Korg Volca Beats
Lesson 5: Real-time recording, editing and clearing
Goal: play parts in by hand like a drummer, then tidy the result.
Real-time recording is quicker for fills and feels more natural once you can keep time. Everything you play lands on the nearest of the 16 steps (it is quantised), so you can’t record off the grid, and small timing slips get corrected.
Record live
- Make sure STEP MODE is unlit, so the bottom row acts as drum pads.
- Press REC while stopped. It blinks (record-ready).
- Press PLAY. REC lights and recording starts.
- Tap the part buttons 1 to 10 in time with the loop. Each pass of the loop adds to what’s there; nothing is erased.
- Press PLAY to stop playback and recording.
You can also press REC during playback to start recording from that point.
Tip: record one part per pass. Lay the kick first, then the snare or clap, then hats. Trying to play everything at once on small buttons is hard.
Fix mistakes
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| One stray hit | STEP MODE on, select that part, press the lit step to turn it off |
| One part is a mess | Select the part, then FUNC + step 15 to clear just that part |
| Whole pattern is a mess | FUNC + step 16 to clear the whole pattern |
| Want to hear one part alone | FUNC + MUTE for solo mode (this combination isn’t in Korg’s short manual; Sound On Sound’s review documents it) |
Muting while you work
Press MUTE so it lights, then press step buttons 1 to 10 to mute or unmute each part. MUTE + step 16 unmutes everything. Mutes stay in place when you change patterns, which is useful live.
Exercise 5
Start from your Lesson 4 house beat. Record the hi tom and lo tom in real time over the last four steps (13 to 16) as a fill. Use step mode to remove any hits that landed in the wrong place.
A tom fill rolling down from hi tom to lo tom is the idea behind one of the most famous drum moments of the 80s, the fill in Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” (1981). The rest of that song’s beat came from a Roland CR-78 drum machine, so it’s a good one to listen to for how a simple machine beat and a live fill work together.