Yet Another Riser Sound Tutorial

Risers / uplifters are important fundamentals in electronic dance music and if you’ve been checking my tutorials for a while, you have probably learned a couple of techniques to make your own.

And here’s one more. Listen the example below:

How I made this?

I used three units of 3xOsc’s layered together. First 3xOsc was a saw wave sound and I used the built-in arpeggiator and automation to gradually speed up the arpeggio time. Pitch automation was used as well. Second 3xOsc was just a white noise with low pass filter sweep. Third 3xOsc was a detuned saw lead with rising pitch automation. And as a finishing touch, FL Studio’s native delay and reverb effects were used to add that spatial effect.

Here’s a step by step guide how to replicate this sound:

Set the project tempo to 128bpm (or whatever you prefer – I used 128bpm in the example) and load 3xOsc to your project. Rename the 3xOsc channel to ‘Raising Arp’ or whatever to keep things well organized.

Add a new pattern to the Playlist, open the Piano Roll view and draw a 16 bars long (or how long you want your uplifter to be) C3 note.

Head back to the 3xOsc interface.

Only one oscillator is needed so disable the Osc 2 & 3 by turning their volume knobs to 0%. Choose saw wave as the shape for the Osc 1 and tune down it’s coarse tune to -24 semitones.

Go to the FUNC (Special tools & functions) tab and under the Arpeggiator section, turn it ON by setting the Arpeggio direction to DOWN. Set the Arpeggio range to 5 octaves and turn ON the Arpeggio slide mode (slide mode makes the arpeggiator SLIDE between notes). Set the Arpeggio time to 1 STEP if not already (right click the Arpeggio time -knob and choose a preset ‘1 step’ from the menu under the ‘Set’).

Create automation clips for the Arpeggio time and Arpeggio gate -knobs (that is done by right clicking the knob and choosing ‘Create automation clip’ from the menu).

Next, set the Pitch knob range to 48 semitones and create automation clip for the Channel pitch knob.

Head to the Playlist and in the Arpeggio time envelope set the envelope point 1/2 to 58% (should be there already) and point 2/2 to 0%.

In the Arpeggio gate envelope, set point 1/2 to 100% (if not already) and point 2/2 to 0%.

And finally, in the Channel pitch envelope, make sure that the point 1/2 is on 50% and point 2/2 is on 100%.

What the automation envelopes do here is a pretty self explanatory: Arpeggio time speeds up gradually from the value of 58% (which is 1 step) to maximum.

Arpeggio gate extends from short, staccato notes (100%) to longer notes and as the Arpeggio slide mode is on you can start to hear the slide between notes better when the automation is around 70-80%.

Channel pitch raises the pitch from current to maximum.

Now, assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track and drop Fruity Delay 2 to it’s effect slot. Switch on the Ping Pong mode and turn the Input panning all the way to right – or left – either way, but don’t leave it to the middle if you want the echoes to ping-pong between left and right channels. Set the Input volume to 1 o’clock (Input volume controls the volume of the input signal. Use it to balance the dry and effected signal level). And finally, set the Feedback level to 3 o’clock.

Next, drop the Fruity Reeverb 2 to the effect slot. Set the Decay time to 6.4 seconds and turn off the High Damping. Set the Wet level to 34% (or according to your taste).

This was the first sound.

Next, load another 3xOsc unit to the project and rename it to ‘Noise’ (or whatever). Only one oscillator is required so disable Osc’s 1 & 2 by turning their volume knobs to 0%. In the Oscillator 1, select noise as the oscillator shape.

Go to the Playlist, add a new pattern and open the Piano Roll view of the ‘Noise’ and draw a 16 bars long C5 note (actually the note can be pretty much anything as white noise doesn’t have any pitched element in it).

Route the ‘Noise’ to a free Mixer track and drop a Fruity Free Filter to its effect slot. Leave the filter type to Low pass. Lower the Q a bit (set it to around 8 o’clock or according to your taste). Set the filter Frequency to around 570 Hz and create automation clip for it.

In the Playlist, set the point 2/2 of Fruity Free Filter’s Freq envelope to 100% (filter fully ‘open’).

This was the second sound.

Next, load third 3xOsc unit to the projec and rename it to ‘Raising Saw’ (or whatever you prefer). We need two oscillators so disable the Osc 3 by setting the volume level to 0%. Set the Osc 1 coarse tune to -24 semitones and fine tune to +24 cents. Set the Osc 2 coarse tune to -24 semitones and fine tune to -24 cents.

Head to the Playlist and add a new empty pattern there. Open the Piano Roll view of the ‘Raising Saw’ and lay down a 16 bars long C5 note.

Assign the ‘Raising Saw’ to a free mixer track and copy the mixer track state from the ‘Raising Arp’ track. You can do that by clicking on the ‘Raising Arp’ track to activate it, then click the ‘Effects options’ (top left corner of the mixer window) and under the File DRAG the ‘Save mixer track state as…’ to the ‘Raising Saw’ mixer track.

This was the third and final sound.

As for the volume balance between all three sounds, the ‘Noise’ needs to be a bit louder compared to ‘Raising Arp’ and ‘Raising Saw’ (at least to my taste) so lower the volume of the ‘Raising Arp’ and ‘Raising Saw’ tracks (around -1.8dB sounded ok to my ears).

And the final sound is the same you heard at the beginning of this tutorial.

The end! 😎

Watch  the video version below and download the .flp file for this sound.

Download Yet Another Riser Sound .FLP File (Requires FL Studio 10.0.9 or later to open)