We’re back with the next in our series of custom built Drum Racks, recorded at Studios 301 by Anthony Garvin (manager of Studios 301) and Yama Indra (GLOVES). This time round we have a pulled samples from the yet to be released Korg Volca Beats – Korg’s brand new analog drum machine. We managed to get our hands on one of them ahead of the pack, so we thought we would give you all a sneak peak of the sounds you can get out of the Volca. These little guys have had a lot of buzz around them thanks to being very affordable, and truly analog. We thought we’d put it through its paces and get a drum rack together, so you can get a feel for what this tiny box is capable of. Download link after the jump..

The Sounds

Volca API — The Korg Volca Beats and the API 512c pre-amp, with the SSL9000K in the background.

The Korg Volca Beats is the rhythm machine in a new series of three portable, affordable, and analog music production tools by Korg – the Volca Keys, Volca Bass, and Volca Beats. The unit is incredibly simple, and hence very fun to use, and having a true analog engine with sounds heavily referencing classic drum machines, the Volca Beats sound quality delivers far beyond its footprint. The Volca Beats keeps it simple – six analog “parts” which are editable with only one knob per function; a built in step sequencer; one single effect – stutter, which generates repeated triggers; and MIDI in for both sync and note entry. It even has an internal speaker!

The Samples

Over in Studio 2 at Studios 301, the samples were recorded direct from the Korg Volca Beats into an API 512c Lunchbox pre-amp, then through a channel of the SSL 9000k console for some slight compression and EQ, before being captured back in to Ableton Live with a Apogee Rossetta 200 ADC. It might be a consumer priced drum machine, but it was amongst some giants (with giant price tags) over at 301. It was pretty surreal hearing the Volca’s meaty analog kick booming through the Genelec 1039A main monitors in Studio 2.

The Drum Rack

We’ve included two separate Drum Racks in the Live Pack download.

The first, created by Ableton Certified Trainer Adam Maggs, showcases the Volca in its raw form. With only a slight amount of processing, the rack is a pretty true representation of the types of sounds the Volca is capable of, of course beefed up to sound their best thanks to the signal chain over at 301. On the macros, there are the standard sample selection, pitch, and volume controls, along with a couple of subtle parameters controlling particular timing aspects of each sound, some humanisation, and an emulation of the Stutter effect on the actual Volca.

The second Drum Rack was put together by Liveschool’s Trent Crawford, and is loaded with effects and extra processing on each sample. There are reverbs, delays, resonators and more, all assigned to macros on the individual cells of the Drum Racks, and colour coded for easy tweaking – white for sample selection, yellow for effects controls, and blue for the usual volume and pitch parameters.