The Korg Volca Kick is ‘all about massive kicks, toms, and basses’, according to the company. It starts with a true analog oscillator and offers drive and MS-20 resonator circuits to shape ‘earth-shattering sounds’ that can be played and sequenced chromatically.
As opposed to generating sounds using a typical sine wave, the Volca Kick starts with the sound of an oscillating filter from the original MS-20. The filter of the MS-20 self-oscillates when resonance is increased to the maximum, and this is used to produce powerful kick sounds, ranging from solid kick drums to crisp kick basses with complex overtones.
The Volca Kick’s 16-step sequencer has a new Touch FX feature, which provides one-touch sequencer variations and time division, to introduce more live performance potential.
The pattern chain function lets you connect multiple sequence patterns for successive playback, making it possible to construct large-scale productions of 32, 64, or even 256 steps, by joining up to 16 sequences.
“Like all volcas, kick has a personality all its own, and combining it with other volcas or any other hardware adds unique character to users’ setups,” says Korg’s James Sajeva. “The familiar Audio Sync connection means it plays exceptionally well with other volcas, minilogue, electribe and SQ-1, and the MIDI IN jack lets you use the volca kick as a sound module via DAW or MIDI controller.”
With its compact size, battery operation, and built-in speaker, the volca kick can be taken anywhere.