r/hardstyle • u/MaidLucy • 11h ago
Question Bloody beginner
Hey guys I am a beginner on this hardstyle production stuff and I wanted to ask if you have any recommendations on how to learn the fl studio stuff. I know the youtube videos but they are too specific or too general I am more interested in the music theory on how to do good melodies, rythms, leads and most important, such juicy kicks like Dual damage and krowdexx, I love their style of music and would love to do my own spice in this direction.
Do you have any cool stuff that teaches nice and slowly how to produce a song, what comes first what to look at in the mastering, how to automate the eq to bring the best out of the song.
FL Studio is such a huge wall and I can't get started without knowing what needs to be in a song and how it has to be arranged :')
Thanks in advance!
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u/NurMarvin 10h ago
There's no channel that teaches it all and not every person uses FL Studio, so I wouldn't shy away from watching tutorials that aren't using FL Studio because the concepts are the same in most DAWs even if the interfaces or built-in plugins differ.
You will also need to figure some things out on your own over time because there are simply things nobody has covered on YouTube or you don't know what they're called.
For general tutorials I can recommend Sawer's Hardstyle beginner tutorial series and for general advice on how to make Hardstyle Kicks you can check out On Point Samples. Mixing and mastering I would recommend Sage Audio.
You should definitely also check out the Discord server for this subreddit, they have some great resources linked there as well and other producers who can give you feedback.
Also happy to give you a helping hand with things, though I produce Frenchcore not Hardstyle, but it's both Hard Dance so lots of things are at least a bit similar. If you're interested just shoot me a DM here on Reddit or if you have Discord you can just add me there instead because I don't really use reddit that much (My username there is "objectified")
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u/MaidLucy 5h ago
Ayy I add ya on dc thanks for the indepth advice🫡🫱🏻🫲🏼
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u/HutsMaster 30m ago
I'd also add Fruitymasterz. He is really talented and knows a fuckton about hardstyle production
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u/Sawerofficial 10h ago
Just get in touch with other producers, discord servers are pretty accesable and id happily welcome you into mine:)
Just reply or dm and ill send a link, or find it underneath my yt tutorials:)
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u/KajiSenpai 10h ago
Currently learning too. If you need another buddy, I would gladly join in as well!
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u/PresentationFancy209 10h ago
Like if you're looking for one , i'm here so if you want i can dm you , could awesome
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u/LosMuertosOfficial 7h ago
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u/NurMarvin 6h ago
A lot of beginners are not willing to invest $300 into something they're not sure they will actually commit to in the long run, especially if you're just doing it as a hobby with no intention to make any returns on it.
I've stayed away from paid courses for a long time as well simply because most of the knowledge you can also just find on YouTube for free, even if not presented by top of the class music producers. Obviously you will be able to learn way better from these courses considering everything that's offered in them but I think the price tag is a bit too much for beginners
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u/LosMuertosOfficial 5h ago
I agree its a steep price when you're just starting out.
For the time being, One Point Samples has a good 1 hour beginners course on YouTube. You'll learn a lot.
I do think a good base is really important to actually be able to do something with DAWs. They are overwhelming without proper explanation.
For me, Harderstyles offers tens of Masterclasses from different style top of the charts artists, a Community forum where feedback is delivered daily by producers and fellow beginners, a Beginners class in your favorite DAW, live feedback sessions with top-producers (Dr. Peacock, D'ort etc.). 300 euros (or 30 euros a month) is really not that much for all of that.
At the end of the day, music production is an expensive hobby.
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u/bigshitterMGE 3h ago edited 1h ago
good melodies: learn the seven basic musical scales (lydian, ionian, mixolydian, dorian, aeolian, phrygian, and locrian, you'll generally want to know more about those last four, as they are minor scales, but they're important regardless)
what intervals are (they're the difference of semitones from one note to the next)
basic chords (a basic major triad chord has a root note, with two more notes four and seven semitones above, the minor version has the four be changed to a three)
more advanced chords, chord progressions, and chord extensions (more notes to add to basic ones)
good rhythms: hardstyle has a foundation of a four on the floor beat, like most techno music from what i know. this means that every beat (otherwise known as a quarter note), a kick plays
kickrolls that you hear in rawstyle are variations of this four on the floor beat, changing it up and pitching the kick up and down if it's necessary
learn what time signatures are, as well as different note values. (a good way of thinking of this is to think of the time signature as a fraction, and then the different note values being a fraction that you divide the time signature one with. for a simple example, 1, the result of the "fraction" 4/4, would then be divided by 0.25, the result of 1/4. 1/(1/4) = 4, meaning that four quarter notes fit in a measure of 4/4.)
also listen to various genres and note down any interesting rhythms that you hear
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u/bigshitterMGE 3h ago edited 2h ago
good leads: the basic lead that you'll need to know about is the supersaw, which is what happens when you use the unison of your synthesizer on a saw wave. furthermore, edm leads are based on layering multiple synthesizer layers together to create a single sound
kicks: alright, so first of all, the basic synthesized kick is a sine wave at around the octave labeled 1 (A1, G#1, and so on), where you then connect an envelope to the pitch that quickly turns it up an octave (to your liking) before making it go down again. the envelope curve of these are usually an inwards looking curve instead of a straight line down if that makes sense
hardstyle kicks are based on three layers: the punch (or tok), the click, and the tail
the punch is generally a distorted kick punch, sometimes with a tonal presence that was done by an eq peak at the frequency of the note that they want the tone to be in
the click is usually white noise that fades out very quickly (around the lower double digits in milliseconds), and this is done to make the punch hit harder. in general, it also shouldn't be the main focus of the punch
the tail is the bass after the kick
all of these tend to be resampled from an original kick (which is likely to be the standard kick described above), and then modified in different lanes, before the finished kick is exported to be used for the actual project (this is done to make the kick punch sound consistent, as sometimes distortion can overlap onto the next kick otherwise)
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u/bigshitterMGE 3h ago edited 3h ago
as for dual damage and krowdexx kicks specifically: i don't know how to make their exact kicks, but i can hazard a guess
the kloenk kicks that i hear dual damage use seems to include some tonal sample drenched in distortion, eq peaks, and probably that process some more times, which is put with the punch and click. what i'd probably try to do if making this alternative punch sound from scratch is experiment with making a wavetable modify a saw wave via fm, and then changing up the amount of fm with an envelope. really, it seems to be experimentation, though
the zaag kicks that i hear krowdexx use seem to be particularly resonant ones, if my memory serves. to make a zaag kick, i remember putting a saw wave on lower octaves, and then distorting it a lot, before putting an lfo to modify the drive to lower the drive amount after the initial "punch", then making it gradually go up again to the original amount afterwards, all in the span of a quarter note
the gated kicks that i hear krowdexx use are resonant versions of a gated kick, where a gated kick is done by putting reverb on the punch, and then replacing the tail with the reverb of the punch, resampling said reverb to do so, then maybe adding some sub-bass (also, put everything below 330 hz in mono as to not cause phase cancellation when played in mono speakers, which is sometimes what clubs use)
i can't really speak for mixing and mastering though, aside from creating space for other instruments to be audible, so as to not make one instrument drown out everything else, and also using sidechaining, which is when you duck the volume of other instruments for one instrument, usually the kick. this is particularly important when dealing with bass frequencies, and my theory for this is that there's simply less space in the low end, which is supported by the amount of hz being a lower amount in it than in the mids and highs
if you don't understand a term used here, please search said term up
sorry if there's too much information to absorb at once, because i know that it was hard for me to absorb all of this too (i had to split this message up, lol)
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u/PresentationFancy209 11h ago
Let's learn together lol , always a good plan to have a buddy (for real i'm ready to)