The Hardstyle Mixing & Mastering Courseâ„¢ is offline. You can now learn the best mixing strategies in the new Mixing EDM Music guide.

HOW TO MAKE A HARDSTYLE LEAD | Sylenth1 Hardstyle Lead (FL Studio Tutorial)

In this lesson you’ll learn how to make a Sylenth1 hardstyle lead in FL Studio. In the video you can watch the entire lead making process from beginning to end.

Hardstyle lead basics

Depending on what you’re looking for, there are always different ways to make a hardstyle lead. As far as basics go, I consider the method in this video part of the essential basics.

Why? Because it’s one of the easiest ways and one of the ways to incorporate chords in your melody, without killing your lead sound. It’s pretty simple, yet very effective.

Basic synthesis

There are few basics settings that always seem to work:

  • Make a saw-wave sound with Sylenth1, using 2 oscillators with 6-8 voices each.
  • Set one oscillator 1 octave lower than the other. Detune them both, but slightly less for the lower octave.
  • For a little bit more detune, use a pitch LFO with a fast rate. You can also add a little bit of chorus.

Very simple, but these are the basic settings. Furthermore, you can use the filter (not necessary for the sound), use some portamento (glide) and add some release to the sound. This is all a matter of taste or some fine-tuning.

Basic mixing

Once you’re happy with your Sylenth1 hardstyle lead, route it to the mixer. On the mixer there are also a few basic settings that always come back:

  • Use an Equalizer to add some high frequencies and remove some low frequencies.
  • Use a reverb that adds space, width and fullness to your hardstyle lead.
  • Afterwards, limit the signal a bit with a compressor, limiter or distortion plugin.

That’s really it. If you just follow these basics, you always end up with a very flexible hardstyle lead for your melodies.

Find your own lead style

Of course, you can add delays, different layers, more oscillators or any of the settings you want to tweak. I absolutely encourage you doing that, because that can make your lead sound more unique.

But once you get a good understanding of these basics, they’re your new quality baseline. Then it’s a good experience for some more advanced sound design and find your style.

Plugins

For this lesson, the following plugins were used:

  • Sylenth1
  • FabFilter Pro Q 2
  • Fruity Reeverb 2
  • Fruity Compressor

If you have a question you would like me to answer in a future video or article, you can send it (3-4 paragraphs/500 words max) to this email address: cep@screechhouse.com

If you feel my content really helps with your music productions, you can show your appreciation by doing one of the following three things:

  1. Make a donation to my work by clicking here to donate via PayPal every time you feel I have given you a good tip, new knowledge or helpful insight. Whether it’s a buck, $2, $5, $10, $50, or a monthly recurring donation, just pick any amount YOU think is equal to the value you received from my videos, articles, courses, etc.
  2. Share this website with your friends so they can start learning and improving their music making and producing skills to become successful in this area of their lives too.
  3. Purchase one of my products on the products page by clicking here. That way, you’ll always have access to my absolute best work. Giving you the last push you might need to get your track to that pro level.

Thank you for your support and please, keep practicing!

– Cep
Music producer & creator of Screech House

Suggested products

Browse all products…

Leave a Comment