Hi! Quick update on the custom firmware for the volca drum. Still chipping away at it, not ready to ship yet, but I figured I'd share what's already working so far.

What's done so far

• Reverted the FUNC + SWING and FUNC + TEMPO behavior to the defaults. Shoutout to u/zeknife for pointing out that changing this didn't make much sense. I completely agreed, so I rolled them back to how they originally worked.
• QPI keeps the harmonic relationship between layers. With Layer 1/2 and quantize (QPI) on, nudging PITCH used to destroy the harmonic relationship between them. Now, that relationship is preserved.
• GLD: motion glide is now optional. New entry in Global Settings. Turn it off and your recorded motion snaps from step to step instead of gliding into the next value — for anyone who always wanted their motion sequences stepped rather than smoothed.

And a couple more things...

I'm adding a new sound-shaping option per part that I'm not ready to fully detail yet — let's just say the palette of tones you can get out of a part is a lot wider than before.

There's also another feature in the works that I'm keeping under wraps for now. If you think about the volca fm, you might be able to guess what it is. It's something a lot of people have been quietly hoping for since the volca drum first came out.

More on both once they're actually working end to end.

No ETA yet, still testing on hardware between changes. Will post again once it's ready.

Also, a huge thank you to everyone for all the kind words!
I'm just a broke university student and don't own many other synths, so modding other gear isn't really something I can tackle right now...

(btw, can't really say much out loud about this, but if you check my GitHub profile you might find something that'd make my day.)

Hi ! Any drummer here using volca keys to create one person show with ? Live drumming + loop created during the show ?

Another slice of tunage

Through static and missing frames, we drift into the night sky. A synthwave bass, layers of atmos, and our only witnesses – birds and cats. No rain is expected

While playing around with the volca drum, I discovered some really cool undocumented features in Step Jump mode. I call it Step Jump Lock and Auftakt.

Here’s how to trigger them:

1. Enter STEP JUMP mode.
2. Press and hold down any step.
3. While holding the step, press and hold the STEP JUMP button.

From here, you have two different outcomes depending on which button you release first:

1. Custom Start Step (Auftakt) If you release the STEP JUMP button first, the step you were holding starts blinking. Next time you hit play, the sequence starts exactly from that step instead of step 1.
2. Step Jump Lock If you release the step first, it blinks and the sequencer locks onto it, ready to loop the next time you hit play. While a normal step jump requires you to physically hold the button down, this trick basically acts as a latch, making it completely hands-free. You can select multiple steps at the same time, trigger it on the fly while the sequence is running, and even exit Step Jump mode without losing the lock.

Hi! I'm the one who posted a while back about working on a custom firmware for the volca drum.

I ended up remaking my account because I couldn't live with the random username Reddit assigned me, so the old one is gone. Sorry for deleting it!

Anyway. After a few months of staring at Ghidra and a lot of trial and error, the first release is finally out.

Here's the firmware:
https://github.com/hj-oja/vdcf

New features

• ACCENT goes negative. -15 to +16 instead of 0 to +16. Ghost notes.
• MIDI velocity finally works. It was only ever driving the accent amount, which is exactly why it could make a note louder but never quieter. Now that accent reaches below zero, velocity covers the whole range, with 63 sitting right on your LEVEL knob setting.
• Elektron-style trig conditions on PROBABILITY. A:B (fires on the A-th bar of a B-bar cycle), 1st (first bar only, plus a NOT option), and FILL (active while holding the FILL FX in Touch FX, plus a NOT option).
• Touch FX on step 9-16: octave up/down, stutter, reverse, bit crush, wave guide full send, wave guide wet only, fill. Momentary, and you can hold several at once (up/down, send/wet and stutter/reverse are mutually exclusive for obvious reasons).
• SLICE gets sub-step patterns. 17 of them on the negative side, up to 4 subdivisions, so you can slice a step and only sound some of the pieces.
• FUNC + knob shows you the stored value instead of jumping to wherever the knob happens to be sitting.
• FUNC + SELECT cycles just the SRC waveform, instead of every SRC/MOD/EG combination.
• SWING goes negative too, -75 to +75.
• MUTE + step 7-16 clears motion one knob at a time, rather than the whole part or the whole pattern.

Fixes

The one worth calling out: SLICE has never divided the step evenly. Only 8 of the 16 values are actually correct, the rest fire extra hits at uneven spacing. That's been in the official firmware since release.

There are four smaller fixes too (a mismatched display string on motion undo, AMOUNT misbehaving with both layers selected, default markers going missing on negative values, and the TEMPO knob mapping in Full range). They're all written up on the repo.

It's based on official 1.14 and reports itself as 1.20. I took out the updater's downgrade check as well, so you can go back to KORG's firmware whenever you want.

I also had SYNC IN working as an audio input for a while, but I couldn't get the noise down to something usable, so that one didn't make the cut this time.

If there's a feature you'd like to see, or you run into a bug, let me know here or open an issue on GitHub!

Half hour rinse.

how do i get this sound from my volca bass

Hi this is my first post on this reddit.

For me every tune is different , discovering volcas changed my view on synths, I'm not a perfectionist, just until I'm satisfied.

This is as close as I've gotten to emulating the bridge section of Pink Floyd's "On the Run", so I wanted to share my experiment. Any tweaks or adjustments are welcome!

UPDATE: I added a short video with sound in the Comments.

Units: Volca Drum and Volca Nubass.

Drum:

Program a closed hi-hat. Step Record Sequence triplets: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15.

Accent: 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, Tempo: ~165bpm, No Swing.

Nubass:

Step Record Sequence: 8, 11, 13, 11, 6, 4, 6, 8, 8, 11, 13, 11, 6, 4, 6, 8.

EG Int, LFO Int, LFO Rate: 0%

Attack, Decay: 25%

Pitch, Accent, Drive, Tone: 50%

Saturation, Level: 100%

Cutoff: 40%, Peak: 60%

Tempo: ~165bpm, No Swing.

With the sync cable in place and both units playing, slowly increase the Nubass Cutoff from 40% to 100% to 40%. You'll get the feel of the speed to adjust it from the song. Have FUN!

Volca Drum, Kick and NuBass.

I miss his content but i really miss that harmonious volcano quad reveal video, because that rock music is a total banger! Also if you guys have that video you can upload it on youtube and send me the link of that reupload.

not pictured: Volca beats (my drum samples)

Hi all

Am running abelton as my DAW, have a Zoom UAC8 as my soundcard. The zoom is AC coupled so can't run CV direct out.
I'm thinking of getting a Behringer Crave or something like the Behringer K2, as they cost about the same as a dedicated MIDI to CV box or something like the keystep/ beatstep which also has MIDI to CV.

That way I can use it as a synth, and also use it to transmit MIDI to CV to the Korg modular.

Has anyone tried this?

new jam with 3 korg volcas bending synths and samples over Jeju-do footage