Brief update on my Akai Force and Volca Drum experimentation…
Spent an hour or so last night making a template for controlling my Volca Drum from the Force.
Mapped some parameters to macros and had a play around.
I used 6 separate midi tracks for ch 1-6 from the Force and the mono seq mode of the step sequencer to show 64 steps of my 2 bar pattern. Then used track select on the Force to switch between the 6 parts.
Would be nicer if we could do key splits with midi channel assignments in the Force.
It’s so much nicer to use the knobs on the Force than the tiny pots on the VD though!
With 16 knob macros and 64 pad macros I feel I could map every parameter on the VD in multi/split channel mode and MAYBE use snapshots on the Force scenes to save/load full kit presets…
More experimentation to come and I’ll try to make a little video when I’ve got my template and workflow to a state I want to share.
One thing I found is that the VD does respond to program change messages from the Force but does so in an odd way - the numbers don’t match up for some reason? More testing needed.
So I’ve been on tempted by this little device for a bit. Seems like peeps really enjoy it. How about the other belter, the Volca Kick? What is people’s thoughts on that. Too bad you can’t use the resonator with external sources.
I had Volca Kick and now have VD.
Kick is great, but I just did not find use to it. My box had that annoying drift of the kick attack, which a well-known bug/feature.
Besides the kick sound itself, it’s can produce oldschool percussion sounds and also do nice bass in a vein of MS series. And even simple lead sounds, because it’s an oscillator anyway.
It can also be programmed to produce really fast “percussive” pulsations (not sure how to describe it), not sure if any regular synth can do that. So it’s acts more as additional sound source or food for sampler. I associate this box with retro-electo styles, ebm, “kraut” electronica and so on. Gabber and techno kicks are also possible, but not very versatile.
This is actually why I got a Volca Kick in the first place - it can do some quite interesting things under external midi sequencer control too. I wonder if the Volca Drum can be similarly abused into interesting shapes?
I have both Kick & Drum and mostly use them together as sample/slice fodder for the OT which nicely circumvents the Kick’s attack consistency issues. As said it’s quite versatile for blips and zaps, bass tones as well. Layering it with some noise from the Drum works also great.
I will need to check, but theoretically yes. It’s not even needed to enable 240 bpm, the engine is already full of all sorts of digital insect noises and it can be programmed in a complex way
Contrary to the Volca Drum, I have so many synths that do sameish and similar things to the Volca Kick (for example: Bass Station II, Syntakt, Analog Four), so I sold that one
I had the kick for a couple of years. It’s a great little box and, as already mentioned, does more than its name implies. The kicks though, just brutal.
I’ve been selling off a lot of gear in recent months and it got swept up in the studio purge but it’s still with me in the form of samples in my ar.
When I get a little more space I plan on getting a Volca Kick again, to add to the Volca Drum, and fuse them together somehow as one of the cheapest and most versatile drum machines on the planet
My volca drum arrived today and I can understand why Erica LXR 02 costs almost 600 EUR…
Is my first volca… and the last. It’s a fun box, I’ve spent little time with it, sounds good (not incredible like the xlr02) and it has a lot of possibilities
But…
Only 16 patterns and 16 kits? No backup?
It seems incredible to me. I knew that it had 16 patterns and kits but I didn’t know that you can’t backup the unit. This morning I was making a backup of the behringer rd6, the most simple box ever existed
I like it as a music toy, a good one, and I guess that I need to treat it like an analog machine without presets.
I’m probably in the minority, but I didn’t like it. I found that it often made my tracks muddy because of all the sub-bass and I would caution about using it with headphones, I was seriously worried about damaging my ears.
I do really like the Volca Drum and the Beats as well.
I didn’t know nothing about how the volcas worked, I’ve never interested until now, but if this machine would have more memory, it would be more than a toy
That’s a well-known limitation of the Volca series. I have the Drum and I just lean into that limitation, creating new kits and patterns every time I use it on a track, nuking old stuff as needed.
Yeah, that’s basically how I approach it. I’m not a preset/plan/backup person so it doesn’t bother me, but if recall is an important part of your workflow it’s a bummer for sure.
I usually pair it with another drum machine, most often my Model:Cycles.
I was curious about the original LXR drum for a lot of years and it’s interesting that you’ve found Lxr 02 sounding better than Volca. I did not see a one live, but from multiple demos of both revisions to me the sound has some specific digital flavor, like artifacts of the sound generation (which sometimes is good, sometimes not, probably the thing which made me hesitant), while Volca sounds smoother and more consistent on various settings. But it’s totally subjective, nevermind. The YT demos sound really big.
Agree on 16 kit/patterns stuff. It’s difficult to use professionally, like preparing a live set or working on multiple projects. I lost very funky patterns on my Volca Sample because I replaced samples and overwritten something, etc, etc
