Korg Volca Sample Tutorial 100% Value 0% Fluff

You can find our favorite Tips & Tricks on how to get the maximum out of your Volca Sample below. Our Korg Volca Sample Tutorial covers both the 1st and the 2nd generation of the Volca Sample. Plus, we will be updating this page on a regular basis.

How to create better Drum Rolls

This guide explains in detail how to use automation to bring your jams with the Volca Sample to life. Korg uses the term “Motion Sequencing” to describe Automation. In the end, both terms mean the same thing.

“Automation is used to record and perform parameter changes over time. To keep knobs moving, without touching them.”

Step by Step Korg Volca Sample Tutorial

• Press “Play”
• Choose a part
• Create a pattern by activating steps (the more, the better)
• Hold “Func” and press “Motion Sequence On/Off”
• The red LED of Part 12 will light up
• Stop Holding “Func”
• Press “Record”
• Record Button will light up red
• Now the Volca Sample is “Record Ready”
• Once you start moving an eligible knob (Yellow), the recording starts
• We recommend using “Level” and using drastic movements

• Recording stops automatically after 16 steps are recorded
• “Rec” Led is no longer lit
• The Knob you turned will light up red indicating data has been recorded

• Don´t like it? Press Record again to overwrite
• You can go on to automate more knobs
• We recommend Decay and Cut Off
• You can automate all 11 Parameters for each single Part!

Advanced Tips

Creating Basslines, Melodies, Tom Rolls

• Set the Volca Sample to record ready (see above)
• Hold “Speed” then turn “Pitch”
• This locks the Pitch Shift to Semitones
• Make sure to turn the knob before the next step plays. This way, each step will have only one pitch, without shifting between notes.

Easy Tom Roll

• Find one Tom sample, set it to steps 14, 15, and 16.
• Write these Automations:
• Pitch down step 15, then 16 even more
• Lower the volume of step 15 a bit, then step 14 a bit more
• Turn down the high cut to make step 15 slightly duller than 14, step 16 a bit duller than step15.

Volca Sample 2 Only – Timing Variation

This new function allows you to delay single steps. Not the start point within the sample, but to push the whole sample back in relation to all other steps.

Use it to:

• Let the backbeat split the loop in uneven parts (Groove) Example: Delay only the second Snare or Clap.
• Reduce the “machine gun effect”. When setting 16th high hats or shakers all steps sit perfectly even in the grid. That sounds robotic. Introduce subtle changes by shifting some steps back slightly.
• Find even more on this new option here: START DELAY

Video Tutorial

We highly recommend following along with the Korg Volca Sample Tutorial below. Once you have used this technique a single time, we guarantee you will use it for every single jam you make. You might also want to sub to our YT and click that Bell icon, so you get notified once a new video is up.

This ain’t the end, fellow music lover. We’re just getting started.