Korg Volca FM

The Lounge Other Gear
#41

The volca form factor isn’t one I enjoy in all honesty but they do sound great. This one and the sampler are right up my street.

So with Korg killing it with these volcas and minilogue I wonder if they might take things further. Roland, for example, came out with the JD synths so imagine some volca based hybrid bringing everything into one workstation with higher polyphony, multimbral, multitrack sequencing but in something like the Minilogue form factor!

I mentioned on the Sonic State video how impressive Tatsuya Takahashi comes across in the various product presentations and interview/chats he’s done. Looks to me like someone who is going places in the echelon’s of synth lore!

#42

I’m going back and forth on whether to get this Volca FM. I don’t care about the low number of presets or 3-note poly - I’ve got a workstation keyboard with considerably greater preset and sequencer memory for auto-playing entire compositions.

However it looks like I need to order another set of Eneloop rechargeable AA batteries.

#43

I’m going back and forth on whether I should get two straight off the bat, or just get one to begin with.

#44
#45

hoping the sliders can be motion sequenced, though it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if not. they don’t conform to the ‘translucent stuff can be motion sequenced’ rule …

1 Like
#46

Take that, all you “FM is nothing but 80s ballad piano” haters

#47

This little thing is seriously one of the best new things at NAMM. I’m not all that big on the Volca series, but this thing is so much fun to tweak that it’s not hard to get lost in it. Buying one of these as soon as they hit the market.

#48
#49

32 patches, 16 sequences… hmm can you sequence patch changes? :alien:

also, looking forward to finding out more about the WARP feature on the seq…

#50

I seriously haven’t seen or heard anything else out of NAMM that I want but this is brilliant. To me, this is Korg proving beyond a doubt that they get it. They get how to make a fun, affordable synth that everyone wants. Or, at least, Tatsuya Takahashi does.

#51

Take that, all you “FM is nothing but 80s ballad piano” haters[/quote]
woah, what idiot said that? Obviously someone who has never heard Autechre?

#52

Seeing as how Korg has been solid and reliable with a full MIDI CC# spec on previous Volcas (not withstanding spreading it across 10 MIDI channels on the Volca Sample)… this should make a wonderful 3-voice FM module to be sequenced and sampled by OT.

#53

ya I was thinking the same thing, but apparently there’s a bug with OT sequencing that could hamper the fun …
it seems that, unlike the MnM, the OT sends the note data first and then a split second or so later sends the CC data … so you get glitches, some paramaters glitching more obviously than others I would imagine. The MnM doesn’t do this, and handles CC data correctly. This is what I was informed by a user in a MnM v OT sequencing query thread I made recently, so maybe anyone reading should do some research on this themselves to confirm - since I haven’t used the OT in this way myself yet.

#54

I’ve never experienced any problems sequencing external synthesizers with the OT, even using extensive CC and note information. I don’t get enough CCs from one track, so usually I dedicate two tracks to a single synthesizer.

Is this possibly one of those “splitting hairs” type assessments?

#55

I never had issues with my OT sequencing external MIDI gear either and I make extensive use of CC# on most of my sequences.

#56

Me too.
OT + Yamaha RM1X + Microwave XT combo = no issues, works great.

#57

Only tried it a handful of times but no prob here with OT + external hardware. Volca keys, m20mini, mininova, Ipad. With various amounts of CC data. All fine.

#58

Baseck’s the man! Totally GASsing for one of these puppies (and that Make Noise 0-Coast) pretty badly. Was just about to drop the $$ on a built PreenFM2, but this looks way more fun, imho!
Curious about that “warp” feature as well.

#59

Take that, all you “FM is nothing but 80s ballad piano” haters[/quote]
woah, what idiot said that? Obviously someone who has never heard Autechre?[/quote]
I did, kinda. I was mainly lamenting the lack of polyphony. Clangy techno and autechre style FM is great, but so are the delicious plastic pianos and pads. :slight_smile:

#60

haha, I thought someone said FM was only 80s epiano… I agree with you though, I fkn love FM electric piano sounds.