How To Create A Portamento Square Wave Lead Sound

Portamento square wave lead sound. You have probably heard this type of lead on many trance and/or house songs. Its one of the “bread and butter” -sounds in electronic music.

Listen the audio example to get a hang of what I’m talking about (with some vibration added):

[audio:https://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/Portamento-Square-Wave-Lead-Sound-Example.mp3]

Ok. This is how you re-create this sound using FL Studio’s 3xOsc:

1. Load 3xOsc and choose Square Wave as the shape for each three oscillators and set the Coarse Tune to 0 Semitones for each.

2. Go to the MISC -tab and under Polyphony click on Porta to enable Portamento mode and tweak the Slide -knob to 0:05 (with Slide -knob you set the slide length between the notes).

Now, to make it vibrate, set the LFO to modulate the pitch:

3. Go to the INS -tab and from there to PITCH -subtab. Under the LFO -section, turn the AMT -knob (LFO Amount) slightly left or right from its default position (center), SPD (LFO Speed) to radically left, ATT (Attack Time) to 2/6 from left and DEL (Predelay Time) all the way to left.

Here’s what the knobs do:

• AMT set the modulation amount. Delicate setting is the key for nice sounding vibrato, but of course you can use whatever setting  you want.
• SPD set the speed of the modulation. Fast but not TOO fast sounds quite allright.
• ATT sets the attack length in the modulation i.e., how fast or slow the modulation is fully effective after a note starts.
• DEL adds a gap between the start of a note and when the modulation kicks in.

And finally, some ambience and echo with Reverb and Delay:

4. Assign the 3xOsc to a free Mixer track and drop Fruity Reeverb 2 and Fruity Delay 2 to its effect slot and set them like this. First Fruity Reeverb:

And Fruity Delay 2:

Also, if you think the lead sounds too sharp or “piercing”, drop Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the effect slot and use High Shelf filter to reduce the higher frequencies:

And there you have it: portamento square wave lead sound with vibrato effect! 🙂

Watch the video below and download the FL Studio project file:

Download Portamento Square Wave Lead Sound FL Studio Project File.