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Interview with Tatsuya Takahashi

Tatsuya Takahashi is the Lead Designer for the Korg Volca Series, a trio of analogue synths and grooveboxes launched in 2013, acclaimed for their big sounds, portability and low price.

Stuff.tv's Tony Horgan had a Skype chat with "Tats" in October 2013.

A technical hitch with the voice recorder means we'll have to summarise the start of the conversation, which involved Tats getting a job at Korg in Japan, having spent time in his youth building micro synths and sound machines as a hobby, then answering a job ad, flying to Tokyo from his home in the UK and getting the job based on the little projects of his own that he laid out on the interview table.

Then we fixed the voice recorder and asked Tats about how he got to the point of designing the Volca series, starting with the Korg Monotron...

Tatsuya Takahashi:

The Monotron wasn't actually my idea but I was approached by a product planner who said, "Can you make a synthesiser that we can sell for $50 that will have fun knobs, will work on batteries, have an internal speaker and analogue sound?" I'd been doing that sort of thing before I came to the company so I said, "Yeah, I really want to do this!" So that's how the Monotron was born.

We released it and I was surprised that a company like Korg could release something like that, because it wasn't for anything. It just made sounds. It didn't take the place of an existing product. We didn't have a target user base. But it was real analogue, knob-turning fun and I love that kind of thing. We didn't know at the time if people would get it ("What would you want that for?") but it did quite well. It turned out that a lot of people liked twiddling knobs and making sounds, so then we thought, "Let's take it to the next level. Let's think of how maybe if we make it a bit more practical people would like it even more, so we made the Monotribe which had a sequencer and drum parts. You couldn't make any particular kind of music on it but could could make loops, so that was a world of difference between what the Monotron could do. But it was still on a similar level of getting lost in your own sound and just enjoying that. I know a lot of people did use it to make music but primarily it was for self-satisfaction.

Tony Horgan:

Yes, I think a lot of people had seen and heard a lot of analogue gear for years but it had been out of their reach, so when they saw the Monotron they thought, "Yes, this is a bit of that analogue magic that I've always wanted." There's a fascination in that whole analogue technology for a lot of us. So, what made you or others at Korg think there was a place for the Volcas?

Tats:

We just make stuff but we always put a reason on it afterwards. We don't really over-analyse the market but we did know we wanted to make something like the Monotribe that people could use to make music with, and so we came up with the Volca Beats and the Volca Bass. Those were the first two ideas: we need a beat and a bassline. And then I think a few months after we thought, "We need chords and melody!" so that's how the Volca Keys came about.

Tony:

One of the best things about the Volcas is that they're affordable. That's really what makes them different from either the discontinued classic stuff that's going to cost you £2 - £3000 or the higher-end remakes of the those boxes which are still very expensive. The Volcas cost about £120 each. How much of the Volca's design was about meeting a price, how much was about keeping things small and portable, and how did you find the design process, having to make so many compromises in order to meet those targets. If I was designing a synth I'd be saying "I want a big thing over here that goes 'Wooo!' and another one over there, with a big screen that goes 'Bling Bling!' everytime you pull that lever." And so on.

Tats:

It's good that you bundle those questions together because they all go hand-in-hand. The last question about me as a designer wanting to add more features... I don't have that urge actually. I like to keep things simple and show what the essence is, the simple elements of how it's good. I think gone are the days when you could sell stuff by features, such as processing power or the number of polyphony. That was really big in the 90s but we've got really high-spec, highly featured technology in our pockets right now, and I don't think that's relevant to what make a good musical instrument. So I find it quite enjoyable to work on a small platform and say "Hey, what do we really want to show here?" and just condensing it down into its bare features.

So that leads on to the cost thing, where it naturally leads onto a lower cost, having fewer features. Sometimes there will be compromises that have to be made, size-wise or cost-wise, but really they're necessary ones to show the true single idea of the product. I'm cool with it and don't find it that hard.

Tony:

You've also included a lot of tricks and original features too, some of which seem to use side effects of other parts of the design, or are creative uses of what's already there; the Stutter on the Beats or the Delay on the Keys. Which features are most satisfying for you?

Tats:

That's a good example and the Stutter happens to be one of my own ideas that I hope makes the Beats more interesting. It works like a delay doesn't it? But it's not, because having a delay I'd need a DSP or a really expensive analogue BBD [bucket-brigade device, a type of analogue delay circuit] and I knew that wouldn't work, so I thought we'll just replay the notes as if they're delays: keep repeating them and take the volume down each time. That was cool because we didn't need any more hardware to do it, it was just a control thing, and also it was cool because it turned out that the times between the retriggers could be really short, so it could sound like a "Zing!". You could get tonal effects, not just spacial effects. Also, there's a trick you can do with it: if you hold Function and turn Stutter Time, the re-triggers will fall in time with the steps, which in turn means you can create really complicated rhythm patters that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do on a 16-step sequencer. That will make it fall into different fractions of steps.

Tony:

I was wondering about the PCM samples. What sort of bit depth and rate are they?

Tats:

It's not exactly but it's around 8-bit. We do a lot of other things with it so it's around 8 or 9 bits.

Tony:

The Delay effect on the Keys: is that a digital delay, or how does that work?

Tats:

It's a digital delay but it's done on a microprocessor, not a DSP [digital signal processor]. We were able to squeeze out just enough processing power from it to do a delay.

Tony:

Are you just doing a very basic sample and repeat, copy and paste kind of effect?

Tats:

Yeah, kind of. This probably took the longest on the Keys to get right. I needed the delay time to change dynamically, so that when you turn it down really quickly it pitches everything up. That was the effect that I wanted and it wasn't easy with this CPU. I'm not The Software Guy but The Software Guy must be very proud of what he's done with the very limited processing power there.

Tatsuya Takahashi

[At this point I play Tats my version of Gabriel Fauré's Pavane on the Volca Keys, amplified through the internal speaker of a Yamaha Electone BK-20B electric organ and remark that the delay on the Keys sounds a lot better when the Keys goes through something old and analogue like this, rather than when it's straight into a mixer.]

Tony:

Someone mentioned to me the other day about the Flux feature on the Keys: if you record with Flux turned on, it doesn't quantise the notes and you can get loads more notes into what would otherwise be a 16-note loop. So for example on that piece (Gabriel Fauré's Pavane) you even get the very fast diddly-diddly-diddly-diddly fill-in parts.

Tats:

How did you program that? Did you use MIDI?

Tony:

Yes. Because I can't export patterns created on the Volcas without making my own MIDI Out modification, I've started making up banks of MIDI loops in Ableton Live, which I can transfer to the Volcas when I want to use them by putting the Volcas into Record-Ready mode and then playing the MIDI file, then hitting Stop before it loops around again. So that's how I got those patterns in there. Anyway. I hear you make some music yourself. Is that right?

Tats:

Yes, I play live sets with another Korg engineer. It's quite improv. We have a table with circuitboards and breadboards and just make music out of it. We play 4-to-the-floor hard techno, we play ambient stuff sometimes, that's what we do. It's my only musical outlet at the moment. I am trying to record an album but I don't if that's going to work.

Tatsuya Takahashi and Kazuki Saita playing live as "Sharin"...

Tony:

Have you seen this? It's called a Belkin Rockstar. It's like a passive mixer with a wired input, and then any of these 3.5mm sockets can be inputs or ouputs, and it doesn't need any power. So it's ideal for mixing the Volcas [NB: this has since been questioned, Tony and Tats cannot be held responsible if the world (and your volca) comes to an end because you are using a Belkin Rockstar as a passive mixer]. You could run one of them through effects, or all of them through effects if you like, such as a Mini Kaosspad 2. I'd say it's the first thing that anyone who buys Volcas should get next.

Tats:

I'll buy one and see what's inside!

Tony:

OK, now I've got a few questions from the Korg Volca Series Facebook group. Here's the first: "Can a Song Mode or Pattern Chain Mode be added in an update?"

Tats:

If there's a good way to implement it then yes, but I'm a bit worried about the interface as it's already pretty packed. You've got functions on all the buttons so if we were to do it I guess it would be a different start-up mode. I think that's one of the reasons we didn't do it because I thought it would be too complicated. I thought these should be live machines, rather than something you build a song on like the Electribes. But maybe - I still think it's a good idea so if there's a good way to do it I'm up for that.

Tony:

"Are they bringing out more in the Volca range? I'd love an arpeggiator."

Tats:

I'd love one too. I don't think an update could do that but it's a great idea. I did have one on the Bass in the beginning but I took it off.

Tony:

I think what someone was suggesting here was a standalone arpeggiator, but then if you're going to do that you might as well make a sequencer.

Tats:

I'm with you on that. I'd love to make a sequencer but to make it work as a product is quite difficult because, as a rule, things that don't make sound themselves (apart from effects units) are quite hard to sell. If the whole world was full of people who knew loads about get it would be a lot easier, but it's quite difficult to get people enthusiastic about something that doesn't make a sound.

Tony:

Regarding the Bass, a lot of people are asking about adding an Accent control [referring to the Accent control of the Roland TB-303 which gives specific notes more presence by ramping up the volume and filter settings momentarily]. Is this something that you could add via a firmware update?

Tats:

I'm going to jot these ideas down because I think they're really cool. Although a lot of them are ideas that I thought about at some point - accent was one, arpeggiator was another. I'm in a situation here where I really crammed a lot into a small space, and that on the surface as well as inside - we've maxed out the whole amount of memory it has with the program and stuff. I'm going to say that people shouldn't get their hopes up about really big updates. We might do it in a while but we don't have that in the pipeline at the moment.

Tony:

Can you tell me how the tuning automatic tuning works? Is it something to do with these lights [on the Volca Keys] on the back behind the two main knobs? Is it tuning itself when they flash?

Tats:

We've got three VCOs in there. If I play all three they'll flash on and off, and that's because it's playing for you and not tuning. If I let go you'll get a weird sequence going on, which are the cycles of tuning it does when you're not using it.

Tony:

What does the 1.02 Volca Beats firmware update do?

Tats:

It fixes a tiny bug that only affects a small number of units because it's dependant on the hardware. One of these rubber buttons, sometimes, can malfunction in the rare event that you have an unlucky unit.

Tony:

Back to the Facebook questions... "Are they going to release schematics like the Monotribe and the Monotrons, and any chance of open-sourcing the controller OS?"

Tats:

As for schematics, maybe. [Laughs] We only release the schematics because people really benefit from it, which was the case with the Monotron. People really wanted to get in touch with that, change it, and customise it. I don't think the Volcas are going to be the same but maybe a partial schematic. It won't be a full-on disclosure. It would be quite difficult to disclose the code for it in a way that would be useful for other people. It's not made as a platform. It wasn't made to be an Arduino, it was meant to be a product. That would be quite tough.

Tony:

Another from Facebook... "Why is it impossible to set the basic tuning on the Volcas? The lack of that basic feature makes it hard to keep up with some vintage keys and acoustic instruments." I think that's someone who's finding it frustrating keeping his Volcas in tune with his other gear.

Tats:

Most analogue gear has a Master Tune, so you could tune your other gear to the Volcas! It would mean another knob basically. You can fudge it on the Bass as it has tunable oscillators.

Tony:

"Are there any plans to make the SyncKontrol app [currently iOS-only] for Android and Windows phone?

Tats:

Maybe. Korg hasn't made any Android apps yet, which is why SyncKontrol is iOS. It was a peice of cake making that. Yeah, this is a boring answer but if we can justify the man hours then yes. I'll talk to the guys and see how hard it is because there are a lot of Android users out there we need to listen to. Have you seen anyone using SyncKontrol?

Tony:

I've tried using it because I wanted to add some shuffle to the Beats, but I ended up using the Stutter control for that instead. Because it doesn't send a sync signal for every note (it's every other note) you can't pull a closed high-hat forward, you can only push it back. There's a certain kind of shuffle that you can't do with the SyncKontrol, which is the type I wanted to do. So because of that I don't use it, but apparently people do use it.

Tats:

We made the SyncKontrol because the Monotribe didn't have a display so you didn't know what BPM you were at, but now we have a BPM display on the Beats and Bass, maybe it's a bit redundant now.

Tony:

The last Facebook question... "Why hasn't he (they mean you) joined this group yet? The Facebook group is called Korg Volca Series. I'm not sure that's a serious question or not but I'll put it to you.

Tats:

I look at it sometimes but I'm a bit too scared to join it!

Tony:

I would completely understand if you didn't want to join it or even look at it at all. I know from reading reviews of my app you might not want to hear people saying bad things about your creations.

Tats:

Maybe we should have a different one, like Korg Analogue or something. Maybe I should start one. I'll just reply "I'm too scared!"

Tony:

And finally, are there any more Volcas in the pipeline?

Tats:

I think we've made something that's very appealing, whether that's to do with the cost or the size or something else. I'd love to do more but they're not in the pipeline yet.

Tatsuya Takahashi was talking to Tony Horgan in October 2013.