Here’s Zac Green from popular music blog ZingInstruments.com walks us through 7 simple steps to make electronic music.

In the minds of consumers, creating electronic music is as simple as pressing a “make music” button on a laptop, stealing snippets of other people’s work and then having it played in nightclubs.

Now, the reality is that creating electronic music is just complex as any other type of music. If you’re just starting out writing electronic music in your home studio, here are seven simple steps you can take to help get you started on the right path.

Step 1: Find a DAW and stick to it!

A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is like your instrument. If you were learning to play guitar, you’d stick to one. However, because there are so many different software out there with so many trial versions floating around, it’s easy to get stuck in the game of always wondering if there is a better one out there, especially if you spend time on EDM production forums and such.

I don’t care which one you pick, just pick one. If it helps, I started with FL Studio and didn’t change to another one until many years later.

Step 2: Learn music theory

I know, you probably just want to create some crazy ass stuff like Skrillex or whatever, so how does music theory come into it?

Just because the sounds are synthetic and seemingly chaotic, it doesn’t mean they don’t need to fit together. Learning the basics of music theory like scales, chord construction and perhaps even going further into advanced topics can give you a whole new set of tools to help you write awesome electronic music.

There are some people out there renowned for not knowing a single thing about music theory who are still able to write great music, electronic and otherwise. However, the fact is that these people do know a lot about music theory, but they simply never learned it formally from a book or teacher.

Step 3: Invest in quality hardware

If you think you can make great sounding music with nothing more than a laptop and pair of Beats headphones, you’re in for a rude awakening. Sure, it might sound good to you, but when somebody else plays your music through an entirely different audio setup, it’s going to sound bad.

If you can’t afford a good pair of studio monitors (speakers with very clean EQ) then reference level headphones are your next best bet.

There’s also the ‘car test’. It’s a simple way of testing whether your track sounds good or not, and it’s nothing more than playing your track through your car’s speaker system. If it sounds good on those, then you’re on the right track.

Step 4: Move beyond presets

The virtual instruments that come with most DAWs are pretty good, but they’re very generic. If you stick exclusively to using the presets, you’ll end up sounding the same as every other amateur producer in your particular sub-genre of electronic music. This goes for third-party VSTs like Massive as well. Learn how to adjust the parameters and how they interact, and you’ll be able to create recognizable sounds, like a musical signature.

Step 5: Work with others

Most bands will write music together one way or another, each of the members combining their musical skill, knowledge, and creativity for something far more interesting than any one person would come up with alone.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a solo project, but quite often you can benefit from having the input of others. Electronic music producers are more likely to work alone, excepting in the mastering stage. If you feel like your music is getting stale, it’s time to bring in a fresh perspective.

Step 6: Write more

Have you been working on the same track for three months? Put it aside and start something fresh.

If you’ve got the opposite problem, and you never finish anything, take a different approach. Instead of giving up, force yourself to create a one minute track, and keep working on making lots of them, one at a time. Eventually progress to two-minute tracks and so on.

The more writing you do, the better you get at your craft. Of course, this doesn’t happen automatically. You have to invest some conscious effort into learning what sounds better, finding weak spots and areas for improvement.

Step 7: Use a MIDI controller

Rather than trying to input every sequence with a mouse (or heaven forbid your laptop touchpad) invest in a decent MIDI controller, preferably with both keys and pads. There are a lot of good choices, and most of them will automap the hardware functions to those of the DAW.

Not only do they make inputting notes much quicker, but they can give you a new way of writing. Rather than programming in advance and then listening back to the result, you can record live. The layout of a musical keyboard also changes the way you approach chords and sequences.

Using MIDI controllers isn’t inherently better in every respect. Sometimes you can surprise yourself when inputting using the cursor by coming up with crazy ideas that would be completely impossible to perform otherwise. A combination of the two is the best way to go.

Now that you’ve had a chance to read through these tips, it’s time to start applying them. Don’t feel pressured to put them all into practice at once. Trying one out at a time over the course of a few weeks is fine. Likewise, don’t treat them as gospel. Rules are made to be broken, but it helps to know when to stay in the lines so that when you do go outside, it’s even better.

The post 7 Simple Steps to Make Electronic Music appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

After a long hiatus from making tutorials here’s finally a new video. It’s about how to make a snare sound using FL Studio Sytrus.

There are no text boxes this time, I’m just showing you how to.

The method is simple: I’m using Sytrus with two Operators. OP1 is for snap and body, OP2 for noise.

In the effect chain I’m using:

• Fruity Fast Dist for distortion
• PEQ2 for cutting lows and boosting some fundamental parts
• Soundgoodizer for additional excitement
• Another PEQ2 for cutting low frequencies even more after Soundgoodizer (plus some minor tweaking in the mid/high area)
• Transient Processor for sharpening the attack part of the snare.

I also show you how the snare works in a simple mix (i.e in a ‘context’).

Enjoy!

The post How To Make A Snare Sound appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this tutorial, I will give you few ideas and thoughts why you should make sure that the low end of your EDM track stays mono and how to do that in FL Studio.

First, why is it important to make sure that the lower frequencies of your mix are in mono, especially if it’s aimed for clubs?

The “low end” is the FUNDAMENTAL in electronic dance music. The low end holds the energy of your whole track so it needs to be as solid (and punchy) as possible.

What could possibly make the low end sound inconsistent and not so punchy in a club sound system?

Some stereo widening effects such as chorus, haas effect tricks, etc. Even though they are cool and they have their place when applied to UPPER FREQUENCIES, they can be BAD for low frequencies.

Why?

The thing is, if the stereo widening effect sets the phase of the audio between the left and right channel out of sync (which they usually do), and you don’t have an option to control the frequency range where it will be applied, your low end may suffer phase cancellation issues when those channels are mixed together.

Many club PA’s sum low frequencies to mono and if your low-end material is having a left and right channel phase mismatch, bass levels may sound inconsistent and it’ll partly loose the focus. And that’s bad.

(And also, maybe not so relevant these days, but IF your song is going to be pressed on to vinyl, the low end needs to be mono anyway.

By keeping the bass in mono, you will ensure, that your track retains its energy and hit hard in the dance floor.

And even if the club is having a full stereo system, the installation, alignment and how people are positioned on the dancefloor, varies. Many people are standing so that they hear only one of the speakers. In fact, only small amount of people are in the middle of the floor to hear the music in full stereo.

That is why you need to make sure that the low end sounds consistent whether it’s listened in stereo (in ideal position) or summed to mono and/or listened to only one speaker.

So keeping the bass in mono already from the beginning of the production is indeed a good idea!

Ok. Here are a couple of practical ideas you can do to keep the bass section of your track in mono.

Stereo Analysis Tool And Mono Tricks

For starters, you might want to load some stereo analysis tool to the Master channel of your DAW to keep an eye how the audio signal is spread in the stereo field. If you don’t have one, check out Stereo Tool by Flux. It’s an awesome free stereo imaging and analysis tool and that’s what I’m using in this tutorial.

Reading the analyzer is pretty self-explanatory: the wider the stereo spread of the audio signal, the wider that yellow/orange visual stuff in that vertical axis:

And vice versa: if the left and right signals are identical (a monoaural signal) the result is a straight line:

Ok. I have loaded a kick drum as an example and routed it to one of the Mixer insert tracks.

As you can see (and hear), the kick is slightly spread in the stereo field – most likely in the higher frequency area so it’s not completely mono:

Now, your DAW usually has some inbuilt option or a plugin to set audio to mono.

In FL Studio, there’s a Stereo Separation knob in the Mixer which you can use to merge left and right channels.

Turn it all the way to the right and it will sum the left and right channels to mono:

As you can see in the Stereo Tool, the kick is now mono:

So this is a quick way to “monoize” any audio.

However, what if you want to retain the stereo spread of those upper frequencies, but still want to make sure that the low end stays mono?

You can use i.e an equalizer which has a mid/side processing option, such as Fabfilter Pro Q. With mid/side EQ, you can use a low cut filter to filter out all the stereo information from the low-frequency area.

In FL Studio, you can use Maximus for something similar and here’s how:

Load Maximus to same Mixer insert track where your kick is and turn OFF the compression for all the Bands (including the Master) as we are not going to use Maximus for compression here. We are using it just for controlling the stereo width of different frequency ranges:

Click the Low Band and dial the Stereo Separation -knob to 100% merged. This’ll sum stereo data to mono only in the low-frequency area defined in the low-frequency band settings.

Also, as a side-note: set the Look-ahead delay (LMH Del) to zero milliseconds to avoid latency delay appearing to the Maximus output. The look-ahead delay control has it’s used if you use Maximus for compression and/or limiting, but in this case, it’s not needed.

Switch on the Bands display to see what kind of frequency range the Low Band covers and use the Low Band Frequency knob to set the Low band frequency cutoff value. Set it to around 90 or 80 Hz. This’ll mono everything starting from that frequency value and below, but leaves the stereo information above that intact:

Let’s move on…

Making Bass Presets Mono

But what about those bass sound presets included in your favorite synth plugin? There are tons of ready-made presets and you can’t be 100% sure whether the low end works in mono.

(I’m using Spire and one of its factory presets “BA Drill Bass” as an example here):

So how to make sure the low end stays in mono?

You can use the same process as with the kick: mid/side EQ or Maximus.

I’m using Maximus here so I’m just going to drop it to the same Mixer insert track where Spire is routed and use the same settings as with the kick: I turn off the compression for all the bands, merge the Low band to mono and set the Low band frequency cutoff value to around 80 Hz. This leaves the stereo spread in the upper frequencies intact.

Now watch the stereo analysis tool as I isolate the low-frequency band (isolating can be done by simply muting the Mid and High bands):

Voila, it’s in mono!

But did this particular preset actually require “monoizing” the low frequencies? Did it contain a stereo information? And how to check it?

You can check it with Maximus: while the low-frequency band is still isolated, set it’s Stereo Separation knob to default and watch the stereo analysis tool:

As you can see, the low frequency range of this bass preset does contain a stereo information. But there’s not much of it and at least to my ears, it seems to sound alright when summed to mono. So this particular sound could’ve worked perfectly well in a mono sound system as is.

However, checking how the lower frequencies sound in mono already at this stage of production, keeps you safe from nasty surprises when the track is going to be played on a dancefloor.

In worst case scenario, some bass presets may contain so much stereo manipulation that when you mono the low frequencies, complete phase cancellation happens from time to time. If that’s the case, then simply by merging the left and right channel isn’t going to fix that. It just makes the phase issue apparent in an early production stage.

Even though the stereo analysis tool helps you to see the stereo width visually, you need to let your ears to be the final judge: when you mono the low-frequency range, and listen to it in isolation, does it sound weak from time to time? Is there an inconsistency in its volume level?

If it does, you might want to check out how the bass sound patch is build. Depending on the synth plugin you’re using, check the effects or special features that affect to the stereo width, such as chorus, some special stereo widening parameters, etc.

If there isn’t an option to set a specific frequency range where the effect will be applied, try decreasing the stereo widening effects until the low frequencies sound consistent in mono.

So with that said – and if you’re wondering why I’m not advising to just pass the whole mix through mid/side EQ, Maximus or some other tools that can make the low frequencies to mono: It’s one way to do it for sure, but by making sure that fundamental low frequency sounds works in mono already in the early production stage, makes it possible to spot possible problematic sounds and frequencies and fix them right away, which – in some cases – would be very hard or impossible to fix just by processing your whole mix with low frequency mono summing tools.

EDIT: Also, in some cases, you may want to mono slightly different frequency areas separately for kick and bass, which isn’t possible if you use the mono tool just in Master channel.

However, one way to deal with mono compatibility is to use e.g Maximus in the Master as a sort of ‘analyzer’ to keep checking how the low frequencies sound while you’re producing and if you spot a wonky bass sound then go and deal with it individually.

Bulletproof Way For Mono Bass

If you want to be 100% sure that the low frequencies of your favorite bass preset is mono compatible, but you still want to retain a stereo depth it has in the upper frequencies, try this:

Cut all the low frequencies off from the bass sound and layer a pure sinewave bass underneath it.

In FL Studio you can do it easily by using 3xOsc and Layer channel. Here’s a step-by-step process:

Assign the plugin that contains your favorite bass sound preset to an empty Mixer track and use i.e Fruity Parametric EQ 2 and high pass filter to roll off everything below – let’s say – 100 Hz:

Next, load 3xOsc and make sure you have a sine wave selected as oscillator type for Oscillator 1. Disable Oscillators 2 and 3 by setting their Mix level to 0%. Tune down the Oscillator 1 by two octaves by setting it’s Coarse pitch to -24 semitones.

Next, go to the Instrument settings and set a Root Key using the Preview keyboard. This is where you define which key plays the current pitch of the Channel.

This is also useful feature when you want to play i.e low pitch notes with those middle keys of your MIDI keyboard.

The default root key is C5 (C5 is the middle C – MIDI note number 60 – in FL Studio).

So in this example, when you hit a key of C5, the 3xOsc gives you a lower C as we tuned down the Oscillator 1 by two octaves from it’s default pitch. Measured in hertz, that’s 130.81.

Now, 130.81 Hz is a bit too high for a sub bass when played from middle C, so you might want to set the Root Key so that when you hit C5, you’ll actually get a low C (65.41 Hz).

In order to change the Root Key setting, simply right-click a note to in the Preview keyboard. Set it to C6. That blue note shows the root key of the channel. Setting the root key higher will cause a given key to sound lower in pitch. So now, when you hit a key of C5, you’ll hear a low C (65.41 Hz) which is good for sub bass.

Why is it important to set the Root Key when layering sub bass with another sound if you do use the Layer channel method?

To make those two sounds sound alright in relation to each other.

The thing is, if you use the Layer channel method (and perhaps a MIDI keyboard to play the notes), remember that you use the same channel and MIDI notes to play two different sounds – two different synths which might be tuned differently.

That is why you want to make sure that 3xOsc sub bass goes low enough in relation to your bass preset sound.

You don’t want to leave it too high, but on the other hand, not to make it go too LOW either.

In most cases, setting the Root Key to C6 works just fine as many basses presets has been tuned so that middle C gives you that 65.41 Hz.

However, if you’re not going to use a Layer channel method, just leave the Root Key as is as you can draw the notes manually to the Piano Roll and go as low and high as you want independently with both sounds.

As a side note, check out StereoSavage by PluginBoutique. It’s a quite accurate VST stereo tuner. It’s quite helpful for all kind of tuning tasks if you feel you can’t fully trust your ears.

Ok.

Next, load a Layer Channel and set those two instrument channels as Children by selecting them with the Channel selector and clicking “Set Children” under that “Layering” dialog:

That’s about it. Now you can use the Layer channel to play both instruments and you have a 100% mono low frequency bass.

The end

Watch the video version of this tutorial below:

The post Why And How To Keep Low End In Mono in FL Studio appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this tutorial I would like to draw your attention to a mixing method that may help you to make the drop section of your EDM song hit harder and/or to be more dramatic.

In electronic dance music song, drop is a part that comes immediately after breakdown and build up (build up is a section where you build the tension towards the drop). Drop is where you reintroduce the full bass line with drums and also – depending on the genre – a melody perhaps. If your track is played in a club, drop is where people start dancing and jumping like crazy. It is a part of your track that you should really try to make stand out.

So how to make it stand out then?

There’s several ways for sure, but one of the essentials (IMO) is this: pay close attention to the FREQUENCIES of your song and try to make your build up LESS BASS HEAVY than your drop. Try to preserve a clear contrast between these two sections by using EQ to “hold back” the lower frequencies during the build up. And when the drop hits, RELEASE those frequencies. After all, we are talking about a part of a song where we should “drop the bass”. If the build up is already as bass heavy as the drop, it’s hard to make these two sections differentiate from each other and thus, the impact is less dramatic. So in a nutshell: use EQ (high pass filter) to CUT the lows in the build up and the contrast between your build and drop will most likely make a greater impact. Try doing this, if not for the whole build up section, but at least for those few last bars of it.

Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have ANY bass at all in your build up. You don’t want to make it sound too thin. And you may also have some hits and stabs in your build that require low frequencies to make an impact. But as in whole, try to make the difference between the build up and drop obvious to the listener in low frequency wise.

So in practice, in your Mixer, you can either roll off the low frequencies from each individual sound you’re using in the build up section via EQ using high pass filter if necessary. But the easier way to do this is to EQ them AS A GROUP by routing all the associated Mixer tracks into one Mixer track, then EQ that track.

Below is an image of my example mix and I have done just the aforementioned: I’ve routed the Mixer tracks associated to build up sounds into one Mixer track and done the same to drop sounds. Now I can easily control the EQ and levels of both sections using just two Mixer tracks.

But exactly what EQ frequencies you should cut?

Try rolling off frequencies of 70-100 Hz and below using high pass filter. Use your taste to cut more/less lower frequencies. Try to make it sound natural and not too thin in relation to the rest of your mix.

Also, when you roll off those low frequencies, this will most likely give a bit more headroom to the build up part so you can increase its volume level if you feel its necessary.

The end.

Watch the video version below:

The post How To Make Drops Hit Harder appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create that huge snare sound that can be heard in countless of modern EDM tracks (especially in the ‘build-up’ section, just before the ‘drop’). I’m not 100% sure, but I think it’s called ‘bigroom snare’ (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!).

Here’s an audio preview:

And here’s how it works in a mix:

Now, to create something like that, all you need is a snare sample with some ‘body’. By ‘body’ I mean presence in the 100-500Hz frequency range (bass and low-mid range). Then, apply reverb and compression and you’re all set.

Here’s how to do it step by step:

First you need that snare sample. If you have FL Studio, use the browser and locate the ‘Packs -> Drums -> Snares’ folder and pick your snare sample.

I recommend using the ‘Grv Snareclaps’. Many of them has punch in the bass/low-mid range and you can make great impact snares out of them. I used the ‘Grv Snareclap 29″ as my main snare when I was making this tutorial.

TIP: When choosing your snare sample, you can use the help of a spectrum analyzer (Fruity Parametric EQ 2 for example) to check in what frequency areas the sample is peaking. Just drop it to the Master track and keep an eye on it when you browse and audition the samples.

Next, drop your snare sample to the Step Sequencer and assign it to a free Mixer track.

In the Mixer, add a Fruity Reeverb 2 to the snare drum Mixer track and dial in following settings. Remember that these settings are just what sounds good to me so feel free to apart!

Few words about the Fruity Reeverb 2 settings I used above:

High Damping (DAMP): damps the high frequencies in the reverb signal and causes the sound to become muffled and warmer. Setting the High Damp to damp only the higher frequencies (13-15kHz or above) or bypassing it completely is recommended to let those high frequencies pass through because a bright reverb works better for the impact snare than muffled one. I just bypassed it completely by setting it to OFF.

High Cut (H.CUT): removes the high frequencies from the reverb. Makes the room sound duller. Just like with the High Damping, cut only the highest frequencies or turn it OFF to bypass it completely. I set it to OFF.

Room Size (SIZE): sets the size of the virtual room being simulated. Use huge Room Size settings. I set it all the way to 100.

Predelay (DEL): creates a slap-back echo effect that can add atmosphere. The Predelay increases the ‘largeness’ of the reverb. Using values of 100ms or more simulates an ambience of a pretty large room or space. I used 125ms in the example. Whether to increase or decrease the Pre-delay time is up to your taste. Feel free to experiment.

Decay Time (DEC): controls the decay time of the reverb. I found that using a pretty moderate Decay Time worked quite well, but if you want the reverb ‘tail’ to be more continuous, use longer Decay Time. I used 3.2 seconds.

Next step is optional: in the Mixer, add Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the snare drums effect chain and boost the 250Hz and surrounding frequency area a bit using a Peaking Filter with semi-wide Bandwidth (around 40%). This’ll enhance the bass/low-mid frequency range and gives more ‘body’ to the snare (but only if the sample has presence in that frequency area). Of course, using EQ here is a matter of taste. Whether the sample requires a boost or not and how much to boost depends on your snare sample and your mix. But in this tutorial example, I found that the EQ boost sounded pretty nice with several of the ‘Grv Snareclaps’ samples.

Next, add Fruity Limiter to the snare sample Mixer track effect chain, activate the Compressor side of it and dial in following settings:

Here’s an explanation to the settings I used above:

The aim is an extreme compression effect so start by lowering the Threshold level to a fair amount below the input peaks of the snare sample (you can see the input peaks in the Fruity Limiter graph when you playback the snare sample). This is a starting point for a heavy compression. Where to set the Threshold level exactly depends on the input signal level of your sample (and in the end, your taste), but as a rule of thumb, set it a way more lower than the highest peak of your snare. I used a Threshold level of -28dB with the example snare samples.

Set the Ratio to fairly high to really bring out the tail part of the snare (by tail I mean the part of the snare sample that comes right after the attack). It will also boost the tail of the reverb signal. I found that using a Ratio of 4.5:1 seemed to work pretty well with the example snare.

Compensate the gain reduction caused by the compression by increasing the Gain. Of course, the exact level depends on your mix and how loud you want the snare to be.

Set the Release time to around 150ms or use your taste. With longer Release times, it will take longer from the signal to ‘recover’ from the compression and you’ll get less pumping sound. I found using Release time of 150ms working pretty well in this example. It sounds hard and bumpy, but it kind of fits in there.

It’s a pretty heavy compression yeah, but I think it serves it’s purpose as a special effect in this example.

That’s about it, basically.

So in a nutshell: find a snare sample with presence in the bass/low-mid frequency range and process it with a big reverb and heavy compression.

The end.

Watch the video version below and download the .FLP project files:

Download Huge Impact Snare Sound .FLP (requires FL Studio 11.0.4 or later to open properly)

Download Huge Impact Snare Sound Mixer State File (.FST)

The post How To Make Huge Impact Snare Sound appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

Sometimes, you may want to make your beats sound a bit dirty and not so hi-fi and in this tutorial I will show you two methods how to vinylize your beats – in other words, how to add vinyl recording style crackles, pops and hiss to your audio.

Here’s an audio example. First the method 1:

Here’s method 2:

Before we begin, I show you quickly how the example beat was put together – in case you’re interested to know.

The drum samples are from the default sample library that comes with FL Studio. You’ll find nice bunch of good quality samples from the subfolders under the Packs folder.

The beat consists of two slightly different drum patterns. Here’s the pattern 1:

And pattern 2:

Now in the Mixer, all the Mixer tracks that are assigned to the drum samples are routed to one Mixer track (bus track – note that any Mixer track can act as a bus track in FL Studio). This way, the samples can be effected as a group.

First effect in the bus track effect chain is Maximus. Of course, Maximus isn’t actually essential for the vinyl effect. I’m just using it in this example to fatten the beat and in case you are interested to know how, I’m using a slightly modified version of the “Soundgoodizer A” preset which you can find in the preset menu. How I modified it?

The low end was too heavy so I lowered the Low band pre gain, did the same to High band and boosted the Mid band a little. In the Master band I slightly increased the Attack time to add a little more sharpness to the beat. I also modified the compression knee a bit to make it amplify the lower level input signals. This’ll pump up the beat a little. And finally, I increased the Pre gain few dB’s to give the beat it’s final boost.

Ok. Now, to the actual vinylizing part.

The vinylizing in this first method is all about plugins. I’m using iZotope’s Vinyl. It’s a free vinyl simulation plugin which you can download from Izotope’s website.

Compare the difference what it does to audio. First example is iZotope Vinyl disabled then enabled:

Let’s look at some of the controls: ‘Wear’ control’s how worn out the record is. I’ve set it to around 40%. ‘Year’ models record players from different decades using filter responses. I’ve set it to 2000 which has no effect at all (Earlier years roll off frequencies.) There’s also bunch of other parameters which I however didn’t found so usable – at least not in this example beat:

• Mechanical Noise: The amount of turntable motor rumble and noise
• Electrical Noise: Internally generated electrical noise, such as 60 Hz grounding hum
• Dust: The amount of dust on the record
• Scratch: The number and depth of scratches on the record

So basically, I’m just applying the Wear and it’s all set.

Ok. Second effect in the chain is a plugin called Milli Vinylli (you can download it for free here). Milli Vinylli is an old Vinyl sound generator. It generates those vinyl crackle, pop and hiss artifacts much of like iZotope’s vinyl, but IMO Milli Vinylli does it better and offers more control over the artifacts.

Let’s look at some of the controls: using the first row buttons you can turn generators on/off. First generator is hiss. Control the volume via the ‘Vol’ knob. ‘Main Vol’ controls the volume of the sum of all generators. ‘Click A’ (and B) generates clicks. ‘Var’ adjusts the level of variation. ‘Density’ sets the noise density and ‘Fq’ frequency. ‘Dust’ generates those same artifacts you hear when you play a dusty vinyl. There’s also ‘Friction’, but I’m not using it in this example beat.

Note that Milli Vinylli generates crackles and hiss continuosly so you might want to record your beat to audio and maybe use it as a loop. Recording is easy: press SHIFT+E in the Master channel to open Edison in loop recording mode and play back your beat.

Use arrow keys to select a record take and drag it to the Playlist using the drag tool.

Now disable the effect chain and Edison in the Mixer and you’re all set.

You can also record just the Milli Vinylli crackles to audio and then mix it with the beat.

Ok. This was the end of the first method. Here’s the second method:

In this method, I’m using exactly same plugins in the drum bus track excluding the Milli Vinylli. For the crackle and dust I’m using an audio sample – recorded from a real vinyl. Musicradar’s Vinyl Style Sample pack (free – available in the Musicradar’s website) includes few really awesome crackle samples. And I’m using one of them in this example – CRACKLE03.WAV to be exact.

All I need to do is to copy, paste & cut the crackle sample. It’s easy to loop it over and over again.

IMO the crackle sample needs a little bit of EQ. There’s some low frequency noise maybe a tad too much so I just assign it to a Mixer track and use Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to fix it.

And this was the end of method 2.

I’m sharing the .FLP files for both examples and the effect chain Mixer state file (.FST) so you can freely play around with them (note that they require FL Studio 11.0.2 or later, iZotope Vinyl, Milli Vinylli and/or the Musicradar’s Vinyl Style Sample pack to open properly):

• Download the Mixer State file (this fx chain requires iZotope Vinyl and Milli Vinylli)
• Download the Method 1 .FLP (requires iZotope Vinyl and Milli Vinylli)
• Download the Method 2 .FLP (requires iZotope Vinyl and Musicradar’s Vinyl Style Sample pack)
• Download iZotope Vinyl (no longer available)
• Download Milli Vinylli
• Download Musicradar’s Vinyl Style Sample pack

Watch the video version below:

The post How To Vinylize Beats appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

Image-Line’s Harmor is a five-star synth plugin practically for any type of sound or sound effect and in this tutorial I will show you how to make a mega uplifter with it quickly and easily.

Here’s a sound example:

Article Assets

Download Massive Harmor Uplifter .FST (This is just the Harmor preset file for the uplifter sound. Just drag and drop it on to Step Sequencer or Harmor and it should open.)

Download Massive Harmor Uplifter .FLP (This is FL Studio 11 project file. It contains the Harmor preset as well as the Piano Roll score for the uplifter.)

Ok. To replicate that, open the Harmor and first draw an 8 bar long C3 note to the Harmor’s Piano Roll. (NOTE that you’re free to stray from ANY of the settings I’m showing in this tutorial to create more interesting sounding uplifters!)

Now, first task is to thicken and stereoize the default Harmor sound which is just a standard saw wave and we are going to use the Unison effect for that.

So, under the Unison section set the Unison distribution (type) to Hz and Unison order to 6. (The unison types are different variations of pitch and panning spread and there’s five types to choose from. Order sets the number of unison voices.)

If you wonder how one can know what values to use and when I would say that Unison is a kind of effect you set by ear. At least that’s how I usually set it.

Next, go to the part B of the Harmor and activate it by clicking the switch. (There’s two parts in Harmor, A and B and both parts have an identical but independent synthesis options. The output of both parts are mixed together if the parts are activated.)

Now, under the Unison section (of the part B of course), leave the Unison type to Blurred (default), set the Unison order to 6 and raise the Pitch to 100%. (That’s the Unison pitch thickness and it sets the detuning across the unison voices.)

Next, strengthen the harmonics of the sound of the part B using the Harmonizer.

So, under the Harmonizer section, set the AMT (Harmonizer mix level) to 74%. (According to FL Studio manual, the Harmonizer clones and transposes the existing harmonics using various methods. So in this example, raising the Harmonizer mix level and leaving the other settings as is, it emphasises a higher pitch tone in the sound.)

Next, a bit of a distortion.

Go to the FX tab and enable Distortion by first choosing Classic as the Distortion type and set the Filter (it’s a highcut/lowpass filter) to all the way to top to let all the high frequencies pass through.

Next, compression.

Under the Compression section, choose Burning as the Compression type, drop the AMT (Compression amount) to 44% and increase the Low band (L) to 52% and High band (H) to 62%. Or set them according to your taste.

Next, reverb.

Under the Reverb section, first enable the reverb from the switch. Under the Options menu you’ll find some classic reverb presets. Choose Cathedral. Increase the Decay time to something like 7000-8000ms. And finally, set the highcut filter to around 10000Hz to let it pass through higher frequencies from the input signal (to make the reverb brighter).

The sound itself is ready. Final step is to make the pitch of the sound rise and that is done using slide notes in the Piano Roll.

So, open the Piano Roll view of the Harmor and draw an 8 bars long slide note of C7. This’ll create a slide from a note C3 to C7 over a time of 8 bars.

And finally, to make the uplifter rise higher and faster towards the end (like in my audio example), draw a two bars long slide note of C8 starting from bar 7.

That’s it!

Watch the video version below:

The post How To Make A Massive Uplifter With Harmor Synth Plugin appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

Transitions are bridges for energy!

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Let’s take a look at a more conceptual part of music production – Energy.

Energy is the lifeblood of your song. It’s the pacing, the speed, the intensity, and the pulse.

I want to talk about one specific part of energy today, and that is a thing most of us call transitions.

Why do we care about Transitions?

Transitions are important in making sure our arrangement runs smoothly. They help shift energy between sections; They bring us along an emotional ride.

Without them, sections can seem disconnected and rough (although, this can be done intentionally).

They help us identify holes in our arrangement. If you’ve ever been stuck on making that next section, putting a transition in will give you a push.

If you watch any popular TV show you’d notice how they leave you hanging at the end of every episode — something called a Cliffhanger (high school English class! We’ve come full circle).

Transitions can be thought of as sectional Cliffhangers. When a transition is building up at the end of a section, it lets the listener know that there will be more — to stay tuned. Just as Cliffhangers keep us hooked, transitions can do the same.

So what are transitions?

Transitions are a tool for manipulating tension and energy. Their main goal is to make sure that energy remains fluid between sections (or the opposite, even).

Transitions are basically energy hacks — cheat codes that you can use to drastically raise or lower energy levels over a very short period of time.

Furthermore, they allow us to direct the attention and expectations of our listeners. For example, when someone hears a reverse cymbal swelling in volume, they expect a change to occur momentarily.

There are two kinds of transitions — micro-sections and transitional elements (watch the video below for examples).

Micro-sections are short phrases, rarely more than four bars, that ease two sections together.

Transitional elements are things you place at the end of/beginning of sections in order to more easily shift between the two.

The most obvious example of transitional elements is cymbals. Reverse cymbals are a very popular tactic in electronic music. Crash cymbals on the first hit of a new section are also very common — because it’s very effective.

Noise sweeps are also a popular tactic — either by opening up the cut-off filter or simply increasing and decreasing the volume over time.

Everything that can be shifted can be used as a transitional element — but it has to be done over a much shorter period of time (usually less than a bar) and it has to noticeable enough to make a difference.

For instance, you can drastically open or close the filter cut-off on your main synth over a bar to indicate a gain or reduction in energy, respectively.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating these concepts.

Transitions are just a small part of a larger whole. To get better with the arrangement, and ultimately, the ability to finish songs.

I hope you learned something and let’s talk soon!

Zencha for HTMEM website!

The post How To Add Energy To a Track with Transitions appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this tutorial I will show you how I made a bit harder style beat in FL Studio. I’m not hundred percent sure in what specific genre or sub-genre this beat falls in to as everyone has their own opinion, but it does belong to the category of a harder style electronic dance music for sure.

Here’s an audio clip of the beat. Listen and make your own decision:

It’s probably a bit of like old school hard trance maybe..?

Anyway. Here’s the exact steps how I made this beat.

Preparation

First, I set the project tempo to 145BPM.

In the Mixer, I also dropped the Master track volume fader to -6.0dB to leave enough headroom for the mix to be safe from clipping.

Next, the most essential element of this beat: the kick.

The Kick

I picked a kick sample titled “kick02.wav” (originally from the Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters 2012 free sample pack, but for this tutorial, I gathered all the sample material to a one single folder which I am also sharing with the FL Studio project file at the end of this tutorial), opened it in a new Sampler Channel, renamed the Channel as “kick” and assigned the channel to a free Mixer track (and left the kick Mixer track volume to 0.0dB).

In the Playlist, I added a new pattern to the Clip Track, renamed it as “drums”, opened the Step Sequencer and placed the kick on each 4 steps and voilà: I got a steady four-to-the-floor rhythm pattern

Now, the kick was a bit too dry and weak to work in a harder style beat as is so it needed quite a lot processing. Slapback echo came first to my mind when I was thinking how typical harder style kick would sound.

So, I opened the Mixer, loaded a Fruity Reeverb to the kick Mixer track and first set the Predelay to 189 milliseconds. Predelay is the key for a slapback echo effect and with a tempo of 145bpm, 189 ms seemed to be just a right value to make the echo appear exactly on the offbeat after each kick.

The Decay time I set to 0.5 seconds. Short decay time works best when creating basic slapback echo effect with reverb.

Rest of the adjustments are pretty minor: I turned off the LowCut to leave all the low frequencies to the input signal, set the HighCut to 4.6 kHz, RoomSize to 46, Color to Warmer and Reverb level to 30%.

Next, I planned to use compression to shape the kick. My goal was to flatten a little the punch part at the beginning of the kick and bring the kick body (tail) alongside with the slapback echo more “in-yer-face”.

So, I went and dropped a Fruity Limiter to the kick Mixer track.

First, I switched on the compressor mode by clicking on the “Comp” and started by dropping the Threshold level to -28.9dB. I needed to drop the Threshold down to this level to get the desired effect. (Threshold sets the dB level above which the signal will be compressed. If the Threshold is left above the level the incoming signal is peaking at, the compressor doesn’t do anything.)

Then I adjusted the Ratio to 5.1:1 as it sounded just about right to my ears. (Ratio sets how much of compression will be applied once the threshold level is exceeded.)

At this point I also raised the Gain (this is the output gain or make-up gain) to 13.5dB to compensate the volume reduction caused by dropping the Threshold and adjusting the Ratio.

Next, I set the Attack to 2.05ms. After experimenting with different values, I found that 2.05ms gave what I was looking for: it smoothed out the excessive punch part, leaving a tiny snap to the attack part of the kick. (Attack sets the time how quickly the compression starts to affect to the start of the signal. Using slow attack times – something like 30ms and above – is usually the way to go when you want to add sharpness and snap especially for your percussion sounds.)

Release time I set to 147.87ms. (Release sets how quickly the compression effect will “let go” after the signal drops below the defined threshold level. Using too short release time usually causes distortion and pumpiness though the pumpy sound might be a desired effect sometimes. Too long release times on the other hand, will not give enough time for the compression to ever recover before the next peak hits and it will sound like the compression isn’t doing much at all to the signal.) After tweaking a little I ended up using the value of 147ms as it brought out the body part of the kick just the way I wanted.

Compare the uncompressed and compressed kick to hear the difference. The audio example below plays first the uncompressed and then compressed versions side by side:

Ok. The kick was still a bit weak on the lower frequency area so what I did next I loaded a Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to kick Mixer track effect slot and used low shelf filter to boost the 80Hz area and below by 10.8dB with a bandwidth of 26%. This added a serious low end boost to the kick!

Note the order of the compressor and EQ boosting in the effects chain: first compressor, then EQ boost. It does make a difference whether you put a boosting EQ before or after the compression. If you boost frequencies before feeding the signal to compressor, the compressor reacts to these raised levels of frequencies and makes things sound different. So in this example, if I would have put the low frequency EQ boost BEFORE the compressor, the compressor would’ve reacted by attenuating the low end boost and it would’ve caused other unwanted “artifacts” to the signal as well and I  would’ve needed to tweak the compressor settings all over again. I wouldn’t have benefited of the EQ boost at all.

Next, I placed a Fruity Fast Dist distortion effect to the kick drum effect chain. I use it to add a very subtle distortion to the kick. I choosed A as the distortion type, leaved the Pre amp as is, adjusted the Threshold to 10 o’clock and Mix level between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock and it was all set.

Now, to develop the sound of the kick to even further, I dropped Fruity Delay 2 to its effect chain. I was going to use it to create another slapback echo effect – this time panned hard to left.

First, I set the Time to 2:00 to make the echo appear on the offbeat between the kicks. Then I adjusted the Input panning all the way to left. I decreased the Input volume to to 11 o’clock to decrease the volume level of the echoes and Feedback level I dropped to 9 o’clock to let the echoes repeat only 1-2 times or so.

And the processing continues.

I added another reverb unit (Fruity Reeverb 2) to the kick effect chain and my aim was to add a small room type of reverb to it so I set the Decay to 0.6 seconds (short). Room size I dropped to 36 (smaller Room size values works usually quite well with short Decay times), High cut to OFF (to leave the high frequencies to the reverb), High Damping to OFF (to not damp the higher frequencies from the fading reverb “tail”), Early reflection level (ER) to 0% (I decided to drop it 0% as I noticed it was causing a tiny overlapping problem with the attack of the kick… it was barely noticeable, but still…) , Wet level to 32% and Stereo separation to -28%.

And finally, a little boost of clarity with another instance of Fruity Parametric EQ 2 by accentuating the 5.5kHz area (using peaking filter) by 3.4dB with a default bandwidth (39%).

The kick was ready:

Next, the open hihat.

Open Hihat

I picked a standard 909 open hihat sample (originally from some old free drum sample collection I have had in my hard disk for a very long time), opened it in a new Sampler Channel and renamed it as “open hihat” and placed it on steps 3, 7, 11 and 15 which are the off-beat (in between kicks) section:

I also assigned the open hihat channel to a free Mixer track and dropped it’s volume level to -4.9dB to balance it with the kick:

Now, the open hihats sounded a little plain and boring as is so I was going to use a Fruity Delay Bank to add that busy, rolling feel to them via an echo and the built-in panning control to spread it in the stereo field.

So in detail: after dropping the Fruity Delay Bank to open hihats Mixer track, I enable the first Delay unit (it’s enabled by default) and under the Feedback section, I leave the Time to it’s default setting (3:00), set the Pan to 100% left and Feedback volume to -14%. A time value of 3:00 makes the echo appear in every third beat and Pan to 100% left throws it all the way to left in the stereo field. Feedback volume -14% seemed to give a right kind of volume balance between the echo signal and the dry signal.

Next, I enabled the second Delay unit and under the Feedback I set the Time to 5:00 (echo in every fifth beat), Pan to 100% right, and Feedback volume to 26%.

And here’s the result:

Alright. The open hihats were ready and I moved on to claps.

Claps

I went to my sample collection folder again and picked a nice trance style clap sound (originally from the same old sample collection as the open hihat) , loaded it to a new Sampler Channel and renamed it to “claps”. I opened the drum pattern and in the Step Sequener I placed the claps into steps 5 and 13. I also assigned the claps to a free Mixer track and dropped the volume level to -1.8dB to balance it with the kick.

To my taste the claps required a little shaping: I wanted to emphasize the body part of the claps more than the attack part to give it a kind of pushing feel.

So, in the Mixer I loaded Fruity Limiter to the claps effect slot, enabled the compression mode and started the process by first setting the Threshold to -24.6dB. After experimenting a while I ended up using Ratio of 3.8:1, Attack of 1.6ms and Release of 146.26ms. Output Gain I set to 3.9dB to compensate the gain reduction.

Compare the difference: first (in solo), uncompressed and then compressed:

And next, compressed claps with the kick and open hihat:

I also dropped Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the claps Mixer track and using a peaking filter boosted the 9.6kHz area by 5.8dB with the default Bandwidth to give the claps a bit clarity and also attenuated the 850Hz area (with a peaking filter as well) by -3.4dB and a Bandwidth of 44% to get rid of the boxiness.

And here’s the end results:

Next, the closed hihat.

Closed Hihat

I picked a closed hihat sample titled “Hat03_PL.wav” (originally from the Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters package) and loaded it in a new Sampler Channel. After renaming it as “closed hihat” I created a rapid sequence to the drum pattern by placing the closed hihat to every step in the Step Sequencer and using the Graph Editor I added a little variation to the Velocity values:

I wasn’t totally happy to the sound of the closed hihat so I assigned it to a free Mixer track first for some further processing.

First, I dropped the volume to -7.0dB as it was way too loud compared to other drum sounds. Equalizing was also required as there were some frequencies in it that didn’t seem to fit so well to the mix.

With that said, I dropped Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the closed hihat effect slot and after fiddling a while I ended up using following settings: low shelf filter to roll off everything below 2.3kHz (and I mean -18dB cut) and high shelf filter to attenuate 7.5kHz area by -2.9dB. This’ll sculpt the hihat to something very thin and “small” and not soo sharp in the high frequency area.

First, in solo:

And with the beat:

But I wanted to process it a little more: I dropped Fruity Blood Overdrive to it’s effect slot and ended up using following settings: x100 mode ON,  PreAmp to 0.19, PostGain to -0.65.

I also used Fruity Stereo Shaper to spread the sound a little in the stereo field. So in detail, after dropping the Fruity Stereo Shaper to the closed hihat Mixer track, I simply set the Delay parameter to 3.2ms left.

First, in solo:

And with the beat:

Ok. The closed hihat sounded allright.

Next, the crash cymbal.

Crash Cymbal

I loaded a sample “Bh_Hit_Crash_0003_PL.wav” (originally from the Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters package as well) to a new Sampler Channel, renamed it to crash and placed it to the first step in the drum pattern Step Sequencer:

I also assigned it to a free Mixer track and dropped the level to -8.5dB to not let it poke through too loud.

The drums were ready so my next step was to build an 8 bars long drum loop.

Building A Drum Loop

So, I went to the Playlist and copy/pasted the drum pattern. Then I cloned the pattern via the “Make unique” -function (right click on the pattern top left corner and choose “Make unique” from the menu). It got automatically renamed as drums #2.

Then I opened the Step Sequencer and deleted the crash cymbal from the step 1 because I didn’t wan’t the crash cymbal to get repeated on every pattern.

Next, in the Playlist, I copy/pasted the drums #2 pattern all the way to bar 9.

I also wanted to create a little fill/build up to the last bar of the beat to add a slight variation to the loop so I made it unique (it got renamed as drums #3) and in the Step Sequencer, I simply added the claps on step 9.

Here’s just the fill:

And here’s the drumloop as in whole thus far:

To give more weight to the build up/fill, I planned to add a reverse crash cymbal and I was going to use the crash cymbal I already had in my drum sequence.

Reverse Crash Cymbal

So first, I opened the Step Sequencer and crash Sampler Channel Settings panel and dragged the sample from the Sample View to the Playlist.

In the crash sample Channel Settings window, under the “Precomputed effects”, I enabled the reverse. I also slowed down the sample a bit by setting the Pitch Knob Range to 6 semitones and dropping the Channel Pitch Knob to -200 cents. I often do this with reversed crash cymbals as it adds more contrast and depth when moving from the build up to the following section.

In the Playlist I aligned the reveresed crash sample so that it ended exactly where the last bar of the drum loop ended (holding down ALT while dragging bypasses the snapping for fine tuning the position of a sample in the Playlist grid).

Then I assigned the sample to a free Mixer track, renamed the track to “reverse crash” and dropped the volume level to -17.1dB to make it sit better in the mix.

Now I had a simple 8 bar drum loop starting with a crash cymbal and ending to a simple fill/build-up.

Check:

Next, the bass.

Bass

Obviously I was going to use 3xOsc for the bass sound so after loading it, I renamed the Channel to “bass” and started to test different combination of oscillators and tuning settings and ended up using following:

• Osc 1 shape: sine, Coarse tune to -12 semitones, Fine tune to 0 (default)
• Osc 2 shape: square, Coarse tune to -24 semitones, Fine tune to 0 (default), Volume to 63%
• Osc 3 shape: square, Coarse tune to -24 semitones, Fine tune to 0 (default), Volume to 25% (default)

Basically, these settings provided a sharp square wave bass (Osc 2 & 3) with an additional bass tones from a sine wave (Osc 1).

I assigned the bass (3xOSc) to a free Mixer track and fattened it a bit by loading a Soundgoodizer to it’s effect slot and leaved the “soundgoodizing wheel” as is (1 o’clock) and dropped the track volume level to -5.6dB.

The sound was ready and my aim was to use it as a offbeat bass meaning it would pulse in between the offbeat of the kick. I also wanted to make it sound like it’s reversing or sweeping.

So first, I went to the Playlist, added a new pattern there, renamed it as “bass” and using the Piano Roll view of the 3xOsc, I drawed a 1 bar long note of E3.

To make it sound like it’s reversing or sweeping in between the offbeat sections, I could’ve used sidechain compression, but instead, I planned on using Channel Volume automation. So first, I selected an one bar long section in the Playlist (I was going to create an automation clip and making a selection in the Playlist makes the automation clip to be automatically the length of the selection). Then I opened the Step Sequencer and created an automation clip for the bass (3xOsc) Channel Volume knob (right click the knob and choose “Create automation clip” from the menu).

In the Playlist, I zoomed in and edited the volume envelope to look like this:

And as a result, I had a nice sweeping/bouncing bass to go along with the kick.

Check in solo:

And with the beat:

Next, I copy/pasted the bass pattern and the volume automation clip all the way to bar 9.

The bass was done and I was ready to move on to the next sound.

Detuned Saw Lead To Air Horn Sound

My next aim was to create a detuned saw lead and process it a bit to make it sound a little like air horn and I was going to use 3xOsc for that.

After loading a new instance of 3xOsc to my project, renaming it to “air horn” and twiddling the parameters a bit, I ended up to following settings:

• Osc 1 shape: saw, Coarse tune to 0 semitones (default), Fine tune to -40 cents
• Osc 2 shape: saw, Coarse tune to 0 semitones, Fine tune to +40 cents, Volume to 50% (default)
• Osc 3 shape: saw and everything else to their default settings

With these settings, I got a basic detuned saw lead, but before the further processing, I created a simple sequence for the lead soumd.

So, I headed to Playlist, added a new pattern there, renamed as “air horn”, opened the Piano Roll view and added couple of E4 notes:

Then I copy/pasted the air horn pattern up to bar 9.

Next, I assigned the air horn to a free Mixer track, dropped the volume level to -3.7dB and added Fruity Stereo Shaper to it’s effect slot to spread the sound in the stereo field: I set the Delay parameter to 17.6ms left.

Now, the sound was too “clean” at this point so I decided to add a little bit of distortion with Fruity Blood Overdrive.

After loading the Fruity Blood Overdrive to the air horn Mixer track, I tested different values and settled on these:

• x100 mode on
• PreAmp to 0.17
• PostGain to -0.69

This was enough to “dirtify” it.

To open up the sound a little (as it was sounding a bit dull), I dropped Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to it’s effect slot and using a peaking filter I boosted the 7.9kHz area by 6.5dB with a banwidth of 31%.

It was still a bit too dry so I added a Fruity Delay 2 to it’s effect chain and set it like this:

I also dropped the Fruity Delay 2 mix level to 72%.

Basically, the sound itself was quite alright:

However, the air horn sequence was a kind of stiff and boring so I decided to add a bit of extra interest via trance gate effect. There’s plenty of ways to create such an effect and I decided to use Fruity Love Philter.

Trance Gating The Air Horn Sound

So in the Mixer, I added a Fruity Love Philter to the air horn effect slot and loaded the Default preset to empty all of it settings to start from scratch.

First, I disabled the Filter by setting it off. Then I set the Editor Target to Volume and Articulator Part to Pattern envelope. Then I enabled the envelope and also set the time to Tempo-based.

Under the Options I choosed “Create Sequence” to open the sequencer:

And in the sequencer window I merged the steps 7 and 8 by left clicking the step 7 two times. I also set the Time Multiplicator, Decay, Sustain and Gate as shown in the pic below:

After clicking Accept, I fine-tuned the envelope by deleting the second-to-last envelope point and the gating effect was ready.

While the gating effect was nice, I wanted it to appear only on certain sections during the air horn sequence. There’s a couple of ways to do this and I decided to use the Mixer effect slot Mute/solo switch button automation.

So in the Mixer (in the air horn Mixer track effect slot), I created an automation clip for the Fruity Love Philter effect slot Mute/solo switch button.

And in the Playlist, I edited the Love Philter Mute/solo automation envelope like shown in the pic below:

This switches the Love Philter effect on/off according to the envelope.

Here’s how it sounded. In solo first:

And with the beat:

Not bad, but the air horn sequence was still lacking something extra and I decided to create occasional pitch slides by automating the Channel Pitch.

Pitch Sliding The Air Horn

So, after opening the air horn Channel Settings panel, I set the Pitch Knob Range to 6 semitones and created an automation clip for the Pitch Knob.

In the Playlist, I edited the pitch envelope like shown in the pic:

And here’s how it sounded so far. Solo first:

And with the drums:

Ok. The basic elements of this beat were fine so next I started to work with the arrangement.

Arrangement

I was going to make the beat to start with drums and bass so what I did next I copy/pasted the drums and bass patterns and automation all the way to bar 25, moved the air horn sequence to right by eight bars and copy/pasted it up to bar 25 as well:

At bar 25, I planned to have a short break and then drop back the beat, but before that, I wanted to create a little build up from bar 17 to 25 and I was going to use a rising pitch effect on the air horn sequence. I decided to create another Channel Pitch automation clip for that.

So: in the Playlist, I deleted the first air horn Channel Pitch automation clip, made a selection from bar 17 to 25 (the automation clip needs to be eight bars long). Then I opened the air horn Channel Settings panel and created a new automation clip for the Channel Pitch Knob.

In the Playlist, I edited the pitch envelope points to rise from 50% (starting point) to 100% (ending point) during the eight bars long section (starting from bar 17, ending to bar 25).

First, in solo:

And with the beat:

I also created a little variation to the gating effect automation: first, I cloned the Love Philter Mute/solo switch envelope that was between bars 17 and 25 via the Make unique -function. Then I edited the envelope so that it keeps on the Love Philter gating effect for the last three bars (22, 23 and 24).

Furthermore, I created a little variation to the drum sequence as well. First I cloned the last drum pattern (at bar 24) via the Make unique -function, opened the Step Sequencer and added the claps to step 1.

Here’s the last two bars:

Also, I wanted to end the beat to a kick and crash (in the break section) so I copy/pasted the drum pattern to a bar 25, made it unique and via the Step Sequencer placed kick and crash on step 1 and emptied rest of the steps.

Here’s the last two bars again:

In the break section, I wanted to create a pitch drop for the air horn.

First, I made the last air horn sequence pattern (between bars 23 and 25) unique and opened it’s Piano Roll view and extended the last note by two bars.

Now, in the Playlist, I extended the rising air horn pitch envelope by two bars, and created a drop from 100% to 0%. I also edited the Love Philter Mute/solo switch envelope so that it switches it off at bar 25.

I was thinking an automated volume drop on the air horn sound would work well with the pitch drop so I went on and created one: first, in the Playlist, I made a selection from the bar 25 to 27, opened the Step Sequencer and created an automation clip for the air horn Channel Volume knob.

In the Playlist, I edited the air horn volume envelope so that it drops from 78% (default value) to 0% (with a tension of 12% between these two points) during this two bars section (25 to 27). I also extended and edited the envelope so that it restores back to the default value of the volume (78%) at bar 27, beat 03 as that was the point where I planned to end the break and bring back the air horn, beat, bass and everything.

This is how the drop sounded:

Allright. This is how the arrangement sounded starting from bar 17 and ending up to the break:

Now, after the break, I was going to make a slight addition to the drums: ride cymbal sequence.

So, first I copied the drum pattern from 17 and pasted it to bar 27:03 and made it unique. Then I opened the browser and picked a ride cymbal sample (from some free sample collection pack I downloaded from flstudiomusic.com), loaded it to a new Sampler Channel, opened the Step Sequencer and placed the ride cymbal to steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, assigned it to a free Mixer track and set it’s volume to a -8.6dB to compensate with the other drum sounds:

Then I copied the drum pattern, pasted it to 28:03, made it unique, opened the Step Sequencer, removed the crash from step 1 and added the ride cymbal to steps 1, 5, 9 and 13. After that, I copy/pasted this pattern up to bar 35:03 (that’s eight bars).

For the last drum pattern (bar 34:03),  I wanted to add same kind of simple clap fill as I had in the previous drum patterns so first, I made it unique and via the Step Sequencer added claps to step 9.

Next, I copied the reversed crash, bass, bass channel volume automation, air horn pattern, love philter mute solo automation and air horn channel pitch automation clips to 27:03.

I also made a slight change to the air horn Love Philter gating effect: I wanted it to be switched on continuously from 27:03 so I deleted the Love Philter Mute/solo automation clip from between 27:03 and 35:03 and extended the one that was on between 17 and 25 and edited it so that it keeps the Love Philter switched on from 27:03.

Furthermore, I made a change to the air horn pitch envelope: I cloned it via the Make unique -function and edited it so that it rises from point 50% to 100% during the last two bars section:

Next, I copied everything between 27:03 and 35:03 and pasted them on 35:03 up to 43:03. I also extended the Love Philter Mute/solo automation clip up to 43:03.

For the air horn sequence I was planning to add a little variation starting from 35:03 so I made the pattern unique (the one that is on 35:03), deleted the remaining patterns, opened it’s Piano Roll view and in the Piano Roll I copy/pasted the notes and transposed them one octave up (to E5), copy/pasted again and transposed one octave down (to E3). Now I had the same sequence playing on three different octaves.

Now to my ears, the notes in the highest octave (E5) were playing a bit too loud so I dropped their velocity values. I used the mouse scroll-wheel method: I first zoomed in so that I could see the velocity bar, selected all the E5 notes and while holding the ALT key, used the scroll-wheel to lower their velocity values.

Check. First solo:

And with the beat:

And in the Playlist, I copy/pasted the modified air horn pattern up to 43:03.

The beat was starting to sound alright now, but the break section sounded like it needed a some sort of quick build up before going back to the beat.

After testing different kind of sounds and ideas, I found something that sounded pretty good: I took a kick drum sample, destroyed it with a distortion fx and made a quick roll with it.

So in detail, I picked a sample “PL_Future_BD46.wav” (again from the Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters sample pack), loaded it in a new Sampler Channel and renamed it as “kick roll”. Then I added a new Clip Track to the Playlist (right click on the Clip Track labels and choose “Insert one” from the menu), a new pattern and placed it at the start of the bar 27, opened the Step Sequencer and placed the kick to steps 1-4, 6 and 7. I also edited the Velocity values via the Graph Editor to make the velocity rise gradually.

Next, I assigned the kick roll channel to a Free Mixer track and loaded a Fruity Blood Overdrive to it’s effect slot and dialed in the following settings:

• x100 mode on
• PreAmp to 0.50
• PostGain to -0.57
• PreBand to 0.51
• Color to 0.0

I also needed to drop the kick roll track volume level to -5.3dB.

Here’s how the whole break sounded with the kick roll:

One more thing: using the same distorted kick sample, I wanted to add a sort of like countdown to the beginning of the whole beat.

So, in the Playlist, I first selected the whole arrangement and moved it to right by two beats so that it started from 1:03. Then I added a new pattern and placed it to bar 1, opened the Step Sequencer and added the distorted kick to steps 1 and 5.

And the beat was ready!

Alright, that’s about it. Check the video version of this tutorial below:

Download The FL Studio Project File For This Beat

The post How To Make A Harder Style Beat In FL Studio appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

This is actually the third part of my Chill Out and Ambient sounds tutorial series.

I will show you an example on how to build a soothing drum sequence followed by a matching bass sound and a beautiful piano melody which will be the basis of a calm and longing atmosphere, and on top of that, a filter delay effected synth sound.

Article and Files Assets

Download Piano One

Here’s an audio clip on what kind of material I’m talking about here:

Okay. First, set the tempo to 100bpm.

Also, drop the Master track volume to -3 – -4.dB to avoid clipping occurances as we move on:

Let’s start the sequencing from the drums (note that all the drum samples I’m using in this tutorial are from Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters 2012 free sample package which you can download here).

Pick a kick drum titled ‘Kik4.wav’. It’s located in the folder ‘Prime Loops – Ultimate Dubstep Drummer\One-Shot Samples’. It’s a “Dubstep kick” yeah, but it doesn’t matter as it works fine for this type of music as well (the thing is, when you use “genre oriented” sample packs, you are free to use them in ANY style and not just what they are aimed for – be open minded with samples and use your ears to decide what works in what and that will open a whole lot of possibilities).

Drop the Kik4.wav to an empty Sampler channel, assign it to a free Mixer track and leave the Mixer track volume level to 0.0dB (again, I’m using the mixing method “give most power to the kick and tweak the rest according to it“).

Use the Channel EQ Band 1 (low shelf) to boost the low end by 3.0dB.

Next, the snare. Go to the ‘Prime Loops Ultimate Dubstep Drummer\One-Shot Samples’ folder again and pick a sample titled ‘Snare10.wav’, drop it to an empty Sampler channel, assign it to a free Mixer track and drop its volume level to -0.6dB.

Head back to the Playlist and add an empty pattern there (press F4). This pattern will be dedicated for the drum sequence. Open the Step Sequencer (press F6) and create a following very simple kick/snare sequence: kick to the step 1 and 15 and snare to step 9.

I don’t know about you, but to my taste, the snare sounds a bit ‘uptight’ for a relaxed chill out beat so turning it down (slowing down the sample playback speed) is required.

You do that by opening the snare Sampler Channel Settings panel, then set the Pitch Knob Range to 6 Semitones and drop the Channel Pitch to -312 Cents.

The snare has also a tad too much presence in the low-mid frequency range so open the Mixer, drop a Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the snare effect slot and use a Peaking Filter to attenuate the 200Hz area by 4-5dB with a Bandwidth of 60%.

Next, the hi-hats: find a closed hi-hat sample labeled ‘Hh_RnB_At_Night_PL_1.wav’ from the folder ‘Prime Loops – XXL R&B Drums\XXL Drum Samples’, drop it to an empty Sampler channel, assign it to a free Mixer track and set the volume level to -2.7dB.

Head to the drum sequence pattern (double click it in the Playlist to open the Step Sequencer) and add the closed hi-hat to steps 5 and 13.

Sounds alright, but liven up the hihats a bit with a delay effect so open the Mixer again and add a Fruity Delay 2 to it’s effect slot and dial in settings like this:

Switching on the Ping Pong Feedback -mode and adjusting the Input Panning like shown in the pic above makes the hi-hat bounce slightly between left and right channel. It’s an easy trick to widen the stereo image of a beat and thus a whole song. Use greater Input Panning settings for a more radical stereo effect. Smooth out the echoes via the cutoff knob (CUT).

Next, locate a sample ‘Snr_RnB_Africa_PL.wav’ in the ‘Prime Loops – XXL R&B Drums\XXL Drum Samples’ -folder and drop it to a new Sampler Channel. Yes, it’s another snare sample, but we’ll use it like a percussion to fill in the drum groove a bit. Assign it to a free Mixer track and drop its volume level to -5.3dB.

Open up the Step Sequencer and add this snare to a step 8 of the drum pattern.

Ok. Next, we are going to do some signal routing for creating a special effect to the drum groove. The aim is to add a big reverb to both snares and hi-hat and use kick drum and sidechain compression to control their volume output (to ‘dip’ it).

So first, open the Mixer and route the first snare (Snare10.wav), closed hi-hat (Hh_RnB_At_Night_PL_1.wav) and the second snare (Snr_RnB_Africa_PL.wav) to a free Mixer insert track (NOTE: do not route the kick drum). Routing is done by first clicking on the track you want to route the signal FROM, then right click on the Send Switch on the track you want to route TO and choose ‘Route to this track only’ from the menu (and let’s just call the track a ‘route track’ – you can rename it to like that if you wish… I did).

Now, go to the route track, add a Fruity Reeverb to its effect slot and set it like shown in the pic below:

Long Decay time is the key for a big reverb as it increases the size of the virtual acoustic space. Turning off HighCut and HighDamping lets the high frequencies pass through freely for a brighter reverb which we’ll need for this effect.

Check the audio:

Now, sidechain the kick drum to the route track. Sidechaining is done like this: click on the kick drum’s Mixer track to make it active, right click on the Send Switch on the route track and choose ‘Sidechain to this track’ from the menu.

Click on the route track and add Fruity Limiter to its effect slot and set it like shown below:

Every time the kick hits, it’ll make the route track output level to dip. The long Release time in the compressor forces the signal level to re-cover SLOWLY from the dip and due to reverb, this adds a sort of ‘breathing’ -feel to the drum groove.

Check the audio:

Okay, the drums sound pretty good. Next, head to the Playlist and copy & paste the drum pattern all the way to bar 17 as this example sequence is going to be 16 bars long.

As soon as we get to the melodic parts of this example tutorial, there is going to be a little change in the melodics starting at bar 9 so add a little fill to the drum groove at bar 8: this works like a small build-up before transitioning to that section.

First, right click the top left corner of the pattern clip and choose ‘Make unique’ to clone it.

Double click the cloned pattern (Pattern 2) to open the Step Sequencer, and add a following variation to the snare sequence:

Also, replace the last pattern of the sequence (at bar 16) with the Pattern 2 as there is going to be the same style of build-up for moving back to the first part of the sequence.

Next we need a crash cymbal for enhancing the small build-up/transition.

Locate a sample ‘Bh_Hit_Crash_0003_PL.wav’ from the folder ‘Prime Loops – UK Funky Producer\Single Hits’ and drop it to the Playlist into an empty Clip track as Audio Clip. Place it to the first beat of a bar 1 and bar 9. Assign it to a free Mixer track and drop its volume level to -14.1dB to complement the drums (and not to compete with them).

Ok, the crash cymbal needs a slight character change: it sounds too tight to fit the style of the beat (or “high pitched” if such thing can be said about pure crash cymbal as their pitch are usually indefinite – of course, this depends on the sample as it may have some pitched elements mixed to it).

It can be made to sound more loose by down tuning it (slowing it down just like we did with the snare).

So, double click the crash cymbal sample to open its Channel Settings, set the Pitch Knob Range to 6 Semitones and drop the Channel Pitch to -216 Cents.

Check the results:

Much better. Also, lets give the crash cymbal a bit more continuum by adding a delay effect to it. Delay (and reverb) is a nice way to make short crash cymbals sound longer and also to give more emphasis and drama to the part where it hits. So, go to the Mixer and drop Fruity Delay 2 to the crash cymbal effect slot and set it like this:

As you can hear the echo bounces from left to right due to PingPong Feedback mode and Input Panning settings.

Dialing the Time to 4:00 makes the echo comp with the rhythm.

Next, let’s use the same crash cymbal sample for enhancing the little build-up section by reversing it (I have actually made a tutorial about this subject so go check it out if you’re interested).

In the Playlist, copy and paste the Bh_Hit_Crash_0003_PL.wav to a same or a new Clip Track to bar 8, right click on the top left corner of the sample clip to open a menu and choose ‘Make unique’ or ‘Make unique as sample’ to clone it. Assign the cloned sample to a new free Mixer track and drop its volume to -15.4dB.

Open the Channel Settings -box of the duplicated crash sample and under the ‘Precomputed Effects’ enable Reverse.

Tune down the sample by setting the Pitch Knob Range to 6 Semitones and drop the Channel Pitch to -420 Cents.

What we are doing here is we use down tuning to create a bigger contrast between the reverse crash and original crash thus making the transition more effective/dramatic.

Now, align the reversed sample so that it ends right before the point where the original crash starts (at bar 9) (TIP: hold down ALT while dragging to bypass the snapping).

Copy and paste the reversed crash cymbal to bar 16 as well (use CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste to keep the align settings):

Check the results (the audio example below starts from the bar 7):

Alright, we are ready to move to the melodic parts of the sequence.

I’m usually using two different methods for creating melodies: I either compose a bass line first and compose chords and other melodies on top of that OR build a sequence of chords and/or melody using a basic instrument like a piano or strings and after that, create a bassline that is based on the chords.

Also, when I’m out of ideas, I sometimes use Band-In-A-Box for generating chord progression ideas and develop melodies based on them (the chord ideas used in this tutorial are created with Band-In-A-Box).

Ok. Let’s use piano sound for the chords. I’m using Piano One by Sound Magic. IMO it’s one of the best sounding free piano plugins out there (also available for Mac) and you can download it here. Installation is simple (there’s instructions included) or follow my guide on how to install VST plugins into FL Studio.

After the installation, load it to your project. We are going to use the Piano One’s built-in reverb to add some depth and ambiance to it so choose ‘Large Hall’ as the reverb type and set the Reverb Amount to around 70-75%.

Assign the Piano One to a free Mixer track. Now, the output level in the Piano One itself is relatively low – at least compared to the drum mix. Of course, dropping the drum levels (and turning up speaker volume) would compensate this, but there’s also another way: add Fruity Limiter to Piano One’s effect slot to increase its gain.

Note that we are NOT using Fruity Limiter as a limiter here (=controlling the peak volumes) – we just use it for increasing the overall gain of the Piano One and you do that by turning the Limiter Ceiling all the way to 12.0dB (this prevents the limiter engaging) and dialing the Gain to around 6dB.

Next, in the Mixer, drop the Piano One’s track volume level to -3.9dB.

Okay. Go to the Playlist and add a new pattern to the project (this pattern will be dedicated for the piano chords and melodies).

Open the Piano Roll -view of the Piano One and start laying down the chords. Before you begin, remember that piano ‘romplers’ like Piano One are trying to simulate the sound of a real piano, therefore you can get the best out of it by thinking how a real human player would play a piano.

For starters, you can make it sound more realistic by varying the timing and velocity values of your notes (this is called ‘humanizing’) – just like a real human piano player does naturally (plus, in Piano One, changing the note velocity also changes the tone of the note as it is using velocity layered samples which mean using different velocity levels will trigger a different sample).

The best way to do this is to use a MIDI keyboard to record the chords and melodies live. Or if you draw the notes to Piano Roll via mouse, edit the note timing and velocity values to add the realism.

Alright. Add following notes to the Piano Roll. NOTE that there seems to be some sort of bug (?) in Piano One: if you put two same notes in a row without space, the second note won’t play at all.

You can cope with this by slightly shortening the end of the notes to add a little gap there (hold ALT and drag to shorten a note without snapping):

That’s a simple, 4 bar long chord progression.

Now start humanizing the chord sequence by moving a couple of notes slightly off the sync (again, hold down ALT while you drag to bypass snapping).

This will make the chord notation sound more ‘organic’ and not too machine -like if you know what I mean.

You can also use the Strum -tool (press ALT + S in the Piano Roll) for achieving similar effect though keep in mind that strumming is a guitar playing technique and not usually used with piano.

More humanizing: add variation to the note velocity values. There are several ways to do this: via Piano Roll Event Editor, through Note Properties -box (double click a note to open it), via mouse wheel and with the Randomizer tool (press ALT + R).

I’ll just use the mouse wheel method: zoom in vertically so that the ‘velocity bar’ appears on the note, place the cursor on the note, hold down ALT and use the mouse scroll-wheel to change the velocity:

Here is the end result:

Ok. The piano has a reverb already, but it could use a little bit of echo as well so open the Mixer and drop a Fruity Delay 2 to the Piano One mixer track and set it like this (usually, reverb is used AFTER the delay, but in this case, it sounds alright either way):

Next, we sequence a simple melody on top of the piano chords. Head back to the Playlist and copy & paste the piano chord pattern few times and use the ‘Make unique’ function to clone the pattern that is pasted to bar 9 (that’s where we plant the melody):

Double click the cloned pattern to open its Piano Roll and dublicate the chord sequence via copy and paste as the melody is going to be 8 bars long overall:

Start plotting notes to the grid. If you’re going to use your MIDI keyboard for recording the melodies live, remember to switch on the ‘Blend recording (overdub)’ -mode in the Transport Panel – otherwise recorded notes will overwrite the old ones (the chords).

Here’s the melody. I also added a little variation to the velocity values:

And this is how the whole sequence sounds:

And with the beat:

Okay. Let’s move on to a next element: the bass. It’s going to be a simple and soft, sub style bass and 3xOsc will be used for this, so load a one to your project.

Select triangle as the shape for Osc 1 and rounded saw for Osc 2 (we only need these two oscillators so disable the Osc 3 by dropping its volume level to 0%).

Triangle has a slightly sharper timbre than sine and mixed with the rounded saw it allows the bass poke through the mix better than pure sine while still preserving the smoothness of a sub bass. (I also tested the triangle with saw and square waves, but to my taste, they sounded too sharp, therefore rounded saw seemed to be the best choice.)

As for the tuning, set both oscillators Coarse Tune to -24 Semitones (that’s two octaves down). Set the Osc 2 Mix Level to 11%. This will make the presence of the rounded saw to be only subtle.

Head to INS -tab and use the low pass filter to soften the sound a bit more:

Assign the 3xOsc to a free Mixer track, drop the volume level to -0.8dB and boost the low end area by 3.4dB using the EQ Band 1 of the track EQ and the bass is ready to roll!

Next, the bass sequence. Head back to Playlist, add a new pattern there, open the Piano Roll view of 3xOsc and draw a following sequence of notes. These are the root notes of the piano chords (root note is often – but not always – the deepest note of a chord).

Now, because the bass is operating partly on the same frequency area as the kick, the kick will loose a bit of its accent/emphasis so to bring it back to front, use sidechain compression to make the bass dip everytime the kick hits. So, open the Mixer, click on the kick drum mixer track, right click the Send Switch on the bass track and choose ‘Sidechain to this track’:

Drop a Fruity Limiter to bass track and set  it like this:

Check:

Head to the Playlist and copy/paste the bass pattern all the way to the end of the sequence (bar 17).

And here’s the whole beat:

Next, the final element: synth sound with a filtered delay effect. 3xOsc will be used for this as well so add one to your project. Select square wave as the oscillator shape for Osc 1 and saw wave for Osc 2 and Osc 3. Set Osc 1 Fine tune to -8 cents, Osc 2 Coarse tune to 0 semitones and Fine tune to +18 cents and Osc 3 Coarse tune to 0 semitones. Also, adjust the Osc 1 Stereo detune to -8 cents for spreading the stereo image a bit.

Head to the INS -tab and from there to CUT -subtab, enable the envelope and set the Set the Modulation, Sustain, Decay and Attack -parameters like this:

Head to the MISC -tab and under the ‘Polyphony’ -section enable the Portamento -mode:

Assign the 3xOsc #2 to a free Mixer track and drop the volume level all the way to -13.7dB:

Add a Fruity WaveShaper to its effect slot and choose a preset ‘Transient Former’ (for some distortion to change the character of this sound to more edgier):

Add Fruity Phaser next to the effect slot and choose a preset ‘SowLow’. This will add a slow and quite subtle phasing effect to the sound:

And finally, drop Fruity Reeverb to the last of the effect chain and set it like this:

Go back to Playlist, add a new pattern, open the Piano Roll -view of 3xOsc and add a following sequence of notes. This is the synthline and its using pretty much the same notes as the piano chords. Also, pay attention to the note velocity values:

Copy & paste the synth pattern all the way to bar 17:

Now, some automation to liven up the synth. Open the 3xOsc #2, open the INS -> CUT -tab and right click on the Attack time -knob under the Envelope section and choose ‘Create automation clip’ from the menu: ‘3xOsc #2 filter cutoff envelope – attack time envelope’ -automation clip will be created to the Playlist:

Edit the envelope like this:

Check what it does:

As you hear, the automation kind of ‘opens’ and ‘closes’ the sound.

Next, the filtered delay effect. We are going to use Fruity Delay 2, Fruity Free Filter and Fruity PanOMatic for the effect: Fruity Delay 2 is for adding a repeating echo to the synth sound, Fruity Free Filter (plus automation) for filter sweeping the echo and Fruity PanOMatic to make it pan between left and right channel. In order to make this effect to work, we need to utilize a Send track.

Why? If we add these three effect units straight to the 3xOsc #2 Mixer track (which is an insert track) the WHOLE synth signal gets processed, but the aim is to process ONLY the DELAY (echo) SIGNAL with the filter and PanOMatic while preserving the original synth sound ‘underneath’ it.

Send track makes this possible: we can add effects of sending track and then route any Mixer insert track signal (or multiple tracks) into it. This signal will be then forwarded to Master track ALONGSIDE the original track signal.

We can also control how much the Send track will receive a signal from the source track and this specifies the amount of effects heard in the end of the signal path (Master track). So basically it’s like parallel effect routing.

Alright. First, in order to hear the effects from the Send track, click on the synth mixer track (3xOsc #2, this is the source track) to make it active and on the Send track, turn the Send knob to 88% (this controls the signal level received from the source track):

Now, click on the Send  track 1 and add a Fruity Delay 2 to its effect slot and set it like this (note that in FL you can make any track to serve as a send):

Note that the Dry signal level is set to 0. This will make sure that the Fruity Delay is outputting ONLY the processed (wet) signal. This way you don’t end up sending duplicate ‘dry’ signal to the Master track.

Next, add a Fruity Free Filter to the Send track:

Now, in order to make the echoes sweep, we need to automate the filter frequency movements so right click on the Freq -knob and choose ‘Create automation clip’ from the menu, head to Playlist, shorten the automation clip to 8 bars and edit the envelope as follows:

Copy & paste the envelope:

Check what it does:

And finally, drop the Fruity PanOMatic to the last of the Send effect chain, right click on the Pan -knob and choose ‘Create automation clip’:

Head to Playlist, double click the ‘PanOMatic (Send 1) – Panning envelope’ to open the Automation Channel Settings -panel, enable the LFO and set the SPD (LFO Speed) and LVL (LFO Level) values like this:

Check the results:

This is pretty much the same effect I used on ‘Primo Lux – Turnpoint‘ even though I used the Ohmforce’s Ohmboyz VST delay effect, but the basic idea is the same.

Here’s the full sequence (“mastered” with Waves L1 UltraMaximizer):

Alright. Now you can proceed on editing the arrangement… maybe something like this:

And that’s it!

Watch the video below:

The post How To Make A Chill Out Beat in FL Studio appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.