This might not seem like a revolutionary idea and it probably isn't, but it's a thought I had driving home the other night that excited me. Imagine "scoring" a thought.. Coming up with a story or idea, and very specifically tailoring music to it so that the message is clear to the listener without a single word having to be spoken (unless that's part of your concept).. I see the idea as sort of an "opera" method.. Utilizing all the tools we have an are capable of, composition, sound design, effects, vocals, etc. to create the ultimate form of auditory art that envelopes the listener and creates not only a mood but a STORY.

This is what I try to do on every single track, and I'm not the only one. Varien does this a lot too, and I think Seven Lions said there are stories behind all his tracks, even the instrumentals. Especially the instrumentals. And I think the results are usually better.

Let's look at Tyven. (which means "calm" in Finnish, by the way) The way it progresses isn't something you'd get from a formula. There's a slow evolution from a kind of neutral intro, to a dark, grimy breakbeat section, then at 2:53 it just stops and adds a completely new theme. Everything after that is more energetic and alive, because there are actual chord changes now, instead of just holding down a pedal note. More new elements, and then towards the end it brings back some elements from earlier for a finale. There's this sense of progression and evolution through the whole thing, that sounds like it's telling a story.

I'd do this for one of Varien's tracks, but he already did it.

It's easier to make a track when you have something in mind. Could be stories, but settings and characters are good to work with too. Like my track Voice of the Desert doesn't directly follow a story with its structure, but the sound design, arrangement and tonality have a theme, and that theme is "what would a sandstorm sound like as a dubstep track?"

Dammit. I was hoping they'd play the chorus over the intro riff, since they literally use the exact same progression.

Harmor. Sometimes I'll fire up Sytrus for leads or Serum for basses, but something like half my sounds in any given project are usually Harmor.

You can also try and make your own acapellas. If you have both the vocal and instrumental version of a track, you can use the "phase inverting" method, it's long and meticulous but turned out to be pretty efficient for me

A lot of artists with instrumental and vocal versions (cough cough PERIPHERY CELLDWELLER BLUE STAHLI) master them differently, so you'll get some drum transients even if you match them perfectly. Even if they're mastered the same, it won't be perfect. But if you always have the vocals playing over percussion, it shouldn't matter too much. Definitely the best way to get acappellas.

Lowpass and bandpass filters. The harshness is all in the highs, filters will cut them out. Modulate the cutoff. One thing that works is adding a bandpass and a bunch of notches, automating them to do random crazy stuff, then bouncing what you get and chopping it up.

Here's one! This is one of the basses in a drumstep ID I'm working on.

https://clyp.it/baymk3am

Basic scream bass; sounds kind of like the drop in Knife Party's remix of "Crush On You". Made using Harmor. For post processing, some stereo shaping might be necessary to bring the sub down to mono, but you can just cut the sub out and add your own.

How to make it:

Start with a supersaw. I used 4 unison voices, with moderate detune (default should be fine). I mapped the pitch thickness to an envelope, so it starts detuned, then once all the unison voices are out of phase, they get closer together. This just adds a little squelch and stereo, you don't really need unison for it. Tune it down 2 octaves with the pitch slider, Freq divider, or just playing really low.

Harmonic prism, with the default prism shape, and turn the Amount knob just a tiiiiny bit to the left. This is where the squelch comes from. Knife Party's basses have a lot of interesting stuff happening in the highs, something I've always admired, and this channels just a little of that. This is something you can only do with additive synthesis; the prism moves each harmonic just a tiny bit out of sync with each other over time, but not so fast that they sound out of tune.

The screaming sound comes from really emphasizing just a few harmonics. The best way to do that is with a comb filter. Harmor doesn't really have a comb filter, but it has a good approximation of one with the "Deeper" phaser setting. Change the phaser mode from "Classic" to "Deeper", set it to Harmonic ("harm"), turn the mix all the way up, turn the width almost all the way up, zero the speed, and mess with the offset until the first peak is somewhere in the mids.

Map the phaser offset to an envelope that starts at the bottom and rises up to the middle, so the scream rises up. And while you're here, do the same thing to the main pitch. If you want to get a sub out of this too, raise the harmonic protection ("prot" slider at the top) a little. To finish, add Log distortion (amount about halfway, filter all the way up) and reverb.

To get the "dipping" effect, turn on legato, hold a note, and play a lower note (more than an octave down) really quickly over and over.

Here's how it works:

Technically, this is a bass, but when you start with a saw, you end up with a range of harmonics that spans the whole audible spectrum (pretty much). The phaser cuts most of them out, starting at the bottom, and leaves just a few peaks. These peaks aren't single harmonics, though; they're clusters of a few harmonics close together.

Quick psychology lesson: what we perceive as "screaming" comes from nonlinear sound. These are sounds that don't act like normal sounds, instead of being a fundamental and overtones, all neatly organized at multiples of each other. Horrified screams are nonlinear. So's the sound of nails scraping on a chalkboard.

By cutting out the lower overtones, this sound tricks the listener into thinking the fundamental is way higher than it really is; instead of being down in the sub bass, it's off in the mids. But because each "peak" is really a few different harmonics, it sounds nonlinear.

I'll update this if anyone thinks that explanation sucked.

Do: remove the default limiter when you start a new FL project. For reasons beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals, there's a +5dB boost dialed in already, and that's probably the reason your track is always peaking.

Don't: use only compression and limiting, if you're trying to make your track as loud as possible. We can all hear that annoying pumping sound that comes from driving a limiter too hard, and we hate it (see above). Use soft saturation to get those extra couple decibels instead, but remember it's a type of distortion, so don't overdo it.

The ones that aren't terrible

Knife Party - Boss Mode
Seven Lions - Fevers
Pegboard Nerds - Pressure Cooker (lead only)
Tobu - Summer Breeze