In this tutorial I will show you two methods how to make your own 909 style snare drum with 3xOsc. The sound is very basic, but knowing how to make one might come useful to you in your future sound designing efforts.

Here’s the audio preview of the snare:

Ok. First thing to do is to load the 3xOsc.

Basically, we need two oscillators: sine wave and noise. Sine will be used as the ‘body’ of the snare and noise is for the ‘sizzle’. Let’s start from the sine wave so make sure Osc 1 has sine selected as the oscillator shape. Also, disable the Osc 2 & Osc 3 by turning their volume knobs to 0%. We’ll come back to the noise part later.

Now, let’s use volume and pitch envelopes to make the sine wave sound like a short kick drum so go to the INS tab and VOL subtab, enable the envelope and tweak it like this:

Next, go to the PITCH tab for the pitch envelope, turn the Modulation amount knob all the way to left and set the Attack time to very short.

The kick needs to be tuned down a little so go back to the PLUGIN tab and set the Coarse tune to -6 semitones.

Ok, the kick sounds alright (though it needs some EQ, which we’ll do later). Next, mix in the noise by choosing noise as the Osc 2 shape and adjust it’s volume to 10% (the noise level should be fairly low in relation to kick).

Next, we need to adjust the volume envelope a bit so go back to INS and VOL tabs, enable the Tension edit mode (TNS) to shape the Decay a bit to give the sound more ‘snare like character’.

Actually, the Decay time could be longer, so choose the TIME editing mode again, and increase the Decay a bit:

Next, add a little ‘sharpness’ to the noise via filter resonance. Under the ‘Filter’ choose SVF LPx2 as the filter type and set the resonance knob to about 10 o’clock.

Next, assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track for EQ and compression.

Now in the Mixer, the following tweak is just a matter of taste: turn the stereo separation all the way to right (100% merged). This sums the left and right channels to mono. This is because the noise coming from 3xOsc is kind of ‘spread’ between the left and right channels. I somehow like it’s sounding better in snare sound design if it’s in mono. I don’t know about you. Use whatever you like better.

Next, load Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the 3xOsc effect slot (we use it for cutting off the low end). Select high pass filter as the filter type and a steep slope (steep 8) (you can select these by right clicking the band token and under ‘Type’ choose ‘High Pass’ and under ‘Order’ select ‘Steep 8’) , set the bandwidth to 56%  and cut everything below 180Hz.

Next, boost the 3 – 4kHz area (3.6kHz in this example) few dB’s (5-6dB in this example) for more ‘attack’ or ‘presence’ or whatever it should be called.

And if you feel like the noise is sizzling too much, cut the 8kHz area one or two dB’s with a high shelf filter.

Also, if you wan’t to enhance the ‘body’ of the snare, try boosting slightly around 400Hz area, even though too much boost in this range may easily make it sound like it’s coming from a can or something.

Next, let’s use compression to add a little more sharpness and snap to the snare so add Fruity Limiter to the fx chain, activate the compression mode, drop the Threshold to around -22dB, Ratio to 2.5:1, Attack to around 7 ms, Release to 130-140ms and finally, compensate the gain reduction by raising the output Gain to around 5dB.

Now, load one more effect to the fx chain: Fruity Reeverb. Only a tiny amount of reverb is needed – and for the high frequencies only so set it like this: turn the LowCut to 3000Hz, HighCut to OFF, HighDamping to OFF, RoomSize to around 20 to simulate a smaller room, Color to Warmer, drop the Decay to 0.6 seconds and Reverb level to 19%.

As you can hear, this kind of small and subtle reverb adds a continuation to the sizzle of the snare, but doesn’t add too much of that depth and sense of space which isn’t required right now.

That’s basically it. In the 3xOsc, try different mix levels between the sine and noise to suit your taste.

Now, if you wan’t, you can drop Edison to the Master track (or the 3xOsc track) and record and normalize the snare and save it to your own collections. Recording with Edison is easy. After you have loaded it, press the record button in it and play your sound.

Trim it (select an area, right click and choose Edit -> Trim)

Normalize it (under Tools -> Normalize).

Save the sample as wav:

Or drop it to a Sampler channel straight from Edison by dragging it:

Via the Sampler Channel settings, you can easily tune it as well:

This was the end of the method one. Now, while this might be a quicker way to create a snare drum with 3xOsc, the downside is that you can’t control the sine and noise envelopes separately as both are controlled with same envelope. This can be problematic if you would like to use i.e shorter decay time in the kick while having a longer tail in the noise. Also, the tail of the kick drum is still there and it poses an easily audible pitched element when you play higher notes. Check this:

With that said, I will now show you the second method on making a snare drum. With two 3xOsc’s. The principle and end result is still the same, but with a better control over the envelopes.

So first, start a new project and load 3xOsc. This 3xOsc unit will be dedicated only for the sine wave (kick) so choose sine as the Osc 1 shape, set it’s coarse tune to -6 semitones and disable Osc 2 & 3 by dropping their volume levels to 0%.

Head to the INS and VOL tabs, enable the volume envelope and tweak it like this:

Very short Decay time results a very short kick.

Now, head to the PITCH tab, turn the AMT (modulation amount) knob all to left, and set the Attack time to very short:

Now, assign this 3xOsc to a free mixer track and drop a Fruity Parametric EQ to it’s effect slot and again, roll off frequencies below 180Hz with a high pass filter and steep 8 slope.

Ok. Kick part is ready. Next, the noise.

Load another instance of 3xOsc, set noise as the Osc 1 shape and disable Osc’s 2 & 3.

Go to the INS and VOL tabs, enable the volume envelope and now, use longer decay time for the noise than with the kick. Use the Tension Edit mode for editing the Decay tension. Also, under the ‘Filter’, increase the resonance (with SVF LPx2 selected as the filter type):

Assign this second 3xOsc unit to a free mixer track and drop the volume level to around -18dB and Stereo Separation to 100% merged (if you feel like it).

Next, layer the sine 3xOsc and noise 3xOsc together using a Layer channel. You’ll find the Layer channel under Channels -> Add one. Layering is simple: in the Step Sequencer, just right click the channel selectors of both 3xOsc channel so that they are green and press ‘Set children’ in the Layer channel settings. Also, set the Layer channel volume to 100% if you don’t wan’t any unnecessary volume reduction.

Next, EQ the noise with PEQ2.

Now, use compression for both signals together. In order to do that, route both mixer tracks to a new mixer track and drop a Fruity Limiter there.

In the Fruity Limiter, enable the compressor mode and tweak it like you did in the first method:

Add PEQ2 (to the route track) and boost the 400Hz:

And Fruity Reeverb (to the route track as well):

The end.

Watch the video version of this tutorial below, and download the .FLP files for both snares.

Download Snare Drum Example With One 3xOsc’s (requires FL Studio 10.0.9)

Download Snare Drum Example With Two 3xOsc’s (requires FL Studio 10.0.9)

The post How To Make A Basic 909 Snare Sound With 3xOsc appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

If your sample collection lacks a simple and pure kick drum which has no extra noise or effects, watch out this tutorial: I’ll show you how you can quickly create your own kick drum in FL Studio using a FLS native generator plugin called Fruit Kick.

Here’s an example:

Alright, let’s get on to it asap: first, load the Fruit Kick to your project. You will find it under the Channels -> Add One…

If you wan’t a same kind of kick like in the example clip, tweak the Fruit Kick parameters as shown in the pic below:

These settings create a nice, basic, clicky kick drum which should work well in a progressive house for example.

For further processing, assign the Fruit Kick to a free Mixer track and use Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to shape the frequencies:

If you wan’t to shape the kick even more, try compression (I didn’t use compression in the example kick though).

That’s it. Quick and easy!

Watch the video below to hear how the different parameters in Fruit Kick affect to the sound.

Below, you can download the preset file for the Fruit Kick. After downloading, just double click it to open:

Download Preset For The Fruit Kick (.FST file)

And here’s the .FLP file where the Fruit Kick is assigned to a Mixer track and the kick is processed with PEQ2 – exactly like in the example:

Download The .FLP File For The Kick (requires FL Studio 10.0.9 or later)

The post How To Make A Kick Drum In FL Studio Quickly And Easily appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this tutorial I will show you how to program a house chord stab using FL Studio’s 3xOsc. You have probably heard this type of sound in many house tracks.

Here’s an audio example:

Article Assets

Grab our House Chord Stab FL Studio Project File and follow along!

Ok. First, load 3xOsc and choose square wave as the oscillator shape for each three oscillator, set the Osc 1 coarse tune to -24 semitones, Osc 2 -17 semitones and Osc 3 -20 semitones. Set the Osc 1 stereo detune (SD) to -10 cents to spread the stereo image:

To analyze the settings a little, we just tuned the oscillators to form a major chord: oscillator 1 is tuned down by two octaves (12 semitones = 1 octave), oscillator 2 by 17 semitones and oscillator 3 by 20 semitones.. so now, if you press note C in your MIDI keyboard (or draw a C note to the Piano Roll), you’ll actually hear notes C (osc1), E (osc2) and G (osc3) which is a C major chord (triad). If you play D it is a D major chord, E is E major and so on..

Next, we need to utilize the volume envelope so go to the INS -tab and from there to VOL -tab and click on the ‘Use envelope’ -button to enable it and use ultra-short attack time by turning the Attack all the way to left. This is required for a sharp and stabby sound.

Now, to really make the sound stabby, we need to activate the filter cutoff envelope so open the CUT -tab and enable the envelope. As for settings, turn the Modulation Amount (AMT), Attack, Sustain, and Release controllers as follows:

The Modulation Amount controls how the envelope is applied to the modulation target which is filter cutoff in this case. The filter cutoff value is set in the ‘Filter section’ (check below the envelope section) and the envelope act as an offset of that value. If you leave the Modulation Amount -knob to center position, the envelope doesn’t do anything – it will not be applied to this value. But if you turn it left, the envelope SUBTRACTS from the filter cutoff value and if you turn it right, the envelope ADDS to the value…

So to put it simply – and assuming we leave the Filter section -settings as is – turning the modulation amount left kind of ‘closes’ the sound, and turning it right (near to the center point) ‘opens’ it.

As for the envelope controllers, shortening the Attack time sculpts the sound to sharp and stabby and turning the Sustain level and Release time all the way to right keeps the sound ‘closed’ in case you play long notes (of course whether it sounds ‘closed’ or ‘open’ depends on the modulation amount settings.

Next, head to the MISC -tab and under the ‘Polyphony’ enable the Portamento (sliding the pitch from note to note) and Monophonic mode (maximum one note played at a time) and tweak the Portamento time (Slide) to 1:03 (this’ll set the portamento slide length between notes to fairly slow. It is also used for overlapping notes as the monophonic mode is turned on):

Now, assign the 3xOsc to a free Mixer track and load Fruity Blood Overdrive to it’s effect slot. It’s a distortion fx and we use it to add a fairly subtle distortion to the sound (to ‘edgify’ it a little). Set x100 mode on, PostGain to to around -0.5 and PreAmp to around 0.11:

x100 mode increases the power of PreAmp a hundred times. PostGain is the final gain reducer which you need to use to compensate the output boosts created with PreAmp parameter (and to protect your ears!). PreAmp overdrives the audio in order to achieve distortion.

Next, drop Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the 3xOsc effect slot, and use peaking filter to boost the 6.2kHz area by 6.7dB to add a bit of clarity:

And for some extra interest and atmosphere, add Fruity Reeverb to the effect slot, use short Decay time (1.1 seconds), use Pre Delay to create slap-back echo effect (try value of 250 ms), turn the Color to Warmer to add some warmth to the reverb signal and lastly, drop the Reverb level a tiny bit (to 17%):

That’s about it. Now go and make some house with this sound..

Oh and if you’re interested to know how I made the audio example you heard in the beginning, I just created a following sequence of notes to the 3xOsc Piano Roll:

Then, I went to the Playlist, copy and pasted the sequence, opened the 3xOsc and under the INS and CUT -tab I created and automation clip for the Modulation Amount (AMT) -controller:

In the Playlist, I edited the Modulation Amount automation envelope like this:

Then I copy and pasted the whole sequence and dropped a drumloop I made earlier for this tutorial:

The end

Watch the video below:

The post How To Create A House Chord Stab With 3xOsc appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

This is the second part of my Chill Out and Ambient sound creation tutorial series (check out the first part where I covered the making of a lush pad sound). In this part, I will show you how you can use Fruity Granulizer and a drum sample to produce an interesting/weird soundscape.

Fruity Granulizer is a FL Studio native plugin that uses the granular synthesis technology. Granular synths split a wave sample (loaded by the user) into small pieces called grains which are then played back according to a different parameter settings of the plugin. It can be used to create some very complex special effects and if you implement automation to the parameters you can morph any wave sample into ‘obscurity’.

Article and Files Assets

Note: the sample I’m using in this tutorial is titled 01_Percussive_Snare.wav located it in a folder ‘\Prime Loops – Drum Samples Taster Pack\Prime Loops – XXL Reggaeton Drums\XXL Drum Samples’ once you unpack the file).

Here’s an audio example of the soundscape:

Now, to re-create this, first load a Fruity Granulizer to your FL Studio project and drag & drop a drum sample (its a sample titled 01_Percussive_Snare.wav. You’ll find it in a folder ‘\Prime Loops – Drum Samples Taster Pack\Prime Loops – XXL Reggaeton Drums\XXL Drum Samples’ from the Prime Loops Drum Sample Tasters -package which you can download here) in to the Granulizer (or in the FL Studio Browser, right click on a sample and select ‘Open in new Fruity Granulizer channel’ from the menu).

Next, add a new pattern to the Playlist (keyboard shortcut F4), open the Piano Roll view of the Fruity Granulizer and draw an 8 bar long C5 note.

Go back to the Fruity Granulizer again.

Now, the following settings I’m going to show you are just for re-creating the exact sound you heard in the audio example. Feel free to experiment with any of the settings.

Ok. Under the Time section, hit the Loop switch to enable looping and turn the START -knob to 22%. START -knob defines the position in the sample used when the playback starts. Turning it all the way to left makes the sample playback start from the beginning and turning it right starts playing offset inside the sample.

Under the Grains section, start by setting the W.SP (Wave Spacing) to -8 %. The W.SP controls how many grains will be generated from the wave sample. You can set the value between -300% to 300%. 100 % is the default/starting value and that is the normal playback of the sample (NOTE that the G.SP -knob needs to be in 100% as well to achieve normal playback). The higher you set the value (above 100%), less grains are generated for the wave sample and it sounds like its playing faster. The smaller you set the value (going below 100%), more grains will be generated and it starts to sound like its slowing down and shattered into dozens of small pieces (which is actually happening). If you use negative values, the playback order of the grains (not the sound itself in each separate grain, but the playback order) will be reversed. So if you set it to -100%, the playback speed is normal (depending on the G.SP settings as well), but the grains are playing back in a reversed order. Decreasing the negative value (and I mean going from -100%> to -99%> to -98%> and so on) results again more of grains, but with a reversed playing order. So using a value of -8% means that there is a lots of grains, only with a reversed playback order. Hopefully this makes sense.

Next, turn the G.SP (Grain Spacing) to 80%. G.SP controls the grain spacing in playback – in other words, how much there is space between the generated grains. The default value is 100% and it can be set between 11% to 300%. If you increase the value (going over 100%), the spaces between the played grains will be greater which means playback gets slower. If you decrease the value (going below 100%), the spaces will decrease thus resulting a faster playback. Using a value of 80% speeds up the sample a little.

(Try combination of small W.SP values (i.e. -3%-3%) and low G.SP values (around 40%) to make the sample go ‘creeeaaakyyyy’).

Next, set the HOLD (Grain Hold) to 10ms. HOLD sets the length of each grain.

Set the ATT (Attack) to 5ms. ATT defines the attack and decay length of each grain (fade in and fade out time).  Note that the fade in & out times are added to the length of the grain.

Ok. With a combination of these values (and the sample provided) we’ll get a ‘creaky’ or ‘buzzing’ type of sound.

I’m not going to use the Effects section at all in this sound example, but feel free to experiment with them as well. Refer to FL Studio manual what the different parameters do.

Next, for variation, automate the ATT -knob by right clicking on it and choosing ‘Create automation clip’ from the menu.

Head to the Playlist and double-click the Grain attack time -automation clip to open its channel settings. In here we can utilize the LFO to control the envelope curve. Click on the LFO switch to enable it and disable the Multiply (if you leave the Multiply enabled, the LFO acts as an amplitude modulator for the main envelope curve of the automation clip instead of ‘replacing’ it and it will sound different – also note that the LFO doesn’t erase your main automation envelope – you can switch it off at anytime).

Now, set the LVL (LFO amplitude level) to 100%, SPD (Speed) to 003:00, TENS (Tension) to 25%.

Ok. Open up the Granulizer again and right click on the G.SP -knob and choose ‘Create automation clip’, head to the Playlist and edit the G.SP automation envelope like this:

Check the results:

Now, assign the Fruity Granulizer to a free Mixer track and drop a Fruity Reeverb 2 to the effect slot (for the ambience). Set the Decay to 9.0 seconds, Damping to OFF (to let the high frequencies pass through in the reverb signal), Bass multiplier to 200% (for a ‘warmer’ reverb tone), switch on the tempo-based Predelay and set it to 3:00 (for a slap-back echo effect), Room size to 75, Diffusion to 25 (for a more sparse and distinct ‘bounce-off-the-wall’ -reflections) and Wet level to 37%.

Check:

Next, we are going to record the whole sound to a WAV file, import it to the project and use it to make the soundscape a bit more complex.

So, head to the Playlist, make a selection, open the Mixer and arm the Mixer track (the one you assigned Fruity Granulizer to) to disk recording (right click on the Arm disk recording -button to define a custom destination folder. Default is FL Studio\Data\Patches\Recorded) press ALT+R and hit Start to start recording.

The recorded audio file will be automatically imported to Playlist and once its there, double click it to open its Channel Properties, assign it to a free Mixer track and drop the volume level to about -4dB. Head back to the audio clip Channel Properties and under the Precomputed Effects, reverese it by switching on Reverse. Under Time Stretching, pitch shift it by turning the Pitch to +600 cents (that’s half an octave pitch shift). Pitch shifting here adds a bit of a ‘contrast’ between this and the original sound.

Now, create a little fade-in for the audio clip (to make the start of it to blend better with the original sound) by right clicking on the Channel Volume and selecting ‘Create automation clip’. Then, head to the Playlist and edit the envelope like this:

Next, to play with the stereo panorama a bit, open the Channel Settings of the audio clip again and create automation clip for the Channel Panning. Then, head to the Playlist, double click the Channel Pan automation clip to open its Properties, enable the LFO and set the Speed to 002:00 and Level to 100%:

Alright. Head to the Mixer and drop a Fruity Delay 2 to the audio clip Mixer track and set it like this (and drop the Fruity Delay 2 effect mix level to 40%):

And this is what you get:

That’s it! Hopefully this’ll gave you some ideas on how you can use Fruity Granulizer to create interesting soundscapes. Watch out for part 3 soon!

Watch the video below:

The post How To Create Chill Out And Ambient Sounds Part 2: FX Soundscape appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

In this series of tutorials, I will show you how you can create sounds and soundscapes common in Chill Out and Ambient music using FL Studio.

Download the FLP below to follow along…

First sound will be a lush pad. Listen to the example below:

I created this sound using three instances of 3xOsc’s which I then layered together and I’m going to show you the exact settings I used to create this sound. Remember that you’re free to experiment with the settings to develop your own original sounds.

Let’s begin!

First, set the project tempo to something slow – 100bpm for example. This is because many of the plugin features used in this example sync with the tempo and slower tempo is preferred for creating that relaxed feel which is characteristic for chill/ambient style music:

Next, load the first instance of 3xOsc to the project. It will be used for creating a “soft pluck type” sound with the arpeggio.

So, assign it to a free mixer track, select sine as the oscillator shape for each three oscillators (selected by default) and set the Coarse tune to 0 Semitones for each oscillator (Osc 1 is 0 by default). Also, set the root key to C6 (now even though setting the root key is not necessary for replicating this exact sound, it might come useful if you use a small MIDI keyboard which has only few keys or computer keyboard and you want to play low octave notes. The higher you set the root key, the lower the pitch for the key you press):

Head to the INS -tab and from there to VOL  -tab and enable the volume envelope and tweak the AHDSR controls as follows:

Short Attack and Release time is the key for a pluck sound.

Now, for arpeggiating the sound, go to the FUNC -tab and set the Arpeggio direction to up-down, Arpeggio range to 3 octaves and Arpeggio time to 4:00:

Open the Mixer, and drop Fruity Delay 2 to the 3xOsc’s effect slot. It’s needed for making the pluck sound ‘etheric’ and widening the stereo atmosphere. Set it like this:

Setting the signal delay time (TIME) to 5:00 gives a little more ‘odd’ – and not too four-to-the-floor – feel for the echoes. Decreasing the cutoff frequency (CUT), smooth out the echoes nicely.

Add Fruity Reeverb next to the effect chain. The reverb needs to sound big so set it like this: Decay to 12.0 seconds, Reverb signal level to 48%, Color to Warmer and RoomSize to 84. Leave the other parameters as is:

Ok, the first sound is now ready and here’s how it sounds:

Next, load another instance of 3xOsc to the project. This is going to be a saw wave pad sound.

Start by assigning it to a free mixer track, select saw wave as the oscillator shape for each three oscillators, set Osc 1 & Osc 2 coarse tune to 0 semitones and Osc 3 to -12 semitones, Osc 1 fine tune to -20 cents and Osc 2 fine tune to +17 cents and Osc 1 stereo detune to +10 cents for widening the stereo image. Set the root key to C6:

With these settings, we get a wide, detuned saw sound.

Now, go to the INS and VOL -tabs, enable the volume envelope and edit the envelope curve as follows to give the sound a character of a pad sound:

Slow Attack and Release time is the key for a pad -like sound.

Next, smooth out the sound a bit by decreasing the Filter cutoff amount:

Next, we are going to use the LFO to modulate the filter cutoff frequency to make the pad sweep so head to the CUT -tab and under the LFO, click on TB to make the LFO Delay, Attack and Speed tempo based, turn on the Global -mode to apply the LFO settings globally instead of making them restart in the beginning of each note (this gives a more ‘free’ feel to the modulation), turn the Attack all the way to left to let the LFO modulation kick in right away, turn the Amount knob slightly to left for a delicate and not so radical modulation effect and make the modulation slow by decreasing the LFO speed value (right click on Speed knob to choose from pre-defined tempo-based lengths – select ‘128 steps’):

Here’s how it sounds:

Now, open the Mixer and drop a Fruity Chorus to the 3xOsc #2 effect slot. Chorus is here to thicken the pad and making it sound a little ‘warmer’. Set the Chorus like this: Depth to 2.4, Stereo to 119, LFO 1 Freq to 0.5, LFO 2 Freq 2.4, LFO 3 Freq to 1.9. Leave the other parameters to their default settings:

Next, add Fruity Phaser to the effect slot. Phaser is here for an additional sweeping effect. Set it like this: Sweep Freq to 0.2 (that’s for slow sweep), Min depth to 0, Max depth to 0.7, Freq. range to small, Stereo to 1.0, Nr. stages to 11, Feedback to 0.2, Dry-wet level 90% wet, Out gain to 0dB:

These kinds of settings add a slow and subtle sweep to the sound.

For some dense, drop Fruity Delay 2 to the effect chain, tweak as follows (and in the Mixer, drop the delay mix level a bit):

Next, add Fruity Reeverb and program it like this: Decay to 8.7 seconds, HighDamping to OFF, Color to Warmer, HighCut to OFF, LowCut to OFF and Reverb signal level to 14%.

This is a kind of big reverb as well. Turning LowCut and HighCut off ensures that no frequencies won’t be attenuated from the input signal (as that kind of cutting isn’t needed in this case) and disabling HighDamping disables the damping of the high frequencies in the reverb signal (yeah, I actually want those high-frequency reverb signals to existing in this sound example).

And finally, drop another instance of Fruity Phaser to the end of the effect chain. Idea is to try to reduce those slightly metallic tones (caused mostly by Reverb) with a fast (but subtle) phasing effect – almost like vibrato. Set the Phaser like this: Sweep freq. to 0.9 (that’s fast), Min depth to 0.03, Max dept to 0.4, Freq Range to Large, Stereo to 0.5, Nr.stages to 12, Feedback to 0, Dry-wet level to 95% wet, Output gain to 1.0dB:

Ok. Sound #2 is ready and this is how it sounds:

Now, the final sound. This is going to be a pad sound as well. So, load a third instance of 3xOsc, assign it to a free mixer track, choose rounded saw as the oscillator shape for Osc 1, triangle for Osc 2, and rounded saw for Osc 3, set coarse tune to 0 semitones for each oscillator, root key to C6, Osc 1 fine tune to -14 cents, Osc 2 fine tune to +22 cents, Osc 3 fine tune to -10 cents and increase the Osc 3 volume a bit (all the way to 54%):

Enable the volume envelope by going to the INS and VOL -tabs and tweak the AHDSR controls like this:

Next, LFO modulate the pitch to add some vibrato (for adding more color to the sound) so head to PITCH -tab, and under the LFO, enable tempo-based time, set the Global -mode on, drop the Attack to zero, increase the LFO speed to make it sound like a slow’ish vibrato and turn the LFO Amount subtly to right:

Modulate the stereo panning via LFO as well (for making the stereo image sound bit more interesting) so go to PAN -tab, enable the tempo based time and tweak the Amount like shown in the pic:

This’ll make the sound pan from left-to-right. Listen to this:

Now, open the Mixer, Drop Fruity Delay 2 to the 3xOsc #3 fx slot and tweak it like this:

Next, load Fruity Reeverb to the effect slot and set it like this: Deacy to 12.5 seconds, Predelay to 100 ms, HighDamping to OFF, RoomSize to 88, Reverb signal level to 14%:

And finally, drop Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the effect chain and set it like this: choose filter type as High Pass for any of the bands (most likely for token number 1 like I’m using in the picture), set the Filter Slope to Gentle 8, Bandwidth to near 90% and frequency to 180-200Hz:

This kind of EQ settings cuts frequencies below 200Hz and make the instrument sound thin which – in this case – makes it sit better with the first pad sound – and also damps some of the ‘ringing’ frequencies which might get annoying. Listen to the end results:

Now, layer all the three sounds together: add a Layer channel to the project and in the Step Sequencer, right-click on the 3xOsc channel selectors to select them all and click on ‘Set children’ in the Layer channel settings:

Open the Mixer and set the volume levels between the sounds in balance. Use the following volume settings: 3xOsc to -8.3dB, 3xOsc #2 to -2.7dB and 3xOsc #3 to -1.7dB:

Also, it might be a good idea to route all the 3xOsc mixer tracks to one insert track. This way you can control their volume level as a group via one fader:

And we are done! Here is the end result:

This is the end of part one. Stay tuned for more Chill/Ambient sounds on part two!

Watch the video below if you’re more visual

The post How To Create Chill Out And Ambient Sounds Part 1: Lush Pad appeared first on How To Make Electronic Music.

Yes, it’s a bass tutorial once again :). The thing is, cool sounding bass is like half the track in many EDM genres. When you have an interesting bass sound, even a very simple and monotonous sequence may sound awesome with it.

With that said, I’m going to show you how you can create a dirty, “pressurized” sounding powerful electro bass with FL Studio’s native plugins. Here’s a sound example:

Ok. Start by loading a 3xOsc and select saw wave as a oscillator shape for each three oscillators and turn the Coarse Tune to -24 semitones for each.

Next, the fx chain.

Firstly assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track and drop a following effects to the fx slot (in a following order): Soundgoodizer, Fruity Phaser, Fruity Flanger, Fruit Fast Dist, Fruity Reeverb 2 & Vocodex:

First, the Soundgoodizer. Its here to quickly “intensify” the sound. Set it like this:

Next, drop a Fruity Phaser to the fx chain and load a preset “Stereo Enhance 2”. This’ll widen the sound stereo image a bit and adds a subtle vibration to it:

Next in line, Fruity Flanger and choose a preset “DistoChorus”:

Now, Fruity Fast Dist (for some dirt). Set the Distortion Type to B and drop the Post Gain a little:

Next, Fruity Reeverb 2. Switch on the Tempo-based Predelay, set the Predelay to 2:00, High-cut to OFF, Diffusion to 50, High damping OFF and Wet level to 24%:

And finally, the Vocodex. Instead of using it for actual vocoding, I’ll just use it for “shaping” the example sound.

First, you might want to turn off the Draft mode (though the Draft mode is there to save some CPU). The reason for this is when you render Vocodex processed audio to .WAV it will sound quite different than what you hear live as the Draft mode will be disabled automatically when rendering.

Next, Turn the Band width to 400%, set the Order to 1, Hold to 250.00ms, Attack to 0.00ms and Release to 0.00ms:

Done!

For further tweaking, automate the 3xOsc Channel Pitch movements for some cool pitch slide effects:

The end. 8)

Watch the video version below:

Download Dirty Powerful Electro Bass .FLP File

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