Midi redirection for Volca Sample

#1

As Korg Volca Sample users know, the midi implementation of the gear is strange: one midi channel per instrument! Unusable.
I just made with an Arduino board and a Midi Shield a Midi Redirector that let use the Volca Sample as a “normal” midi instrument.

If someone is interested I will learn how to post files on this forum :slight_smile:

#2

As a owner of Volca Sample it sounds quite interesting.

Please share it

#3

I started from the work of this guy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcMHnB5qIcQ

But he don’t use a midi shield and I dont want to do soldering so I have used this midi shield:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/MIDI-Shield-Breakout-Board-for-Arduino-R3-compatible-AVI-PIC-Digital-Interface/32373935229.html

Any standard size arduino board will do je job.

Attached is the arduino sketch (remove the .txt)

#4

Volca Sample midi is geared more towards drum use

#5

thats the reason it is primordial to be able to trigger samples with a drum sequencer, and so to redirection midi channels.

#6

@Varthdader: Which is why it’s strange to use a separate channel for each sample. For drum use you’d expect them all to be triggered by different notes on channel 10.

With each sample on a separate MIDI channel you’d think that you’d be able to pitch them up and down with MIDI notes or something, but you can’t. The way they’ve done it is strange no matter how you look at it.

#7

@Tonite,SirPrimalform:

I get the point now, thought there was a logic to Korg´s ways, and alas from the info here there is not!

#8

>With each sample on a separate MIDI channel you’d think that you’d be able to pitch them up and down with MIDI notes or something

You can do it with the Electribe, so I assume that they didn’t want that feature overlap. I would definitely own a Volca Sample if it could do that.

#9

Well, if there´s a midi socket in the product one would tend to think that there would be an appropriate use for it.

#10

wait, you cant pitch the samples with midi? It might be some weird format you need to adhere to, has anyone looked at the midi output to check how everything is structured?

#11

You have CC control over all of the knobs on the front panel. This means that you can convert note messages to CC messages that control the “speed” parameter. I do not know if the speed knob adjusts the base pitch chromatically.

This is not the first time Korg has ignored midi notes to pitch over midi. The Kaoss Synth would not respond to note/velocity to control the grid, but you could convert those to CC messages to make that work.

It would take a small firmware update to fix this issue, but I don’t think that they will update the firmware.

#12

I actually asked them if this was something they might add and they said something along the lines of “there’s no room for the code”. Really? It doesn’t take much to read the note number from the messages you’re already processing and send it to chromatically control the playback speed (given that the resampling code is all already there). Pretty sure they just don’t want it to be ‘too good’.

#13

I bought the MIDI cable from retrokits. routes everything to one channel. Other little efficiencies that I can’t remember but very very good.

#14

Wow, that cable looks awesome!

#15

Yeah, it seems like snake oil but one end has a microcontoller embedded in the plug.

#16

I don’t know if other reasons came into play for Korg’s decision, but one reason for the different MIDI channels might be that there are 11 per-sample parameters, for 16 samples, that can be adjusted via MIDI CC. Those CCs would not have fit into one MIDI channel.

Doesn’t explain why you can’t play the samples pitched, however.

#17

Another Volca Sample midi project based on Arduino there https://techiesexpedition.blogspot.fr/2016/12/volca-sample-and-kaosscilator-as-true.html
Support also the Kaossilator pro 3 …

#18

What about MIDIPAL’s dispatcher function?

I think it might be capable (with some limitations).