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ELEMENTS HARDSTYLE KICK FL STUDIO: How to Use Fruity Love Philter Tutorial (Love Philter Meaning)

At the end of this lesson, you will know exactly how to use Fruity Love Philter for your hardstyle kick.

If you’re curious about the hardstyle kick sound design from this video, check out the Hardstyle Kick Tutorial FL Studio lesson by clicking this link.

Furthermore, if you want to have unique hardstyle kick samples for your tracks, download a free hardstyle sample pack by clicking this link.

Why should you use the Fruity Love Philter

The FL Studio Love Philter can be used to create a frequency sweep in your hardstyle kick tail. This is important for the bounce and dynamic of the kick.

Of course, you can reach a similar effect with third-party plugins or creating automation clips. However, the Fruity Love Philter is easy to use, lightweight and directly included as a convenient FL Studio stock plugin.

Add the Fruity Love Philter to the Mixer

The Fruity Love Philter can be included to your hardstyle kick effects chain on the Mixer. Therefore, access the Mixer by clicking “View” in the FL Studio menu and then “Mixer”. Select the Insert Track you want to use (e.g. 1) and then click on an empty slot to open the Fruity Love Philter.

Theoretically, you could add the FL Studio Love Philter to any position in your Mixer effects chain. However, based on lots of experimentation, I found it usually works best to include it at least after the first distortion unit and equalizer. This ensures that the Love Philter already has a distorted signal to work with, while still being clean enough to produce an aggressive filter sweep effect.

How to use the Fruity Love Philter for a hardstyle kick

When applying the Love Philter to your hardstyle kick, it usually works best to use a mix level of around 50%. So, the filter will affect only ~50% of the signal.

To achieve that, simply enable two filters by checking the “Enable unit” checkbox at the top of the window. This way, we will set it up so that the first filter only passes the signal unchanged. The second filter will then be used to create the frequency sweep.

How to create a hardstyle kick frequency sweep

Filter type

To get the frequency sweep, first make sure to select the second filter and leave the first filter untouched. Then, select a band pass (BP) filter in the “Filter Type” box. Click the box and drag your mouse up or down.

As mentioned, you could also build a frequency sweep manually by automating the frequency of a bell curve on an equalizer. But why make it complicated?

Filter mode

Furthermore, select one of the available filter modes (Single, Dual, Triple, etc.). You can just choose the Filter Mode that sounds best for your kick. In most cases, the “Triple” option works really good.

Cutoff envelope

Next, go to the “Cut” tab at the bottom-half of the Love Philter and select the “Pat” tab. Now you have access to the cutoff envelope where you can create the sweep by drawing a curved line.

Usually, it works best to draw the line from a higher position on the left, to a lower position on the right. That is, as long as these points don’t go extremely high or low. Also, position the right dot on the visible beat line. This ensures the filter sweep starts and ends on the tempo of the beat. Thus, the tempo of the kick.

To be clear, each dot of the line represent a point in the frequency spectrum. Thus, let the line fall from a higher frequency to a lower frequency.

If your filter sweep doesn’t work, enable it first by clicking the “Enable envelope” checkbox exactly below the envelope window.

By the way, if you don’t know what these filter and envelope settings mean, start first with the essential basics of synthesis by obtaining the Sound Design for Beginners guide via this link.

Play with the base frequency of the Fruity Love Philter

Lastly, you can change the base frequency of the filter with the “Cut” knob, including its resonance with the “Res” knob. These options will position your filter sweep around a certain frequency area with a certain amount of emphasis.

Using any effect while building a hardstyle kick is always a creative process. Therefore, constantly play around with the settings until your kick starts to sound good.

Though, be aware that using the Fruity Love Philter gives a frequency sweep, but also boosts the mid frequencies in your hardstyle kick. Having an excessive amount of mid frequencies can pull your kick a little bit out of balance frequency-wise. Therefore, it’s a good idea to recover some higher (and possibly some lower) frequencies with an equalizer later in the effects chain.

Fruity Love Philter hardstyle kick general guidelines

Cutoff and envelope

As far as the Love Philter goes, it normally works best to keep the cutoff between 30% and 70%. The same goes for the “Env” function. The “Env” function represents the amount of the cutoff envelope. A higher amount means a more aggressive cutoff sweep. And vice versa.

Mix level

In general, don’t use a 100% mix level for most settings. Allow some of the original kick signal to pass through unaffected. This keeps it balanced. Therefore, shoot for a mix level of around 50%. In most cases, this works good. Nevertheless, don’t be afraid to experiment and move away from this guideline.

Input volume

Finally, use the “Vol” option to control the input volume that goes through the filter. The more volume, the louder the filter effect. And vice versa. Sometimes, you want a stronger filter effect and sometimes you want a more subtle one. Thereby, just set the input volume based on your taste.

How to use Fruity Love Philter for a hardstyle kick

To summarize, enable two filters and only use one. For the one you use, select the band pass (BP) filter type, choose a mode you like and draw a curved-down line with the cutoff envelope. That’s really it.

Now, if this goes a little bit beyond your current level of expertise, don’t worry. We all have to start somewhere. That’s why you can now quickly begin with the Sound Design for Beginners guide.

This well-received guide explains all the essential basic settings on a synthesizer, including, oscillators, filters, envelopes and LFOs. This is must-know material for any beginning music producer who wants to succeed.

So, if you haven’t yet, start now by clicking this link: Sound Design for Beginners.

– Cep
(Music producer, author & creator of Screech House)

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