Wait a minute
Why did I pick the KORG Volca Sample OK Go edition over the standard version? The answer has to do with creative rules and challenges. Let me explain.
The Volca Sample OK Go edition hasn’t probably been the most popular among music tech buffs. Being one myself, I would love to see KORG doing something similar with experimental artists like Jan Bang, David Toop & co. but let’s face it, such products wouldn’t sell more than 100 units!
That said, I wanted to see how far I could go with a set of (quality) samples created by someone else (here’s my constraint).
I’m also a sucker for limited edition items (Taku Sakaguchi, the Japanese designer for OK Go designed the graphics for this special edition). All boxes ticked!
OK, let’s go
The Volca OK Go edition, with 100 carefully crafted samples, proved to be an excellent choice for my challenge.
I won’t go into the unit’s details – I’m sure most of you are already familiar with the brilliant Korg Volca series (if not, do check the details of the OK Go edition on the official page).
To me, the Volca Sample stands out among the other Volcas because of the flexibility it packs in such a small package (my plan for this experiment was to add also a Volca FM, but I had troubles sourcing one – stay tuned for a next episode!).
For each of the ten parts, you can modify (among other parameters) the sample’s start point and length, playback speed, level and pan, etc. It’s really easy to transform a pretty innocent (if not boring) sample into something otherworldly.
In this regard, I love the loop feature: just play with the start point and length knobs and you can go from granular, glitchy to delay-like sounds.
This means that, while the unit’s samples are taken from songs from OK Go’s latest album (vocal bits, bass lines, beats, stabs, you name it), with a little bit of work you can easily create your ‘own’ palette of sounds out of them.
Of course, you can use the Volca Sample OK Go edition as a plain Volca Sample model. Just overwrite the factory samples with your own samples (you can always restore the OK Go samples if needed).
There might still be a few Volca Sample OK Go edition units available here and there. If this post tickles your fancy, get yours before they’re gone!
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