KORG volca series

Is it pretty intuitive to use? I had an Alesis awhile back and I had a very hard time figuring it out.
forgot to give an answer on this, sorry! so, it is and it isn't. you get six drum voices and you can do what you like with them, no preset 'kick' 'snare' etc, which means dialling in sounds from scratch will take longer (no real templates for each).

you also need to grasp that you get two layers per voice, which is good for doing one short sharp sound and another longer tailed one to combine the two.

I tried using the 'Edit' function of the Volca FM for the first time, attempting to do some actual patch programming (or just get the LFO set to pitch for a given patch!). I watched a tutorial and it seemed like the parameters coming up on mine did not match what the video guy had, idk.

I'm still getting great results just by twiddling knobs, you can get a long way from the presets just by changing the algorithm and adjusting decay & velocity. I may never learn it properly but I'm still getting more tracks out of it than maybe any synth I've owned.

Nice to hear you're getting good use out of it, Jordan! The Volca FM is the first synth I bought, 3 years ago. I ended up selling it in part because I couldn't get my head (and fingers) around programming it.

Loki hates lo-fi delays I guess?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW948Va-l10

(that's supposed to start at 33 seconds in)

tax marvel

It's a streaming series, no budget for a Minilogue (much less a Kyra or something)

If this had been a late 70s BBC series, it would have been a Stylophone.

I signed on to do a solo drums & synth performance next month (along with a couple of other drummers), and I think I'm going to keep it simple and roll with just the Volca Keys, my old fave (and an old Tascam digital 4 track to play samples).

I explored the sequencer for the very first time to record some loops, and it's very cool but also pretty touchy and wonky. But you can put down a bassline and another part, and then I can get a lot of tweaky mileage just from adjusting the cutoff, delay, and tempo. That's about all I can handle live, while also playing drums.

I saw Russ Gabriel doing a live set at a festival with 3 Volca’s about 5 years ago, and it was as the equal (if not better) than the other people playing sets that weekend with gear many times the price. It helped that he played to the strength of the machines - loopy techno with lots of live tweaking.