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HARDSTYLE SYNTH FL STUDIO | How to Make a Hardstyle Lead with FL Studio Stock Plugins ONLY

In this lesson you’ll learn how to make a hardstyle synth or hardstyle lead with FL Studio plugins ONLY. For this to happen, we make use of the 3x Osc and the Fruity mixer effects.

For all the settings, please watch the video. You can use those to model the hardstyle synth. For some extra tips, please read the post below.

Layering lead synths

The hardstyle lead in the video plays a melody, but it consists of 3 different layers:

  1. There’s the top layer that plays the main melody. It’s a distorted lead sound.
  2. There’s the chords layer that plays the chords belonging to that melody. It’s a “supersaw” kind of sound.
  3. There’s the bass layer that plays the lowest notes of the chords for some extra heaviness.

Distorted lead

For the main melody, the top layer, it’s a good practice to make a unique sound and distort it a little bit. This give the top layer a little bit more power and aggression.

Chords lead

For the chords lead it’s important to use a sound that’s not too distorted or aggressive. It’s often best to pick a supersaw type of lead. This has to do with the chords it’s playing. If you’d play 3 or 4 notes at the same time (chords) with a distorted lead, the sound gets crushes.

Bass lead

Well… it’s not a real “lead”. It’s just a bass. A bass sound is important when you play the melody in a break. This give more fullness, heaviness and power. But be sure to take away the bass when the hardstyle kick starts. The hardstyle kick already has the lower frequencies and you don’t want them to clash.

FL Studio stock plugins

Now, this hardstyle synth, with the different layers, is made with FL Studio stock plugins only. The main reason for that is to show you that you DON’T need any fancy third-party plugins to make hardstyle, or any genre for that matter. The FL Studio plugins are very good, light weight and easy to use.

In future lessons, I’ll be presenting more FL Studio only projects. And also project using mostly FL Studio plugins.

This can save you a lot of money, and maybe some stress about “having to have” certain plugins. It’s what you do with them that really matters.

Third-party plugins

This doesn’t mean I’m against third-party plugins. They’re absolutely great tools and I use a lot of these plugins myself. It’s mostly preference and it can also give some extra choices. But you don’t HAVE TO use them for making awesome tracks.

If you want to learn how to make a hardstyle lead with Sylenth1 (a popular third-part plugin), just visit my Sylenth1 Hardstyle Lead lesson.

Plugins

For this lesson, the following plugins were used:

  • 3x Osc
  • Fruity Parametric EQ 2
  • Fruity Chorus
  • Fruity Waveshaper
  • Fruity Reeverb 2

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

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Thank you for your support and please, keep practicing!

– Cep
Music producer & creator of Screech House

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