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HARDSTYLE LASER KICK | How to Make a Hard Kick in FL Studio (Hardstyle Kick Tutorial: Riot Shift)

In this video, you will get an effective method how to make a hardstyle laser kick in FL Studio with Sylenth1.

Sylenth1 is very well suited to create that laser effect, as it supports an aggressive pitch envelope feature. However, you can use any synthesizer that allows for an extreme pitch setting. So, don’t get wrapped up around the idea of “having to have” Sylenth1.

Laser kick setup

To create a hardstyle laser kick, you will first have to open Sylenth1 by clicking “Add” in the FL Studio menu and then select “Sylenth1”. That is, if you have Sylenth1 installed. On Sylenth1, click “Menu”, go to “Preset” and select “Insert”. This will give you a new unmodified sound.

Set the oscillator & volume envelope

Then, select a sine wave for the first oscillator. Also, set the octave to “-2” to lower the pitch of the sound. Optionally, add some release with the volume envelope to prevent a clicking sound at the end.

Set the pitch envelope

Now most importantly, use an empty envelope to set the pitch drop of a kick for the punch and “oomph”. Thereby, click the field on the envelope to select “Pitch A and B”. Furthermore, open the decay slider a little bit, fully close the sustain slider and fully open the release slider.

The laser kick effect

Finally, a certain amount for the pitch envelope needs to be applied. Thus, simply open the “destination amount” knob. When you set the amount for the pitch envelope quite high, you’ll get a more extreme pitch drop, resulting in a laser kick effect.

To actually hear your laser kick drum, right-click on the Sylenth1 in the Channel Rack and click “Piano Roll”. On the Piano Roll, draw some notes around G3. Then, press the “Play” button in FL Studio. If you find the volume level being too low, you can always make the sound louder by moving up the mixer sliders on Sylenth1.

TIP: Play with the pitch envelope’s decay setting on Sylenth1 to get a shorter or longer laser effect.

To know exactly what all the settings on your synthesizer do, grab the Sound Design for Beginners guide today by clicking this link.

Make a hardstyle laser kick

Now, if you want to get a harder laser kick, you will have to use some distortion and/or other effects, like equalizers and reverbs on the Mixer. Therefore, you will have to assign your Sylenth1 plugin to a free Mixer Track.

You can do that by going to the Channel Rack. There, set the “Target mixer track” field next to Sylenth1 to a Mixer Track number that’s unoccupied, e.g. “1”. Then, open the Mixer by clicking “View” in the FL Studio menu and click “Mixer”. Now simply select the Insert Track number you just defined and use the available slots to add different effects.

Use the Mixer effects creatively

Your goal is to add distortion plugins, equalizers, reverbs, etc. to make your kick hard and raw. Thereby, it’s important to play around with all the settings and options to get a desirable sound. While this is a creative process and therefore hard to give any “rules”, here are a few tricks you can use:

  • To get more punch and “hardstyle character”, always add a good amount of mid frequencies with an equalizer. Let’s say, between 400Hz and 1000Hz.
  • Also, experiment with different distortion shapes and saturation levels to get interesting distortion types.
  • Furthermore, adding a high pass slope with an equalizer in the beginning of your effects chain usually works very well to get interesting kick shapes and harmonics.
  • Lastly, adding a reverb (or two) can magically glue everything together. Experiment with it.

Finalize your hardstyle kick

Building a chain of Mixer effects like described here, forms the foundation of your hardstyle kick. However, to finalize a kick, more needs to be done.

That’s why my website and YouTube channel provide many videos and lessons about making hardstyle kicks, toks or kick layering. Feel free to use these resources to get your hardstyle kicks to the next level.

Get to the next level now

As far as this lesson goes, you have learned all the essential basics about making a hardstyle laser kick. Nevertheless, if you found yourself still getting stuck and you’d like to get my help personally, you can obtain my mentorship today by clicking this link: Cep’s Mentorship™.

Just fill in the few questions and send me an instant request. But do it quickly, as I only have a few empty spots each month. Read you soon…

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