eXpandemonium - new refill for Blamsoft Expanse

Need some fresh sounds? Want to show off your sound design skills? Here's the place!
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User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

12 Jul 2018

Hi Everyone,

Quixotic Sound Design is proud to present its latest refill, eXpandemonium, a dedicated refill for Blamsoft's Expanse synthesizer. Like with my previous refills, the idea behind this refill is to create a broad palette of sounds that are unique to the synthesizer I'm working with. The result is a collection of over 300 device patches that range from soothing hypnotic pads to twisted FM sequences and from musical and expressive polysynths to utterly uncategorizable inharmonic FX.
Expanse has received a number of significant (and free!) updates since its release back in 2016, and for this refill I've made a special effort to use these new features, like inter-osc FM and RM, and sample/wavetable importing.

Please check out the demo's for an idea of the sounds contained in the refill. Special thanks to reasontalkers Aeox, Strangers, Modecca/Teflontomb and Scratchnsniff for their excellent musical contributions.



you can check out some more info and buy eXpandemonium here:
https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/expandemonium/
Last edited by Auryn on 16 Jul 2018, edited 1 time in total.
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

12 Jul 2018

Auryn wrote: ↑
12 Jul 2018
Hi Everyone,

Quixotic Sound Design is proud to present its latest refill, eXpandemonium, a dedicated refill for Blamsoft's Expanse synthesizer. Like with my previous refills, the idea behind this refill is to create a broad palette of sounds that are unique to the synthesizer I'm working with. The result is a collection of over 300 device patches that range from soothing hypnotic pads to twisted FM sequences and from musical and expressive polysynths to utterly uncategorizable inharmonic FX.
Expanse has received a number of significant (and free!) updates since its release back in 2016, and for this refill I've made a special effort to use these new features, like inter-osc FM and RM, and sample/wavetable importing.

Please check out the demo's for an idea of the sounds contained in the refill. Special thanks to reasontalkers Aeox and Strangers for their excellent musical contributions.



you can check out some more info and buy eXpandemonium here:
https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/expandemonium/
I was horsing around 🐎 with this refill on my keyboard last night and was pretty happy with the colorful timbres (especially poly folder and even plucks).
Just 2 keyboard track riffs playing against each other, each having different patches can sound really interesting.
Really unique patches I would not normally run into with my tendency of making everything from scratch.
Good patches help me move into the direction of keyboard playing and away from solely getting lost in sound design music.
πŸ”—β€πŸ’₯

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

12 Jul 2018

modecca wrote: ↑
12 Jul 2018
I was horsing around 🐎 with this refill on my keyboard last night and was pretty happy with the colorful timbres (especially poly folder and even plucks).
Just 2 keyboard track riffs playing against each other, each having different patches can sound really interesting.
Really unique patches I would not normally run into with my tendency of making everything from scratch.
Good patches help me move into the direction of keyboard playing and away from solely getting lost in sound design music.
Thanks for the compliment! I usually try to find some unique sounds, but it takes time as you really need to familiarize yourself with all the features and how they interact. With Expanse the breadth of options is just enormous. I had a lot of fun just importing samples from the Factory Sound Bank, and using them as a starting off point. The sample importing can yield some pretty interesting novel sounds that veer away from the sounds of the included wavetables. I'd recommend messing around with that if you want to go exploring for yourself again.
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

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Dante
Posts: 531
Joined: 06 Jun 2015
Location: Australia
Contact:

12 Jul 2018

InstaBought ! Awesome stuff....

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modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

13 Jul 2018

πŸ”—β€πŸ’₯

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

13 Jul 2018

Dante wrote: ↑
12 Jul 2018
InstaBought ! Awesome stuff....
Thanks for the compliment and thanks for keeping the light on at Quixotic HQ!
modecca wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
<a class="vglnk" href="
" rel="nofollow"><span>https</span><span>://</span><span>youtu</span><span>.</span><span>be</span><span>/</span><span>8V6RCVv</span><span>-</span><span>o6Y</span></a>
this is pretty trippy, both sonically and visually - I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at till I spotted the flick of the infamous glove at the end :-)
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

13 Jul 2018

Auryn wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
Dante wrote: ↑
12 Jul 2018
InstaBought ! Awesome stuff....
Thanks for the compliment and thanks for keeping the light on at Quixotic HQ!
modecca wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
<a class="vglnk" href="
" rel="nofollow"><span>https</span><span>://</span><span>youtu</span><span>.</span><span>be</span><span>/</span><span>8V6RCVv</span><span>-</span><span>o6Y</span></a>
this is pretty trippy, both sonically and visually - I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at till I spotted the flick of the infamous glove at the end :-)
All I did was took 3 of your expanse patches, tossed em into a combinator (layering them), played the 3 simutaneously utilizing a relitively wide range of the keyboard and then went back and did some independant automation to each of the synths. Expanse has so many parameters availible to automate, especially with all of the modifiers and filter options, that it's quick to find a way to play with the timbre in a pleasing way.
Then I added a new note lane for one of the synths and gave it some higher octave sweetener towards the end.
This was a really quick method to get to the heart of what I have always pictured the simple essence of synthesizer music to be.
Once again you got me interested in a synth that was collecting dust!
πŸ”—β€πŸ’₯

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

13 Jul 2018

modecca wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
All I did was took 3 of your expanse patches, tossed em into a combinator (layering them), played the 3 simutaneously utilizing a relitively wide range of the keyboard and then went back and did some independant automation to each of the synths. Expanse has so many parameters availible to automate, especially with all of the modifiers and filter options, that it's quick to find a way to play with the timbre in a pleasing way.
Then I added a new note lane for one of the synths and gave it some higher octave sweetener towards the end.
This was a really quick method to get to the heart of what I have always pictured the simple essence of synthesizer music to be.
Once again you got me interested in a synth that was collecting dust![/size]
Ha well you pretty much described how I view the purpose of my refills... I supply some suitably diverse sonic bedrock, and you figure out how to express yourself with it creatively.

I found it challenging at first to get a broad range of sounds, because to some extent Expanse seemed to funnel me towards creating these big EDM type wooshy unison patches (which it excels at). To get around this I focused on creating a lot of different textures using just the oscillators and modulators, and leaving the unison and filters out of the equation at first.

If you'd be willing to put the track on Soundcloud it would make a nice interlude in the refill playlist btw
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

13 Jul 2018

I usually use a lot of tracks in my song, but with eXpanse I prefer to just make the whole song focused on a few intentionally cpu heavy instances of the synth.
crank em.JPG
crank em.JPG (9.98 KiB) Viewed 2788 times
Interesting I guess modifiers don't affect the cpu much, as there is no cpu switch for them.





Better late than never:
πŸ”—β€πŸ’₯

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

13 Jul 2018

modecca wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
Interesting I guess modifiers don't affect the cpu much, as there is no cpu switch for them.
I'm pretty sure the modulators fall under "Tables" actually
modecca wrote: ↑
13 Jul 2018
Better late than never:
Thanks, added!
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

15 Jul 2018

Added another barnstorming demo entry from Scratchnsniff, one of the world's few (so I have learned) rural dubstep producers! Thanks for your effort.

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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

strangers
Competition Winner
Posts: 793
Joined: 06 Mar 2017
Location: NJ

15 Jul 2018

Congrats on the release! I'll surely be using this refill a lot with the massive range of sounds available. It's really cool to hear what others have been coming up with while utilizing the refill.
Auryn wrote: ↑
15 Jul 2018
Added another barnstorming demo entry from Scratchnsniff, one of the world's few (so I have learned) rural dubstep producers! Thanks for your effort.

That's a beast of a track. Again, the range of sounds in this refill is insane.

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aeox
Competition Winner
Posts: 3222
Joined: 23 Feb 2017
Location: Oregon

16 Jul 2018

Cool demos guys!

It's interesting to see how others used it because there are so many patches. I think I only used around 6 or so patches for my track! Just a very very small sample of the refill..

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

18 Jul 2018

Thanks in no small part to all these fancy demos the refill has been sitting pretty at the top of the "most popular right now" for most of the week. If this keeps up I'm gonna have to treat you all to some finely aged dutch cheese. :D
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
aeox
Competition Winner
Posts: 3222
Joined: 23 Feb 2017
Location: Oregon

19 Jul 2018

Auryn wrote:Thanks in no small part to all these fancy demos the refill has been sitting pretty at the top of the "most popular right now" for most of the week. If this keeps up I'm gonna have to treat you all to some finely aged dutch cheese. :D
Glad to hear!

Sent from my Nokia 3310 using Tapatalk


User avatar
VHS
Posts: 129
Joined: 21 Sep 2015

19 Jul 2018

dat aeox demo tho :D great job!

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modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

20 Jul 2018

Auryn wrote: ↑
18 Jul 2018
Thanks in no small part to all these fancy demos the refill has been sitting pretty at the top of the "most popular right now" for most of the week. If this keeps up I'm gonna have to treat you all to some finely aged dutch cheese. :D
Where do I turn in my cheese wheel voucher?
Have any ideas what Re you will make a refill of next?
πŸ”—β€πŸ’₯

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

20 Jul 2018

VHS wrote: ↑
19 Jul 2018
dat aeox demo tho :D great job!
Yeah it really is an outstanding piece of melodic writing
modecca wrote: ↑
20 Jul 2018
Where do I turn in my cheese wheel voucher?
haha well first I have to check whether I can actually just safely mail such a thing... IIRC travelling to the US you weren't allowed to just bring a cheese or two in your luggage, so I don't know what will happen if I replace the suitcase by an envelope so to speak.
modecca wrote: ↑
20 Jul 2018
Have any ideas what Re you will make a refill of next?
Good question. I've been toying with several ideas. I still have a half-finished Polymodular system+Oberon+Many Other RE's modular thing that I'm working on - working title "reason modular allstars" ;) , which is the most ambitious and sonically interesting IMHO. It's been an extraordinarily laborious project to work on, so progress is slow, and the amount of RE's used make it a niche product at best. Also I got a bit discouraged by Blamsoft going the VCV rack route and not developing the polymodular system TBH. But it will see the light of day eventually in some form, maybe as a freebie community thing rather than a commercial release, I haven't decided yet.

Nostromo is also an interesting candidate, there's something perversely inviting/challenging about doing a carefully designed patch collection for a synth that's designed around the idea of randomly generating patches :twisted: I've already thought of a working title here too: Nostromo - mo patches mo problems

I'm also toying with the idea of doing a refill centered around the PSQ1684. It's a fascinating device, but I'd really have to put in some serious mental/cognitive effort to make the most of it. I don't really have a strong mathematical intuition, so in a way it's contrary to my normal way of thinking.

I'm still exploring the possibilities though, so if you have any RE (or even vst) you can recommend i'd be glad to check it out. I did download a trial version of harmor and the resampling is impressive but the rest of the synth hasn't grabbed me yet (but I haven't really given it much time)...
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

User avatar
Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

05 Aug 2018

A final demo track for this refill. It's rougher than I wanted it to be but working on it in this heat proved quite the challenge. Used PunchBD, Acoustic Clapper (very handy RE) and Qasic Rz-i for the beats/percussion. Everything else is eXpandemonium patches.

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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

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