Makes me feel much better.
@zwhita The manual seems daunting.. 300 Pages
but I am looking forward to expanding my horizons beyond Zebra.
@Bee_Abney, my interest is in cinematic sounds, background scores etc., not much experience in EDM.
I'll paste in my previous post and then complete it here, so that it is all in one message.
Righty-ho. First off, let me explain that I have a lot of the Falcon Expansions because there have been several sales since I got Falcon, and I got it with three expansions (second-hand). Also, I got madly addicted to them.
Analog Motion
Beautiful, thick analog sounds, layered and with a lot of arps and sequences. A great expansion to learn from as it uses fairly simple synthesis techniques to produce wonderful sounds. Given that analog sounds are relatively timeless amongst synth sounds, this is a really flexible expansion and a great place to start from.
Atmospherics
More samples are involved, and granular shenanigans, but the sound is still quite synthetic. Great pads and textures. One of its patches (parts in Falcon speak) is called Rachel Seduction. I take this to be a Blade Runner reference, and it that should give you some idea of what this set offers. Great for all synth scores, I don't know how well some of the patches would sit in an orchestral context. Some are grainy enough to be at home, whereas others would work if you don't mind them standing out against acoustic instruments.
Cinamtic Shades
Pretty much perfect for hybrid scoring. And not just trailer-style in-your-face style, but also meditative. It has a collection of patches called 'Textures' and they are great for using in a scoring context; they will work well with others and stand alone. One is called Dark Night, which will give yo some idea; but another - even better one! - is called Machine Elves.
Digital Motion
Like Analog motion, but with an emphasis on 80s and 90s sounds. Although, with the fullness of Falcon, they sound a lot better (to my heathen ears) than synths from the 80s. It has a patch called Sanitarium, which is a useful timesaver if anyone asks me how I'm feeling today. Again, great for scoring, great for atmosphere and, like Analog Motion, it can also really move. And, of course, you can reprogramme any sequencing to fit your own projects.
Ether Fields
Sounds designed by Simon Stockhausen, who has more sound packs and instruments for Falcon on his Patchpool site. Ingeniously designed with split keyboards, granular meddling, and wonderful samples including strings and voices. You could certainly score an entire film with this expansion, or use here and there to provide a rich background, from mildly contemplative to transcendent. This is top of the range stuff, and great for studying if you want to learn how to really exploit Falcon's abilities.
Kinetics
Half are the sun, half the moon, all involve an almost mechanical motion with either glitchy, electronic, mechanical sounds or something more organic. If you ever need to create a sense of movement and come up short on ideas, you can delve into these.
Plurality
Simon Stockhausen again. Brilliant, from electronic experimental stuff to glass, metal, string sample-based meditation music. Once again, one to study - and one that I'm not ready to try to emulate! If you want something to meditate to, or something for the nicer parts of a ghost story, sci-fi story, or personal growth story, this would be great. It has that sense of reaching out to something beyond, or having something from beyond reach out to you - but not in a horrible way. Some patches may work as scary too.
Savage
It is aptly named. These sounds are great leads, basses, drones, and moving pieces from the heavier end of electronic music. Techno, I guess, or at least Techno in inspiration. It's the synth equivalent of heavy metal guitar, and that's what I bought this expansion for - to combine with heavy guitar playing. It would also work in a heavier hybrid context. If you want to bang your head, or beat your audience over the head with the urgency of EVERYTHING, then this expansion is great. It's nicely designed and sequenced, so also good to learn from. There are slower and less bombastic patches too.
SubCulture Orchestral
This likely
is the hybrid scoring expansion that you are looking for. It's gorgeous, bringing electronic music stylings to orchestral base samples. Great for atmospheres, great for textures, great for layering with orchestral samples. Very good indeed.
Voklm
I go back and forth on this one. On the one hand, I don't like the fact that playing any distance at all from middle C means that the vocal samples are stretched unnaturally - and, if you go up, goofily. On the other hand, there are some really good sounds here and the Atmospheres and Drones are, for me, very usable. If you like warped tape loops of vocals, this would be a very good expansion. I haven't experimented yet with seeing if you can switch the sample oscillator to a stretch one (either basic Stretch or IRCAM Stretch) which would make these more palatable to me.
I also have the following UVI instruments:
Digital Synsations - Nice enough and good to learn from; good all-purpose sounds.
Model D - a piano. Yuck! (I'm kidding!)
Gypsy Jazzy - not so great as some other libraries for simulating 1930s jazz; much better for taking 1930s jazz sounds and playing with them in an electronic context.
Kroma 1.5 - Beautiful
XtremeFX 1.5 - Foley. It was a cheap way to get foley sounds, and having them inside Falcon is not a bad thing.