Korg Volca Beats

How to use this course

Ten short lessons take you from switching the Volca Beats on to programming, saving and performing your own patterns. Each lesson is 20 to 40 minutes, hands on, and ends with an exercise you should be able to do without looking before moving on.

All button combinations and parameter descriptions come from Korg’s official owner’s manual. Where a detail comes from somewhere else, the lesson says so.

If your main goal is a beat to play guitar or ukulele along to, do Lessons 1 and 2, then jump to the starter beats near the end of Lesson 4. You’ll be strumming along within the first hour.

What you need:

• The Volca Beats with six AA batteries or the Korg KA-350 9 V adapter
• Headphones or a powered speaker with a 3.5 mm lead (the built-in speaker is fine for practice but has very little low end, so the kick will sound thin)
• About 30 minutes per lesson
• Optional for Lesson 8: another Volca, a MIDI keyboard, or a computer with a MIDI interface

Notation used in this course:

• FUNC + REC means hold FUNC, press REC, then let go of both
• Step 5 means the step button numbered 5 along the bottom row
• Patterns are written as a 16-step grid, with x meaning a hit and . meaning silence