Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Another new Volca
Volca Kick.......after reading the info, methinks I may need to fire up iMS-20 again, with a view to making some kicks and kick basses
Comments
Just saw that. I haven't made up my mind on this one just yet.
Its looks and description trigger my gearlust, but it seems like a strange oddball in the Volca range. They had the kick pretty well sorted on the Volca Beats and this one seems a bit limited, like a half-trick pony.
I would have liked to see them do something more along the lines of the ER-1, which is capable of a lot more than just great kicks. ... or a Volca Snare, because I'm a sucker for snare drums and I think they are much more interesting to listen to than kick drums...
Still.. it's not unlikely I'll get one eventually, if only to satisfy my incessant urge for tinkering with sounds.
The bit I found interesting was their description of using the resonance on the MS-20 filter to generate the sound instead of a sine wave, not something I have considered before...and how do you do that ? Surely you need an oscillator to put through the filter in the first place ?
Seems pretty specialist!
Not really my cup of tea. But the black look is great and I'm generally glad when the Volca family is growing.
Using a self-oscillating filter is a well-known trick for creating kick sounds on analog [modular] synthesizers, because it's a relatively well-controllable way to generate a pitch-drop with a sinewave using cheap components like a basic sawtooth oscilator and a simple decaying EG on the filter.
The idea is to drive the filter to self-oscillation by cranking up the resonance. This will almost completely hide the original signal and create a sinewave-like sound (perfect for kick drums) which can then be dropped using a fast decay on the filter EG. It only requires cheap, basic components and is nicely tunable.
Amen to the Volca snare. I'm obsessed with finding drum machine snares, and the Volca Beats was an unfortunate pukefest. I've seen it can be modded, but I'd rather just save up for the holy LinnDrum.
Edit: I figured I'd add that I've quite enjoyed the '80s snare' in Ruismaker.
Thanks for the explanation, I will be giving this a go later tonight
.....
I don't know how close the software filter comes to the hardware MS-20 filter, but I think you can pretty much accomplish the same effect with a Monotron (and some fast fingers)
I've never heard a real MS-20 - only the software ones, I got the original PC one when it first came out along with the controller. They have all sounded pretty good to my un-educated ears
The monotron route could prove tiring and maybe inducive to a bit of RSI .... LOL
A small price to pay for that true warm magical analog shimmer
I am sure that some creative use of paper clips and rubber bands could provide some automation
......is this really just for kicks ?
)
Coz I'm not sure I'd buy it just for kicks (pun intended
Damn, I was hoping they'd release the snare version first
kinda lovin' this for my future hardware setup ...if it ever happens. but seriously, most of my recent stuff is my own samples from field recordings and I'm utilizing drumsynths for kick. I'm also layering a lot more of my kicks now that I've been using Gadget. I'll often copy a part from London to Tokyo and synthesize the Tokyo track to fit the mix. I have a blast.
A lot more than just a kick synth. Smaller ARP Odyssey, volca microKORG, in ear metronomes too. http://www.korg.com/us/
This is one of the more exciting volcano for me.. Love a good tuneable kick
Yeah, I just don't know...
Have start out by saying that I am irrationally interested in the Volca series. Just got the call from Sweetwater yesterday that my Volca FM is shipping out, which means I'll have all 5.
The one that I held out on the longest was actually the one that many people went for first: the Volca Beats. It's worth noting that the kick drum on the Beats is actually pretty well-regarded, but the snare drum is comically bad...to the point where a lot of reviewers are convinced there's some type of manufacturing error and have tried to mod it. (If Korg put out a Volca Snare, or some type of intricate noise generator, that would actually have done more to fill the gap in my collection. Not even really kidding).
I would be absolutely lying if I told you I have no interest in this product, or that I won't buy it. I'm telling myself I won't right now, but history has shown otherwise. I'm just a little disappointed by the narrow focus of this product. I'm not really a power user in the sense that I hook up all of my Volcas to a mixer at the same time and then sync everything up with CV. I pretty much keep them in a box, or bring them with me somewhere to doodle with on headphones. I can't really imagine ever doing that with a standalone kick drum generator.
Now, if I were being more positive (and this is probably what will be running through my head when I end up preordering this anyway...) -
I guess I didn't have any specific expectation or hope for what the next Volca would be, and really didn't expect anything new before Winter NAMM 2017 (and maybe even later than that). The best suggestion was some type of "Volca Mixer" that would benefit the overall ecosystem since there are so many of these now, but that doesn't seem terribly feasible to have it battery powered and with all the connections/jacks it would probably need to have.
Update to my lengthy rant above: As I read more about this, it looks like it could be a pretty mean sub bass generator/sequencer, in addition to the percussive "kick" noises that populate that 2-minute Korg demo video. If that's the case, I probably would be interested, BUT I do want to hear how Korg handled MIDI this time around. Since it's basically an analog synth driving a single sound, I would think that the 5-pin DIN MIDI input should control chromatic pitch and possibly velocity too?
You would assume so, but there were MIDI implementation problems with the last two new Volcas. The Volca Sample wouldn't allow you to trigger different samples on a single MIDI channel, nor could you chromatically control chromatic pitch on the single sample you could trigger with a MIDI keyboard. The Volca FM somehow didn't allow you to control velocity with keyboard inputs. Korg explained that this wasn't possible on the ribbon controller and they mapped it to a universal slider instead, so this was a bit of a design choice. This never made any sense to me since both the Volca Bass and Volca Keys respond to keyboard velocity, and are older than the FM.
But hopefully Korg learned from those complaints and I don't have to go buy a separate $44 cable from RetroKits to fix all these problems again
I'll stick with my volca sample for kicks.
Yeah, it didn't take long for me to warm up to the concept either... Hmmm... damn GAS
Maybe stupid to ask, but what does GAS means?
Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
Ahhhhh, thanks!
Yes, not to be confused with Gross Ass Smell.
Haha, yeah. GAS is pretty prevalent on forums about guitar gear, synths, etc. Trying to think of what the AudioBus Forum equivalent is - probably "appaholic", since most of us work with just once piece of physical "gear" (the iDevice).
I know, right? An absolutely stunning reversal. I think there's an adjustment period to it coming from the two previous Volca releases which were: (1) Digital; and (2) capable of a wide range of bass, lead, FX, and percussive sounds as a sampler and FM module, respectively.
My initial reaction was "it does kick drum?!". But if think of it as an analog sub-bass synth, then you could imagine it being pretty cool...if pitch and MIDI control is handled properly.
Or Good Ass smell...
Ok now I understood it!
Another thing I noticed from the description was that it does have 16 sequences you can store (I believe this was available on the FM but not the Beats), and it seems to have pattern chaining (up to 16), although that may just mean playing through the saved patterns in sequential order only (1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 4....). That's workable, but it's funny to me that the $60 Pocket Operators arguably have better pattern chaining than the Volcas!
I'm waiting for the Korg Volca Cowbell.
They seemed to have stretched themselves a bit thin with this one.
I'm no expert in these parts , but knowing there is at least the JoMox MBase11 &
Vermona KickLancet , if not others , it doesnt seem so much of a surprise Korg wanted to
! Kick-box their way into the Kick box market !*