The Volca Keys is a subtractive

analogue synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

manufactured by the

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music technology Music technology is the study or the use of any device, mechanism, machine or tool by a musician or composer to make or perform music; to compose, notate, playback or record songs or pieces; or to analyze or edit music. History The earlies ...

company

Korg , founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners. Under the Vox brand name, they ...

. It was released in April 2013 and was at the time one of the only affordable analogue synthesizers on the market. The

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

is 3-note paraphonic, meaning that it can play

chords Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord (as ...

with all voices sharing the single VCF. The Keys is part of Korg's Volca line of compact hardware synthesizers and drum machines; like other models it features a 16-

step sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open Sound Cont ...

and can be powered off of batteries. The Volca Keys is still available new today for around £125.

Release

The Volca Keys was announced in April 2013 at

MusikMesse Musikmesse Frankfurt was an international fair regarding the music industry that took place in Frankfurt am Main, Germany from 1980 until 2019. In 2012, 68,587 visitors and 1,512 exhibitors from 51 countries were counted. Despite an exhibitor drop ...

along with its siblings, the

Volca Beats The Volca Beats is a hybrid drum machine produced by the Japanese music technology manufacturer Korg. It was released in April 2013 along with the Volca Keys and Volca Bass. The Beats uses both analogue synthesis and PCM samples to produce ...

and Volca Bass, and proved a success for Korg. At the time of its release it filled in the niche of an affordable analogue synthesizer, which contributed to its success. It received high praises from reviewers for its inexpensive price and quality of sounds. On the topic,

MusicTech BandLab Technologies is a Singaporean company that operates a social music platform, called BandLab, and also owns a variety of music-related brands. Founded in 2015, these include Harmony and Heritage Guitars; ''Guitar.com'', ''NME'', ''Uncut' ...

stated, "Korg has listened to its customers and managed to hit the perfect balance of price and features" and

Future Music ''Future Music'' (stylised as ''FutureMusic'') is a monthly magazine published by Future plc in the UK. It was founded in 1992 and is aimed primarily at record producers working in the electronic music field. ''Future Music'' includes hardware a ...

seemed to agree, saying that "The Volcas are revolutionary at this price point". Its reach was far enough to appear as a prop in a trailer for Marvel's

Disney+ The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and deligh ...

series ''

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''.

Review Ratings

* 4.4/5 at Thomann * 9/10 MusicTech Choice Award * 4/5 (Excellent) on Vintage Synth Explorer * 4.5/5 on

MusicRadar MusicRadar is a music website that offers information pertaining to artists and their music. The site features music gear news and reviews, artist interviews and online music and production tutorials. It is owned by British media company Future ...

Design

The Volca Keys has a gold faceplate and transparent enclosure. It is lightweight and portable, having a small size. The knobs on the front are made of transparent and solid plastic and are similar to those on the Korg Monotron, although the build quality is improved. Connections of the Volca Keys include MIDI in, sync in/out and 9V DC power input. The synthesizer can also be run off of batteries. Korg Volca Keys knobs 2 (photo by David J)

Korg Volca Keys knobs 2 (photo by David J)

The keyboard is a touchplate with no velocity sensitivity. It houses a 16-step sequencer with motion sequencing, Korg's proprietary version of parameter

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

. The only way to record into the sequencer is using the real-time recording mode. You can record un-quantized with Flux mode and use Active Step for mutes and shortened patterns. The sequencer is

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

and includes a

metronome A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον (''métron'', "measure") and νομός (nomós, "custom", "melody") is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats pe ...

for help with timing.

Sound Engine

The Volca Keys is has analogue circuitry but all control signals are digital, allowing parameter control over

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

. According to Korg, " he CPU ontrolling the Volca Keyshas a 10-bit DAC giving incredible near-analogue resolution". The audio signal path, however, is completely analogue (apart from the delay):

Oscillators

The Volca Keys' oscillators are digitally controlled analogue oscillators that are either sawtooth or

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

waveforms depending on the mode (square in ring modes, sawtooth in all others). The section has 5 controls: for Mode, Pitch, Detune,

Portamento In music, portamento (plural: ''portamenti'', from old it, portamento, meaning "carriage" or "carrying") is a pitch sliding from one note to another. The term originated from the Italian expression "''portamento della voce''" ("carriage of the v ...

and EG Int (Envelope Intensity). The Mode controls the polyphony of the Volca Keys.

Monophonic Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduc ...

modes are

Unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...

, Octaves, Fifth and Unison Ring (Ring being a

ring modulator In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple w ...

); paraphonic modes are Poly and Poly Ring. Korg mislabels the synthesizer as polyphonic although all oscillators share the filter. The large Pitch knob controls the pitch register of the oscillators, using organ footage terminology. It spans 6 octaves and is switchable between 32′, 16′, 8′, 4′, 2′ and 1′. While in unison modes, the Detune control detunes the notes from the unison pitch up to a

semitone A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...

, making the sound feel thicker. The Portamento control adds glide time between notes. You can apply

modulation In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform, called the ''carrier signal'', with a separate signal called the ''modulation signal'' that typically contains informatio ...

to the oscillator pitch from the envelope generator using the EG Int control.

Filter

The filter of the Volca Keys is a digitally controlled analogue

low-pass filter A low-pass filter is a filter that passes signals with a frequency lower than a selected cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies higher than the cutoff frequency. The exact frequency response of the filter depends on the filter des ...

, a recreation of the filter from Korg's MiniKorg-700S, released in the 1970s. The filter section has 3 control knobs: Cutoff, Peak and EG Int. Cutoff controls the cutoff point of the filter, which is also able to be controlled by the envelope generator by the EG Int control. Peak is Korg's name for filter

resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillatin ...

, and the Peak knob controls the amount of resonance on the filter cutoff point. The filter can be pushed into

self-oscillation Self-oscillation is the generation and maintenance of a periodic motion by a source of power that lacks any corresponding periodicity. The oscillator itself controls the phase with which the external power acts on it. Self-oscillators are therefor ...

Modulation

Modulation on the Volca Keys comes from two sources, the envelope generator and the

low frequency oscillator Low-frequency oscillation (LFO) is an electronic frequency that is usually below 20 Hz and creates a rhythmic pulse or sweep. This is used to modulate musical equipment such as synthesizers to create audio effects such as vibrato, tremolo ...

(LFO). The envelope has control over the attack, decay/release and sustain. It is routed to the

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of amplit ...

by default, but can be used to modulate the pitch and filter cutoff using the EG Int controls. The LFO has 3

waveforms In electronics, acoustics, and related fields, the waveform of a signal is the shape of its graph as a function of time, independent of its time and magnitude scales and of any displacement in time.David Crecraft, David Gorham, ''Electronics ...

: Saw,

Triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

and Square. There are controls over the Rate of the LFO and its depth of modulation to oscillator pitch and filter cutoff. The LFO is also syncable to the start of a note.

Delay

The Volca Keys features an delay circuit, which some have likened to that of Korg's Monotron Delay. It is quite low-fidelity, with low sample rates for the audio processing. The delay only has 2 controls, Time and Feedback. Time controls the distance between each delay echo, while Feedback controls the noise of the delays. There is no mix control on the delay circuit.

References

{{reflist

External Links

*https://www.korg-volca.com/en/ - Official Korg Volca website *https://www.korg.com/uk/products/dj/volca_keys/ - Volca Keys product page Korg synthesizers Synthesizers Electronic musical instruments