The Poor Man’s Mellotron (Korg Volca Sample)

Synthesist Daniel Perry shared this short demo of how he uses the Korg Volca Sample as a “poor man’s Mellotron”.

The Volca Sample wasn’t designed to play samples chromatically, but Perry came up with a workaround.

“Using an Arturia Keystep and the Retrokits RK-002 MIDIator cable, I filled a Volca Sample with Mellotron samples to give me a poor man’s (albeit digital) Mellotron,” he explains.

You can find free Mellotron samples at Sonic Bloom and Leisureland. Details on the RK-002 are available at the Retrokits site.

Note: Another approach is to replace Korg’s official firmware with Pajen’s unofficial Volca Sample alternative firmware.

6 thoughts on “The Poor Man’s Mellotron (Korg Volca Sample)

  1. Definitely just go for the firmware, the retrokits cable calculates pitch from a midi note and turns it into a CC, but 0-127 is far from accurate for pitch tracking.

  2. Three-and-a-half minutes of Mellotron Flutes. He made his point after the first 10 seconds. Why would anybody continue recording three minutes of that? Aaahgh!!!

    (Gods, I hate the Mellotron Flutes sound; for me, that sound is right up there with the sampled dogs barking “jingle bells” on an old Casio SK keyboard, only not nearly as interesting…. :^/ )

  3. At least his keyboard and the Volca are white, that way it looks (slightly) like the Mellotron Model M400! Terrible, boring demo, by the way!

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