11 thoughts on “Recording Sequences On The Korg Volca Bass

  1. Wow. I was interested in this as a $150 303, but now that I see all the programming options, I’m really sold. What a cool box. I’m so surprised this came from an old school synth company and not some startup. Good job Korg!

  2. Wow! There is some creative things you can do with this box. To be honest, I preordered it for a cheap 303. I’m getting something much more interesting I think.

  3. haha, after a long pre-order wait, I got the call from Sweetwater today, the Volcas are in! they shipped out my trio of fun and they’ll be arriving before the weekend, I’m so psyched!

    1. Sweetwater sucks I ordered my volca late June and there still bull sh*ting me,I doubt I’ll ever Order anything from them again. When did you pre order?

      Also they claim to sell lots of products they don’t even have in there “giant” warehouse.

  4. Do they ship with power supplies? Would be great to run a trio of these of one wall wart somehow, rather than having to plug in three separate power adapters. Maybe it could be run off a multiple output power supply for guitar pedals? (voltage/amperage output permitting).

    1. I got my trio last saturday and, so far, I am most impressed by the Bass. I hope Marc Doty also covers the functions that can only be accessed by midi (gate length) in a next episode.
      To answer your question, they come with a set of 6 AA batteries (so, 9 volts), but the external power plug, despite being the same kind as a guitar pedal’s, is ring negative. I am planning to build an adapter for my pedal rack power supply.

        1. Yes, each of them is delivered with a sync cable. The cable is also used for firmware updates (one already on the Beats, which (according to my ears) seems to solve the volume discrepancy between the analog and PCM instruments).

  5. it is the best small synthesizer I have ever bought, you can make a massive amount of sounds with it, you are not just limited to basslines, however bass is where this thing shines, I was up and running in 2 minutes flat making 303 basslines which sound exactly like the roland 303, it just takes a bit of skill to master the filters.

    I plugged it into my Roland D2 drum machine and was making acid house tracks instantly, the midi feature “just works” with no messing about with parameters. Some people are saying this machine has no recording automation but that’s not strictly true as you can record octave knob movements to make basslines that scream like a girl from a horror movie.

    The FUNC (Function) button when held down does a great many things, one of the best features of this synth is the fact is you can tempo sync the LFO in three separate ways or all three at once these are, CUTOFF, PITCH & AMPLITUDE, you really can make some detailed sounds using it’s LFO.

    Having 3 separate oscillators on a synth this small is unheard of up until now, with all three on you can make bass chords that are out of this world, or separate them into three separate sequences and trigger them all together or one at a time, you can even split the Saw and Square waves aswell and have them running together on separate parts.

    There is no metronome onboard this synth but that’s easily resoved by loading up MEM8, korg have programmed one in ready to get you started, after you’ve made your song it can then be deleted, what I have done is copied the metronome to all eight save points.

    The output stage is very clean with hiss so low I can hardly hear it, nothing like the monotrons it’s of a much higher quality and shouldn’t even be compared. The front faceplate is aluminium and it really does have a wiff of the old tb 303 about it but with more functionality in my opinion.

    The filters are all smooth as silk with no stepping at all, so are the ADR filters, the sustain is on one of the keys.

    Ive compared the sound of this compared to the Cyclone Bass Bot and I much prefer the volca, I know this is a bold statement seeing as the cyclone is 4x the price but its true, It sounds brassier and richer with more bottom end and of course has 3 independent oscillators which the cyclone does not have.

    Holding down FUNC and switching on goes into a global setup mode, here you can change midi clock and sync, polarity, tempo range (goes up to a whopping 600bpm! and down to 10!)and power saving features on and off, holding down FUNC, PLAY & REC the unit goes into a test mode showing the firmware version and button/led testing.

    Ive made an acid test video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qZrKHSYEMc

  6. Regarding the wall warts, you do need to buy your own, but if you get the Volca mix, then you can power 3 volcano off the one unit, which is pretty cool, so you only need 1 socket for 4 units, if you have the mix, which other than the mix is quite basic, but des sound good, and has sends to add external fx, which is another cool inclusion, and considering you can get the mix for not a great deal more than 4 psu”s it is a pretty decent addition and I am well pleased with mine!

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