yesterday i received my Kiviak WoFi sampling keyboard from Kiviak Instruments, a small, France-based, company. The WoFi began on Kickstarter a while ago and, with regular updates and steady progress, finally shipped to initial backers, myself included.
to me, the WoFi is a modern-day Casio SK-1, or Yamaha VSS-30 type sampling keyboard. Immediate, simple, lo-fi and fun. the main selling points for me were the internal microphone, speakers, battery operation and a feature set that echoes those “toy” samplers of old. I’ve encountered some quirks, maybe a bug or two, and some functionality that, i feel, could be improved upon, but overall the WoFi delivers and fulfills what i was hoping it would be.
i’m sharing here three initial sounds that i made. rough around the edges (but that’s the point) and just, really, basic experiments, in the first few hours of owning, without yet having found my own unique path to the instrument.
WoFi Aba
the first thing i sampled, via the internal microphone, was an old Japanese wooden abacus that creaks and clacks. this was just my initial attempt at using the internal mic and basic sampling features. it includes a little bit of the WoFi’s character engine to bring the resolution down which, to me, reminds me of my old Emax sampler. looping the way it is reminds me of a sound that may be found on a Steve Roden piece.
WoFi Bellloop
this is a sample of a few hits of a single rod-bell and then played by a few keys on the WoFi. it reminds me of multiple cassette loops playing at once. i really like this idea of playing back samples that have some sort of structure or rhythm and creating polyrhythms by hitting multiple keys on the sampler.
WoFiOp1
this was my first attempt at using the direct line-in connection to the WoFi sampling. it’s a very clean FM sine wave from an OP-1 Field made lovely and dirty by the WoFi. the reverb is provided by the Chase Bliss/Meris 1978 for some extra space and dimension.
i really enjoy the brief experiments i’ve done with this instrument and look forward to exploring it more, finding some quirks and seeing where the developers take it.
my requests for firmware updates would be:
bandpass and/or high pass filters, in addition to the low pass that’s provided.
different scaling of the LFO Intensity control. even less than 1 sometimes feels like too much.
the ability to shut off the pitch effect in the granular “texturized” section.
the PITCH control in the “machine” section appears to increase/decrease in cents, not semitones, but it’s not clear how many cents “-1” is, for example. it feels like about +/- 12 on this knob is a half step. but i could be wrong.
at some point i found a way to edit a sample’s gain and normalization. have not been able to find this page again.
easier to use patch-naming functionality. (how do you switch letter case? it seems to force you to use a CAPITAL letter for the first of a name and lowercase for the rest)
i also have no idea how looping works on this. it seems to only be able to loop the entire sample, start to end, i haven’t found a way to set different loop points.
a lot of this could be solved with a better user manual. for those of you who may have one of these, let me know if you know the answers to the above questions.. and a trick to try, which i have yet to record:
set the sample input to MIC, make sure your pass-thru/monitoring of sample input is on, and turn up the internal speaker.. you get some pretty intense feedback that you can then sample….
thanks for listening.
Wow, that “bellloop” clip sounds fantastic. I could listen to that on loop. Very intriguing instrument - thanks for sharing!