Synthesis

BKS Harmonic is a music-theory-aware additive synthesizer — a sound is a stack of partials you reshape directly. The whole layout at a glance, and how the modules fit together.

Sound as vibration, the harmonic series, why synthesis matters. How every synth — hardware or software — manipulates the same physics.

What sound is, how frequency and amplitude work, and why the harmonic series determines the timbre of every instrument — the physics behind EQ, synthesis, and mixing.

The most slept on waveform in audio.

You have a choice when it comes to engaging a filter.

(beep) - What’s happening here might not be exactly what you think.

The heart of BKS Harmonic — the glowing pad where you set how many harmonics are open (vertical) and how the series folds across octaves (horizontal). Plus solo mode for hearing each partial.

How EQ works: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, shelf, and parametric filters explained — frequency, gain, Q, resonance, and the subtractive approach to shaping sound.

The three controls that make BKS Harmonic what it is. Fold pulls the harmonic series down through the octaves, Gin lets the sub-fundamental layers sound, and Tonic keeps them anchored to the root.

Where synthesized sound comes from — oscillator types, waveform shapes, and the harmonic recipe behind each one.

The scope is how you watch a sound being built. Oscilloscope, FFT, vibrating string, harmony, and a per-partial info readout — and why each view earns its place.

ADSR envelopes explained: attack, decay, sustain, release — how filter and amplitude envelopes shape synthesizer sounds from plucks to pads.

Four controls for finer spectral shaping — Re-excite, Converge, Phase, and Clamp. Where the matrix sets the broad strokes, these reach in and rearrange the partials themselves.

LFOs, vibrato, tremolo, detuning, unison, and glide — the tools that make static sounds come alive.

Sculpt is hands-on spectral drawing: per-partial level bars, a Morph slider that sweeps between classic waveshapes, and a Blend that crossfades the whole sound into resonant noise.

Subtractive, FM, wavetable, and granular synthesis compared — how to build patches from scratch, and what 'analog warmth' actually means in technical terms.

The overtone scan sweeps focus across the partials you've built — not adding new notes, but bringing the components already in the sound in and out of focus over time.

A second envelope that shapes only a chosen group of partials — so part of the spectrum can swell in, click, or fade away on its own timeline, independent of the note's main volume.

The music-theory move: boost the partials whose pitch matches the chord or scale you're playing, so the timbre reinforces the harmony. Play in key and the sound follows.

How synthesizers work — from oscillators to algorithms. Platform-agnostic concepts you can apply to any synth, any DAW, any era of electronic music.

Morphing between snapshots of waveforms. Single-cycle waves, wavetable position, the PPG Wave, and modern wavetable engines like Vital — where the boundary between synthesis and sampling dissolves.

Where the synth's music-theory roots show: choose pure just intonation or equal temperament, stretch the partials into piano-like inharmonicity, and thicken with unison.

Samplers as synthesizers, single-cycle waveforms as oscillators, the Fairlight and S1000, MPC-style chopping, and where sampling ends and synthesis begins.

They say monsters aren’t real, but I’m not so sure.

It’s only a matter of time before you’re humbled by someone with far less resources than you creating at a very high level.

Here’s a little tip to help you find your way around a synthesizer.

Today in office hours I helped one of our students conform some of their free playing onto a tempo grid.

I don’t give a rat’s ass if you use presets or not.

When musicians talk about the sustain of an instrument, The sustain, listen to it.

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to impress you with my pitch.

Those of you who are making risers in your music are going to want to have a listen to this.

Within the lexicon of recording and mixing, the concepts of phase and polarity are similar enough.

This cable goes one way.

Before we begin to discuss delay, echo, and reverb, let’s take a second to talk about the Haas effect.

Check this out and tell me if it makes sense to you.

When you’re working in the box, you enjoy a luxury, which is that all of your plugins and settings snap to attention as soon as you open your session.

When two signals run out of phase, they cancel.

The EQ in your DAW may have an edge over even some of the most coveted recording discs, but only if you know how to take advantage of it.

A guide to BKS Harmonic — the music-theory-aware harmonic synthesizer. Additive synthesis built around the harmonic series, the partials matrix, gin and tonic, the overtone scan, and the sculpt and resonant engines.

A second sound source under the partial engine — noise, a classic oscillator, or a detuned double of the whole matrix. With its own tuning and filter, it adds body, grit, or width.

The familiar cutoff-and-resonance filter, plus three twists tied to the rest of the synth — Scan tracking, keyboard follow, and a Pluck transient.

Simulating real instruments through math — exciters, resonators, waveguides. How a computer can model a plucked string without a single sample.

The main amplitude envelope — standard ADSR plus a Fade for piano-style decay and VCA/VCF amounts that decide how much the envelope shapes the volume and the filter.

Feedback, delay as pitch, ring modulation, vocoders. When effects stop processing and start generating.

The system that drives everything else. A second LFO and envelope, performance sources like velocity and the mod wheel, and a mod matrix that routes any of them to almost any control.

The final stage — transpose, stereo width, drive, level, pan, and velocity sensitivity, plus mono-sum and auto-gain for keeping patches consistent.

Creative constraints for building synthesis skills — no-oscillator patches, one-voice drum machines, timed patch challenges. Constraints breed creativity.

The built-in finishing chain — EQ, delay, and reverb — color-coded so they read apart at a glance. Enough to make a patch sit in a mix without leaving the synth.

The everyday housekeeping — browsing and sharing patches, the PANIC and RAND buttons, and the Settings panel for glide, polyphony, pitch bend, and getting help.

Live course covering EQ, compression, reverb, delay, subtractive synthesis, gain staging, signal chain, and mastering — small groups with a real engineer, weekly sessions in any DAW.

Every triad contains an implied harmony one octave and a fifth above it. Multiply any frequency by three and the overtone series is at work.

We can’t teach you how to mix, nobody can.

The goal of the upcoming musician basics elective is to get you to recognize that you can stack a bunch of notes together and create a chord.

Is a sampler a synthesizer?

It doesn’t matter what your jam is, even if you’re in a math rock, what moves you isn’t numbers, it’s music.

Here I am at the beach.

When dialing in an equalizer, it’s helpful to think of the workflow is happening in two stages a targeting step and an adjustment step.

Phase in 60 seconds, let’s go.

Is a sampler a synthesizer?

84 years of barometric data from NOAA, sped up 26 octaves. Every hurricane, every northeaster, every season — turned into sound.

Avoid misunderstanding phase by asking yourself: could a waveform exist across a cylinder? Where polarity and phase differ, it matters.

We see both experienced and beginner producers at Bee Kitchen.

Who needs synthesis, right?

The practical application of a multiband compressor comes into focus when you consider not just how it differs from a regular compressor, but how it differs from a traditional equalizer.

Easiest way to start to understand tuning is to begin with the idea of a unison.

If you’re thinking about joining a Beat Kitchen class, or actually if you’re thinking about getting into music production at all, here are three things I don’t care about, and you shouldn’t do there.

Check this out and tell me if it makes sense to you.

Side chains are overrated.

One thing that tends to confuse new engineers is the difference between phase and polarity.

Reverb. I am brimming with things that I want to say about reverb. There’s no way I can put this into 60 seconds, but effects mixing and synthesis starts next…

It doesn’t matter what your jam is, even if you’re in a math rock, what moves you isn’t numbers, it’s music.

If you know someone who’s making cool beats but they’re still adjusting stuff by ear, getting things sounding good without entirely understanding what those settings are doing, their success relies as much on luck as it does on skill.

A sawtooth wave, a mod wheel, and the space between equal and just tuning. The harmonic synthesizer crossfades between temperaments so intervals drift like a real string player.

What started as a way to visualize the harmonic series turned into a harmony-aware additive synthesizer. It folds overtones across octaves, tracks scales from partials, and does things conventional synths can't. Free on our website.

The topics in this 10-minute video include the harmonic series and the physical nature of sound.

With or without an audio degree, you wouldn’t be the first musician to come to me, never having been told what key tracking is and what it’s for.

These two passages are indeed different and then stumped my ear training group in gym.

Our community is deeply divided.

There’s sort of a secret reason engineers use pop filters.

Logic doesn’t have a straightforward way to apply an LFO across a bunch of parameters.

So basically the way our classes work, we try and get you in and out of a DAW class as soon as humanly possible because we want to get to the fun stuff, the interesting stuff.

You could imagine the way this space sounds.

There is a myth that’s pervasive around here, which is that people can teach you how to mix.

If my recent videos on things like compression have helped you crystallize those concepts, you should consider joining our class.

Even if you have no interest in electronic music, if you want to get into music production, the language of synthesis is the language of sound.

Free 26-chapter guide to effects, synthesis, and mixing — from sound waves and EQ through compression, reverb, stereo imaging, and mastering. From Beat Kitchen School.

What’s your first upgrade or purchase once you’ve set up the bare bones minimum for your studio?

An additive synthesizer that builds sound from the harmonic series. Fold harmonics, scan overtones by scale, gate partials by chord. VST3 and AU for macOS and Windows.