Volca Modular: Walkthrough

Описание: I'm planning to do a few videos about the Volca Modular. This first one is a walkthrough of some of the basics. (the second video is now up at    • Volca Modular: Patching and LFO's  ) See the timeline for details. Note: I didn't use any effects or post-processing during the main parts of the video (other than volume ducking in the video edit) - these are all Volca Modular sounds. The only exception in the whole video is that I slowed the synth audio down 50% for the first part of the ender (post outro).

TIMELINE

00:00 STARTER - Two clips of patches that I like, and then something pretty strange. I figured out a way to run one of the Volca Modular envelope parameters off-board, to a Little Bits motor, with enough control to attempt something kind of like that hexadecimal scene in The Martian. I used sequenced notes AND motion sequencing of the parameter. It was to be 8 actual letters (I AM VOLCA), pauses between the letters, not worrying about spaces, and so this is 16 blocks - i.e. each block was 16 trigs and all 16 memories were chained together for this. I got to "I_AM_VOMBD" after a few tries (the last 3 letters were one sector short), and decided to call that a win. Caveat emptor, don't hurt your synth trying to do stuff. NOTE: I put the 'letter entry' sound effects in later during the video edit - but they are still from the device.

01:20 INTRO - A lengthy discussion of why I think the Volca Modular is a good buy and a good device.

07:55 MAIN - Some basics. Getting a tone out of the main oscillator (the "carrier").

08:55 The Space Out module.

09:15 The Utility module.

10:30 The modulation oscillator and the Ratio knob.

11:00 Combining the two oscillators in a simple way. Using a built-in scale.

13:15 The Mod and Fold knobs. Using FM and wave folding to complicate the basic triangle waveshape.

14:50 "Normal" (i.e. default and internal) connections. Note: as is common, normalled outputs on the Volca Modular aren't overridden by fan-out (i.e. tapping off of a normalled output), only by sending a different signal into a normalled input.

15:50 Functions (the envelope modules)

16:45 Low Pass Gates (the filter/gate/dynamics modules)

17:50 A basic amplitude modulation patch using the Utility module.

19:15 Entering a sequence in step mode.

20:00 Running the sequence in stochastic mode.

20:50 OUTRO - (Shoutout to all of you new folks interested in the Elektron Model:Samples!)

21:25 ENDER