FM8 Progressive/Electro Drops - Create A Gritty Pitch Rising Lead

In this tutorial, learn how to make a gritty pitch rising lead in FM8 that is perfect for progressive house and electro drops.

Anytime I need a pitch rising sound, I usually reach for FM8. Not too many soft synths have an entire envelope dedicated to pitch, but that’s why making this pitch rising lead in FM8 is pretty quick and easy.

First, Johnny activates a few Operators and assigns some waveforms to them. You could of course swap out any of the waveforms depending on your needs.

Then, he shows you what envelope shape he used for the Operators that he activated in step one. This is pretty intricate envelope shape as it is looped and has many attacks and decays, but it is an important step in creating this pitch rising lead in FM8. It gives the sound some bounce and life. Luckily you can download this patch for free so you should be able to remake the envelope pattern fairly easily.

The most important step in making this sound is using the the Pitch Envelope to create the rising effect. All you have to do is tempo sync the Pitch Envelope and then create a shape that starts off low and rises up. This will create the pitch rising lead in FM8! It’s that simple.

Finally, Johnny shows you how to create a pretty cool kick drum as an added bonus!

Cheers