Korg Volca Keys

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have made my first purchase in the world of synthesizers. In one fell swoop, I purchased a Korg Volca Beats and a Korg Volca Keys.

The cool thing about the Korg Volca line of devices is that they aren't too pricey and they are meant to be chained together. That is, you have a drum beat going with the Volca Beats and you have a cable that goes from it to the Volca Keys. When this connection is made, the two devices sync up in terms of tempo (I think in this orientation, the Beats is in control of the tempo so changes to that automatically adjust the Volca Key). It helps with coordinating your different musical tones. Maybe this would come into play for live performances especially? Beats me. (pun intended)

Now, I'm super new at this and, what's helpful when you're new at something? Tutorials! I've mentioned Syntorial, in a previous post, and that's really helpful in terms of the general concepts of synthesizers but, for my latest purposes, I'd really like a specific guide to the Korg Volca Keys.

I found the manual but that only does so much, you know? I mean, sure, it defines all the knobs in 4 languages but it doesn't really help me understand how to use them together.

That's the thing about synths, and I've probably mentioned this before, the tricky part is that it's not just knowing what a knob does but how it interacts with the other million knobs.

And a real tutorial I found: Tony Horgan's Korg Volca Keys - The Expert Guide. Although I've only gone about a third of the way through it, I can firmly recommend it. It goes through each dial and section individually and discusses how each of the settings work with respect to one another. It has fantastic pictures and diagrams, and it even has sound clips to complement the written description.

Horgan has a whole line of books dedicated to the Volca line so once I finish the Volca Keys book, I'll move onto the Volca Beats. 

I worry that with this discover of easy tutorials, it may have just opened the possibility for a more expensive hobby...

But, yes, if you have to be looking for a great book regarding specifically the Korg's Volca line, check out Tony Horgan's books.

On final note, I thought it was fun in that some of the things Horgan discusses were things I have already seen through Syntorial, so I can really understand how those concepts are implemented in other devices.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Very Sus chords in Sonic Pi

Bottom line: Use Suspended chords (aka sus) like Sus2 and Sus4 to add a bit of tension before releasing to a major or minor chord. So you've got a number of ways to play chords in Sonic Pi. You could use any of the following (I'm adding the sleeps in there so you can copy/paste into your Sonic Pi window) play_chord([60,62,67]) # provide the number which correspond notes (where middle C == 60) sleep 1 play chord(:C3, :major) # provide chord name sleep 1 play_chord([:C, :D, :G]) # provide the names of the notes you want to use  sleep 1  play 60 # play the notes individually without sleeps between them play 62 play 67 For the purposes of the rest of this post, I'll use the second form cause it's compact and we can see the numbers. ------------------------------------------------ Now, we've got major chords, and the music theory the notation is 1-3-5 (ie Base Note + 3 + 5). Similarly, we've got minor chords with the notations 1-2-5. In Sonic Pi l...
Read more

Sonic Pi and Play

Bottom-line: You aren't restricted to whole numbers when it comes to the play command; the microtones possible can yield some really fun results. --------------------------------------- Hello hello! The first thing you learn when starting Sonic Pi is the play command. I won't rehash the tutorial , if you aren't familiar with  play  check it out - it's solid. What I wanted to write about today was something I noticed when writing a post about chords .  When playing notes, you can provide the name of the note or the number that corresponds to that key on the keyboard. 60 is C, for example. What's 61? D? Nah, C#/D♭. 62 is D.   And that makes sense cause you're just moving up the keys on the keyboard.  But then it got me thinkin'....what about 60.5? Boom. It works. And this makes total sense too. After all, Sonic Pi is a programming language and why wouldn't it allow you to use all sorts of numbers for inputs? We can use 0.25 as a valid sleep  value, rig...
Read more

Rolling High Hat Trick with Sonic_Pi

Welcome, readers! I learned a neat trick for spicing up a high hat and a kick loop. Consider the following: live_loop :cymbal do     sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: amp_level     sleep 0.25 end    It's your standard loop. Now try modifying the velocity or amp of that cymbal: live_loop :cymbal do     amp_level = (ring 0.5, 1).tick     sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: amp_level     sleep 0.25 end  It's subtle but it gives a rolling feel to the sound. It's a really quick way to add some more flavor to the beat. Based on a conversation I had in the Sonic Pi forms , this is a way to streamline this too:  live_loop :cymbal do       sample :drum_cymbal_closed, amp: (ring 0.5, 1).tick       sleep 0.25 end You can put the ring inside the sample line. I'll explore rings more in a future post too so stay tuned! Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what you think and what you've been work...
Read more