Volca Sample vs. the World

The Lounge Other Gear
#41

It’s a wonderous little box. I need to dust mine off. That new editor looks ace!
I just imported loads of synth hit sample chains into my Rytm. I’ll isolate the smallest hits for import to Volca Sample, along with some new drums.

The old Machinedrum trick of importing samples pitched up to save space should yield some fun lofi results after pitching back down with VS’ 32khz sample rate. I’ll bet there’s a good bit of mojo to be found there.

My wish for Korg to update it with midi program change receptivity probably won’t be answered, so I should just get on with manual program change when sequencing from Monomachine.
VS has got to be the cheapest solution for sequencing fresh drum samples with MnM.

#42

As great as the Volca Sample is for crunchy lo-fi sound, I’m impressed at how clean and “hi-fi” you can get the VS to sound. This was my first test with it with two sets of samples I made (I was preparing for a live performance so was using the VS just for these particular drum sounds.)

The first set is more acoustic Taiko type rhythms and Kitchen items and the second set more industrial.

3 Likes
#43

Something great about the sample that people may have missed as it isnt very well described in manual, isn’t shown in the official videos, and, at least when i got mine, you needed to update the system for it to work at all…
you can parameter lock each step
so rather than swoop around with parameters while the sequencer is running, you can enter values step by step, like the octatrack
except unlike the octatrack, the pitch (speed) control goes way more than ±1 octave!

1 Like
#44

jesus christ thank you clancy… just updated my volca, opens up a whole new world :astonished:

#45

Wait, whuuut? Can you do this with the sequencer running? Can you explain the process?

Just hold the step and tweak a knob?

powerful

#46

Is this what you’re talking about?

1 Like
#47

yeah you gotta update the firmware to v 1.3 to make it work

1 Like
#48

yep that’s it

#49

Volca sample rules. Just a shame it eats up so many midi channels :frowning:

#50

Insane innit. MIDI is fast becoming a dark art…

#51

Insane innit. MIDI is fast becoming a dark art… [/quote]
Yeh man, it would be such a sweet little drum machine to use with OT if it only took one midi channel :confused: Its cool that korg have thought about people wanting to send CC to each sample individually and giving each sample it’s own midi channel. But an option to just have the samples spread over notes on one channel would be next level…

#52

Just a heads up, Unique Squared is selling these “used” on EBay right now for $118. The last “used” item I bought from them was still factory sealed in the shipping box at a similar discount, so take that as you will.

Kinda been wanting a little something for couch jamming that wasn’t the iPad, and the monsoons right now make me too paranoid to leave my studio plugged in and I wanted something battery powered, so it’s a pretty easy impulse buy at that price. It’s a bummer about how they assign a sample per midi channel tho. I had a look at the midi CC chart, and it looks like nearly everything is controllable…and per channel? Should pair nicely with the Machinedrum then!

#53

These things are such bargains. I love self contained, intuitive grooveboxes such as these. Great for sofa jamming.

#54

…anyone else having lots of trouble transferring samples into their unit?

even resetting factory sounds ain’t happening for me - getting the dcod err message.

so frustrating.

#55

I got into hobby music production in '95 with an Akai S1100 and a handful of outboard gear, the Volca Sample has revived my method of working away from being glued to the DAW since 2005… the simplicity and workflow of the volca sample was enough to influence my Octatrack purchase. It’s been three weeks since my purchase and I’m quite happy, It took a while to figure out the workflow of the OT but after watching and reading for hours I’ve got it down… I’ve been mangling some of the volca sample patterns I’ve worked on but for the most part I’m extremely happy with what I’m coming up with on the OT alone. Too bad about the limitations of the volca, but it’s still worth it over all, it’s great as a drum machine to sync with the OT, or on it’s own a sketch pad, the simplicity is what makes it sound good. With DAW’s and the OT you can often stray away from keeping things simple, try to develop a discipline that the Volca provides as an example because of it’s limitations.

#56

Are your volumes set correctly? Max on your transferring device, min on the volca…

#57

Finally got round to updating my VS. Can’t get the step lock function to work tho. Feel like I’m doing everything the dude in the video is but it’s just not happening. Can someone lay out a quick Idiot’ s guide if they get a minute. Thanks.

EDIT -
I’m getting a weird behavior where if I hold a step and tweak it just results in the normal parameter change across all steps. But then if I turn on motion seq on/off afterwards then the plocks I just made are in place?! But the guy in the video seems to be able to change one step without changing others, while hearing his changes live with the sequencer running… Confused…

#58

Finally got round to updating my VS. Can’t get the step lock function to work tho. Feel like I’m doing everything the dude in the video is but it’s just not happening. Can someone lay out a quick Idiot’ s guide if they get a minute. Thanks.

EDIT -
I’m getting a weird behavior where if I hold a step and tweak it just results in the normal parameter change across all steps. But then if I turn on motion seq on/off afterwards then the plocks I just made are in place?! But the guy in the video seems to be able to change one step without changing others, while hearing his changes live with the sequencer running… Confused… [/quote]
Quick bump. No joy with this :frowning: Plock/automation behavior seems basically the same as it was. Can’t just hold a step and tweak a parameter to record the automation to that step only. The automation is recorded across full pattern/all steps, the same as it always did. Wondering if the update didn’t work properly or I’m missing something really simple. Although VS displays that it’s on latest version now and I’m basically mimicking what the guy in the video is doing…

#59

Finally got round to updating my VS. Can’t get the step lock function to work tho. Feel like I’m doing everything the dude in the video is but it’s just not happening. Can someone lay out a quick Idiot’ s guide if they get a minute. Thanks.

EDIT -
I’m getting a weird behavior where if I hold a step and tweak it just results in the normal parameter change across all steps. But then if I turn on motion seq on/off afterwards then the plocks I just made are in place?! But the guy in the video seems to be able to change one step without changing others, while hearing his changes live with the sequencer running… Confused… [/quote]
Quick bump. No joy with this :frowning: Plock/automation behavior seems basically the same as it was. Can’t just hold a step and tweak a parameter to record the automation to that step only. The automation is recorded across full pattern/all steps, the same as it always did. Wondering if the update didn’t work properly or I’m missing something really simple. Although VS displays that it’s on latest version now and I’m basically mimicking what the guy in the video is doing… [/quote]
I always did those p-locks without the sequencer running. When I had the sequencer running, I had trouble getting it to work, kind of similar to what you’re describing.

#60

Finally got round to updating my VS. Can’t get the step lock function to work tho. Feel like I’m doing everything the dude in the video is but it’s just not happening. Can someone lay out a quick Idiot’ s guide if they get a minute. Thanks.

EDIT -
I’m getting a weird behavior where if I hold a step and tweak it just results in the normal parameter change across all steps. But then if I turn on motion seq on/off afterwards then the plocks I just made are in place?! But the guy in the video seems to be able to change one step without changing others, while hearing his changes live with the sequencer running… Confused… [/quote]
Quick bump. No joy with this :frowning: Plock/automation behavior seems basically the same as it was. Can’t just hold a step and tweak a parameter to record the automation to that step only. The automation is recorded across full pattern/all steps, the same as it always did. Wondering if the update didn’t work properly or I’m missing something really simple. Although VS displays that it’s on latest version now and I’m basically mimicking what the guy in the video is doing… [/quote]
I always did those p-locks without the sequencer running. When I had the sequencer running, I had trouble getting it to work, kind of similar to what you’re describing.[/quote]
Thanks for the reply. Weird that you and I both couldn’t get this working like in the video. Looks ridiculously simple. It’s bugging me now… Will try again tonight and if no luck I’ll try to repeat the update in case something went wrong last time…