Control Volca Fm With Midi

The Korg Volca Beats is a joy to use. The analog tones - kick, snare, toms, and hats - really are the heart of this little machine. They sound so fantastic and their control is minimal but covers a wide range of tonal shaping possibilities. The hats are the standout. The grain knob really has a unique element of sonic control. I bought the Volca Beats, again after having one many years ago, specifically for the sound of the hats. Programming with MIDI notes is the way to go here. You could definitely do a cool one-bar performance on this beast especially getting crazy with the Stutter function but, for my purposes, writing techno-electronic tracks, MIDI note triggering from a DAW is ideal. For fine control, I recommend sequencing your MIDI notes and then recording samples of each instrument for use with sampler instances in your DAW. This way you can adjust the phase of each sample to really gel everything as opposed to having a random analog phase to each tone. Also recording samples allows you to process each sound individually and that is really what a polished & professional sound is all about. The PCM sounds can be cool and sound wonderfully degraded at low pitch settings but honestly you can ignore them and stick to the analog section without losing ANY value to the machine. Korg has delivered almost certainly the best budget friendly analog (and PCM) drum machine with the Volca Beats.

I’ve owned Synthesizers since 1972. I currently own quite a few from several manufacturers, Behringer, Roland, ASM, Elektron, Modal, Teenage Engineering and Korg (Volca FM 2 and Sample 2) to name a few.   10 years in the marketplace this Volca Keys has really held up to the test of time.   Marketed as an “Analogue” Synthesizer in reality the control signals are generated digitally with the CPU using a 10-bit DAC giving it near-analogue resolution. So this is a Subtractive Hybrid unit; an analogue sound engine with digital control so dial tweaks and note info can be recorded into the sequencer/accessed over MIDI. By the way, this is a good thing not a negative at all.   It’s a pretty easy to use, straightforward, with no menu screen, pretty much a dial per function arrangement. Great for beginners but powerful enough for experienced users.   I did notice notice that some dials are translucent and some solid. As a rule I found the solid dials' movements can't be sequenced, but the translucent dials can be sequenced and are backlit red plus flash to denote which parameters are active or recorded in a 'motion sequence' (motion sequencing captures dial movements into the sequencer).  The tempo dials flash in time with the internal/MIDI-clocked tempo and each key/sequence step has its own LED too, convenient for letting you know what's happening at a glance within complex sequences . It has 3 sawtooth wave oscillators & produces great upfront three-note chords, dirty lead/bass lines, ring modulated sounds and detuned unisons. It also features octave/fifth mono modes, a versatile tempo-syncable analogue-style delay that does reverbs/bit-crushing (from the Monotron Delay) freeform unquantised flux recording and 1/1, 1⁄2 and 1⁄4 tempo modes.   It uses the great MiniKORG700s filter. The LFO has 3 waveforms: sawtooth, square & triangle which make for some great modulation variety. The Volca Keys really packs a lot in, it's very versatile and a true value at such a low cost.

One of the best midi controllers I have ever used. I am able to control my euro rack to my computer and everything in between. Awesome

Great product! Needs manual FM scan control. Otherwise a really nice product!

I can do much more than i expected with this one! Volca series is just what I needed.

Allows use of Volca products w/o batteries.

wroks great to control moogs by CV, no midi needed. great with sub phatthy

Good sound, dual alarms, tone controls, loudness control, variable display intensity, compact. Hard to pull in FM stations much better by purchasing an F-type FM antenna (Less than $10.00) No back up battery! Should have more than 5 FM slots and fewer AM slots. All in all...very pleased!

Reminds me of my first film cameras - FM, FE. I like that even the ISO control is on the top deck so I can shoot fully manual. I also like the secondary command dial which is easier to use that the flush dial on my Nikon Df. I do use a para cord wrist strip because it's small and I have to be conscious of my grip. It's my first MILC so I'm glad I got the kit. Just waiting for the second battery to become available.

I use this product to run the FM radio transmitters, it can control 8 transmitter without interfer my recording, it is very useful and price right