In this tutorial
My notes from this video
Phase is sound design at its core. Where the waveform starts decides if two waves cancel each other out or boost each other, and with two saw waves it changes the sound a lot. Because it's slightly limited in what it can do, tweaking these very small things makes a huge difference for your sound.
Phase re-trigger means that any time you hit a note, it starts exactly at this phase point. If I disable it, it free runs the phase. With a lot of voices, re-trigger off sounds like a very smooth super saw. With re-trigger on you get a very plucky, phasey sound, because all eight voices start at this phase point. Then tweak the phase point itself. At 180 or 90 degrees the click of the sound changes a lot, so for a more clicky screech, make sure the phase point is right.
For the harder styles, the only effects you really need are distortion, EQ and compression. Phaser, chorus, delay and reverb you can dial in later. The EQ and the compressor together are for mixing. The distortion is mostly for shaping your sound.
The amount is not the only knob that adds distortion. If I take a normal amount and decrease the mix, the distortion goes down too. So if you drive more volume through your overdrive, you get more distortion. Same with the volume, and same with the filter drive when you take a low pass cutoff all the way open. Combining the mix, the volume and the drive gets you way more distortion than you think you can get in this plugin. I mostly use overdrive and clip.
Take a saw wave, open another oscillator in part B and select noise. Take the noise down a lot and add distortion. It's a very classic hardstyle effect, and I use part B for it because then I can control part B, with volume control in two places.
I do the same with the detune on a euphoric lead. I take the original saw wave back to one voice, then open part B with two or three voices and open the detune. Now I can control the mix of B. On a rawstyle lead, the saw wave with distortion goes through the 12 dB band pass, and part B fills it up with a clarity layer, a saw wave with re-trigger off that isn't getting that band pass.
You can stack modulations. For example, pitch AB very, very fast, and then phase AB on random with the gain and the rate open. If you understand this, you can build up your sound with a lot more precision, because you have multiple pitch or phase modulations.
Another really cool trick is to increase a modulation over time. Say I add pitch AB. It's a good setting, but I don't want it to hit immediately. I use mod envelope 2 and select the gain of LFO 1. Take the gain down and set the amount to the range where it sounded good, around 1.6. Now it increases over time. It's a very powerful effect and a lot of people don't know you can use it that way.
For harder style production you need to know how to make a pluck go to a lead. Set the filter to low pass and in mod envelope 1 enable cutoff A and B. Increase the amount, take the sustain down and add decay. Every time you hit a note, the envelope creates that steep low pass effect. Take the cutoff down a lot and you get a very plucky sound. Increase it and you get a lead.
You can't just start the cutoff low and automate it to 100, because it's already a lead long before that. You have to find the range in which this works. In this case it's about three to six, so when I automate this I don't go higher than six and a half or lower than three.
FL Studio·Sylenth1·Serum 2
Want some free packs? Unlock our freebie vault.
We only send you harder-style content. Unsubscribe anytime.
Open the Freebie VaultNewest freebies: instant download on the YouTube freebies page.
