Sound Design With The Korg Volca Keys

DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a professional producer. Diving into sound design has been a learning experience for me, and will continue to be as I make similar content going forward. That being said, let me know if you’d like an indepth video explaining the process more thoroughly.

I wanted to bring two of my favourite passions together, the result of which is this animated watercolor/music video thingy. I hope you enjoy it :)

The kick, snare, hats and shaker were all achieved by layering various waveforms from the Keys, and modulating their volume and pitch envelopes.

The main extracted sounds were the initialized sawtooth wave, a triangle wave, a sine wave and some noise.

The triangle waveform was achieved by adjusting the VCO CUTOFF. A sine wave was produced by turning CUTOFF to 0, and turning PEAK and EG INT all the way to 11. The keys is particularly noisy when the DELAY’s TIME and FEEDBACK are activated. Thus noise was easily extracted and amplified.

Similar methods were used to create most of the other instruments. For example, the e-piano, chimes, etc, were created by modulating the volume and pitch envelopes of the sine and triangle waveforms to create sharper transients (while introducing some warble etc). The bass is from the the triangle wave pitched down with slight adjustments to the volume envelope.

After recording the initial sounds from the Keys, most of the process was completed within the sampling engine in Renoise.

Other beeps and blips are just straight rips of recorded noodling and twiddling on the Keys.
All of this was arranged, sampled, resampled, mangled, etc within Renoise and Reaper, with some added cuts using a DJ controller and Mixxx.

Obviously, none of this is really necessary. There’s a million sample packs, soft synths and plugins to source sounds from, or I could just prompt an AI, but where’s the fun in that?

My wife said the watercolor painting in this video looks like AI art (T.T )

This is the first video in a series. Next is the Volca Beats. So stick around for that.

Thanks for watching.

Take it easy!

[kayacura.music]

Hugging my Volca Keys, watching this together. Shed a little tear I didn't play it much lately. Thank you, your art is unique.

[Doxkyn]

Solid work on this one. Would definitely love to see your process.

[totaldeparture]

Very cool and creative video as well as the Volca sampling itself. I was searching more for patch ideas when I stumbled across this but this is really cool, love the watercolour artwork! I'd definitely love to see more videos in this vein.

[krizalizmproduction]

Watercolour + music 💔 sound 🍬 Best idea which I founded ever

[krothbinew]

I have a Volca Keys and did not know that sounds like this were possible. Thank you for the inspiration! I guess I have some tinkering to do!

[savannahfortis]

Wow - fantastic work here man. Super inspiring to someone who just got the keys! Keep it up ✨

[simodohoomd]

This is great. A breakdown video of your workflow would be cool.

[drgsao]

Wow! Really beautiful! It would be nice to see also the 'how to badass with a Volca Keys'

[raphanunu]

Yes, we'd like an indepth video explaining how you can obtain these sounds, but not only, this music as well, with a single Volca Keys playing live without any extra effect or sound manipulation. I agree with your wife regarding the watercolor which seems, but isn't, sync with the sounds. I can't wait your next post !

[Dan-msoq]

I've not checked to see if the beats video is out but I've had great fun resampling the toms and turning them into EP sounds.

Very very cool video.

Someone I listen to made a really competent full track with a Monotron, search "Oscar Monotron Solo" he made the snare by just turning the LFO up to max.

If ever you get the time, would you ever consider sharing a bit of the process of making the sounds? It could be an unlisted video or something.

[nickangel]

I do sound design too, with just a pack of cigarettes, seriously. No mixing desk, no compressors, not even electricity, and it sounds much better than that. Well, between two cigarettes, I'm right next to Abbey Road Studios, that helps a little, for sure