as an instrument versus emulating it on keys, with a walkthrough of walking bass lines, landing chord tones on strong beats, and directional scale motion. Worked through the caterpillar exercise in depth — shell voicings, third-stacking, and chord substitution — as a framework for building keyboard facility in any key. Also addressed producer perspective: the risks of over-producing familiar material, the limits of metrics-based listening, and how perception shapes what we hear versus what is actually there.
- OFFICE HOURS: Covered a real-world case study in salvaging a poorly recorded garage demo: stem splitting for drum replacement/triggering, cymbal replacement using personal one-shots, re-amping guitars through virtual amps, high-passing for bleed reduction, and heavy vocal processing including noise removal, tuning, saturation, and slap-back delay. Also discussed audio delivery formats (bit depth, streaming platform requirements), Reaper workflow tips for cross-project plugin copying, mastering consistency across singles and albums, drum programming philosophy for producers, and drum fill construction for non-drummers.
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Resident Events
- Weekly Beat Challenge: Nathan
  Oct. 19,
- Office Hours: Scott Hampton
  Oct. 19,
- Instrument Gym: Jon Mattox
  Oct. 19,
- Theory Gym: Nathan
  Oct. 20,
- Office Hours: Nathan
  Oct. 20,
- Production Gym: Kallie
  Oct. 20,
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Courses
- Oct 21, 2026 Mixing: Effects, Synths & Tools
- Nov 7, 2026 Logic Pro 1-Day Intensive
- Nov 10, 2026 Mixing: Effects, Synths & Tools
- Nov 18, 2026 Mix Incubator
- Nov 25, 2026 Production Incubator
- Nov 29, 2026 Mixing: Effects, Synths & Tools
- Jan 5, 2027 Recording Incubator
- Jan 19, 2027 Synthesist
See All Courses
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