Falcon is a standalone and Vst instrument made by UVI, a French company developing virtual instruments, effects, and sound libraries.
In these pages I'll take a look on how things in Falcon are organized, what the various components do, and how they work.
The (meanwhile plenty of) instruments and soundware, effects, iOS apps or the UVI Workstation are not treated here. It's foremost about using and, especially, editing Falcon Programs.
This site does not replace Falcon's manual, which has a nice 'learning by doing' approach to explain the software. With its three Learning Falcon courses (Synthesis, Effects and Modulation, Events), it gives a condensed introduction how to edit Falcon. Also, UVI's Falcon videos (by Dan Worrall) are among the best tutorials I've seen so far. Still, I think some detailed written down information won't hurt.
Due to its simple structure and clear user interface, Falcon is quite easy to use. Yet you have lots of options, as you are not restricted in the number of effects, oscillators, modulation sources and so on. But this modularity has its limits: you have always to follow Falcon's strict hierarchy rules - which is good if you want to get things done quickly and yet satisfying.
To sum it up, Falcon's advantages are: - clear GUI without disruptive bells and whistles, making editing fast. However, modulation source <-> destination links are not easily recognisable.
- excellent sound quality of oscillators and effects.
- Oscillator and Modulation sources tweakability.
- Presets all over the place. The copy to / paste from clipboard feature is very convenient too.
- expandability via Lua scripts. First, you have to learn this language and its commands though.
Short site overview:- Structure - Falcon's Multi / Parts / Program / Layers / Keygroups / Oscillators hierarchy
- Interface - rundown of Falcon's main interface with Toolbar, Main Section, Status Bar. In Toolbar you can select betwen three different views:
- Main View - with its three parts: Left Sidebar, Center Pane, Right Sidebar.
- Mixer View - Falcon's built-in Mixer.
- Performance View - helpful for life performances.
- Editing - investigating Falcon's Program, Layer, Keygroup, Oscillator, Mapping and Modulation editors.
- Effects - discussing Fx, MultiFx, FxRacks.
- Effects Charts - short descriptions of the available Fx, with some remarks on CPU load.
- Event Processors - what are Event Processors and how they can be used.
- Event Processors charts - comparisons of the various sequencers, Chorders and other Event Processors.
- Modulation - a large chapter about all of Falcon's mod sources, and the Modulation Mapper.
- Multi Envelope presets - graphical overviews of the many available presets.
- Synth OSCs - description of Falcon's Synthesis oscillators.
- Wavetables - images of all included wavetables, categorized
- Sampling OSCs - description of Falcon's Sampling oscillators.
- Macros.
- Miscellaneous - notes which didn't fit into other categories.
Comments, corrections et cetera: please write to falcon at cwmodular.org.
* I'm not affiliated with UVI, nor do get any benefits from making this site. It's just out of pure enthusiasm for this piece of software.*
* All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.*
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