The Volca Modular is an

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

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

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 is part of their popular Volca series of affordable electronic synthesizers and drum machines. Like other Volcas, it sports 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 by

batteries Battery most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source *Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...

. The Volca Modular is a semi-modular synthesizer, with patching being available to create new sounds. It was released in 2019 and is still in production, retailing for around £140.

Release

Leaks

Volca Modular was released ahead Winter

NAMM The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

in February 2019, although information and pictures were leaked in December 2018. The news spread throughout online forums throughout the time before the official release.

Reception

The Volca Modular was unique at its launch, filling a niche in the market as an affordable modular synthesizer. It was received quite highly by music technology reviewers but received criticism for its cramped interface due to size and easily damageable

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

patch cables A patch cable, patch cord or patch lead is an electrical or optical cable used to connect ("patch in") one electronic or optical device to another for signal routing. Devices of different types (e.g., a switch connected to a computer, or a s ...

Review scorings

*4.5/5

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 ...

*8/10

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editori ...

*9/10

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' ...

Choice Award

Design

Inspiration

The Volca Modular was inspired by the "West Coast" design of synthesizers, produced by the likes of

Don Buchla Donald Buchla (April 17, 1937 – September 14, 2016) was an American pioneer in the field of sound synthesis. Buchla popularized the "West Coast" style of synthesis. He was co-inventor of the voltage controlled modular synthesizer along with Robe ...

and

Serge Tcherepnin Serge Alexandrovich Tcherepnin (russian: Серге́й Александрович Черепнин; born 2 February 1941) is a Russian-American composer and electronic-instrument builder of Russian-Chinese parentage. Tcherepnin is noted for creati ...

in the 60s and 70s. West Coast synthesizers were based around the idea of adding harmonics to simple

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 ...

using complex oscillator cores and wavefolding, unlike the filtering of high harmonic waves used by the contemporary "East Coast" pioneer

Robert Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesi ...

The Volca Modular's colour palette is also inspired by the Serge-Buchla synthesizers, with their iconic red, white and blue livery. Of all the Serge-Buchla synthesizers, the Volca Modular is most similar to the Buchla Music Easel in terms of modules and capabilities. It features a triangle-wave based complex oscillator core, dual low pass gates, function generators and a source of uncertainty (

Sample and hold In electronics, a sample and hold (also known as sample and follow) circuit is an analog device that samples (captures, takes) the voltage of a continuously varying analog signal and holds (locks, freezes) its value at a constant level for a ...

Patching

Patching on the Volca Modular is done through DuPont jumper cables (of which 20 are supplied). There are 50 patch points available for use. Light coloured patch points are inputs and darker coloured patch points are outputs. Audio signals and

voltages Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to mo ...

are interchangeable, with the Korg stating that the maximum voltage limits are -3.3V to +3.3V for bipolar sources and 0V to 3.3V for unipolar sources. However, independent research indicates that the Volca Modular is able to handle to 9V signals.

Modules

The Volca Modular has of 8 distinct modules, with a total of 50 patch points available to be connected:

Main signal path

Oscillators

The oscillator section contains a two VCOs that can only produce a triangle wave. The oscillators are set up in a modulator-carrier relationship to perform

FM synthesis Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude ...

. The modulator is usually silent (though it can be heard through patching) and its pitch is determined by a ratio to the carrier pitch, controlled by the RATIO knob. The depth of frequency modulation is controlled by the MOD knob. The oscillator section also has a wavefolder, which adds additional harmonics to the complex oscillator by folding the waveform multiple times. The amount of wavefolding is controlled by the FOLD knob.

Low pass gates

The Volca Modular's dual low pass gates (LPGs) are a cross between a

Voltage Controlled Amplifier A variable-gain (VGA) or voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) is an electronic amplifier that varies its gain depending on a control voltage (often abbreviated CV). VCAs have many applications, including audio level compression, synthesizers and am ...

(VCA) and a

Voltage Controlled Filter A voltage-controlled filter (VCF) is an electronic filter whose operating characteristics (primarily cutoff frequency) can be set by an input control voltage. Voltage controlled filters are widely used in synthesizers. A music synthesizer VCF al ...

(VCF). This gives the Volca Modular a distinctly natural sound, with sounds becoming both brighter and louder as cutoff increases. Unlike a typical VCF, they do not have

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 are unable to self-oscillate. The only control for the LPGs is the CUTOFF knob, which controls the cutoff of the each LPG individually.

Space out

Space out is a digital reverb, the only digital part of the Volca Modular. It is distinctly digital and cold but, according to MusicRadar "without it, the Volca Modular can sound dry and lifeless". Its only control is the AMOUNT knob, which controls the wet/dry signal mix.

Modulators and utilities

Function generators

The Volca Modular has 2 function generators, each behaving slightly differently. The first function generator is an attack-hold-release

envelope An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card. Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a shor ...

(AHR as opposed to the more standardized ADSR). The attack and decay stages are both exponential curves, with the attack being inverted. The ASR envelope's has two knobs for hands-on control of the ATTACK and RELEASE. The other function generator on the Volca Modular is ramp shaped, with no control over the individual portions of the envelope. The shape of this generator goes between a sawtooth, blended towards a triangle and then to a reverse sawtooth, or

ramp An inclined plane, also known as a ramp, is a flat supporting surface tilted at an angle from the vertical direction, with one end higher than the other, used as an aid for raising or lowering a load. The inclined plane is one of the six clas ...

. This blend is controlled by the SHAPE knob. There is also control of the time the generator takes from start to finish via the TIME knob. Using patching, this function generator can be made to function like a standard LFO.

Utility

The Utility module uses two simple

equations In mathematics, an equation is a formula that expresses the equality of two expressions, by connecting them with the equals sign . The word ''equation'' and its cognates in other languages may have subtly different meanings; for example, in F ...

attenuate In physics, attenuation (in some contexts, extinction) is the gradual loss of flux intensity through a medium. For instance, dark glasses attenuate sunlight, lead attenuates X-rays, and water and air attenuate both light and sound at variable a ...

and

mix Mix, mixes or mixing may refer to: Persons & places * Mix (surname) ** Tom Mix (1880-1940), American film star * nickname of Mix Diskerud (born Mikkel, 1990), Norwegian-American soccer player * Mix camp, an informal settlement in Namibia * Mix ...

signals: a+b*c and a-b*c (where c is the knob marked "c"). This can be used in many ways, including as a rudimentary method of

summation In mathematics, summation is the addition of a sequence of any kind of numbers, called ''addends'' or ''summands''; the result is their ''sum'' or ''total''. Beside numbers, other types of values can be summed as well: functions, vectors, mat ...

or a basic

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 ...

Woggle

The "Woggle" on the Volca Modular is a sample and hold circuit, which provides random values via sampling

pink noise Pink noise or noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave interval (halving ...

. It has both smoothed and stepped outputs. The internal pink noise sampling can be overridden, allowing you to sample any output of the Volca Modular.

Mult/Split

The split module is a utility that allows you to a turn one signal into two identical copies, useful for when you want to route a modulator to multiple destinations. There are two independent signal splitters.

Clock divider

The Volca Modular's clock divider section gives out trigger pulse in divisions of the

tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

of the

sequencer Sequencer may refer to: Technology * Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically * DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...

(tempo is controlled by the TEMPO knob). Divisions of every fourth, third and second are available, as well as a general gate output.

Notes

References

{{reflist Synthesizers Electronic musical instruments Korg synthesizers

External links

Volca official information websiteVintage Synth Explorer profile of the Buchla 200 series (contains information on the Music Easel)