… In 5 Easy Steps
Easy Money, Champagne & A Private Jet – it is no longer just a dream!
We just got intel of 5 amazing and simple steps to become the world’s leading euphoric hardstyle producer and dj. Crying girls in the front row, Hey Ho’s during your track and emotional moments, where 20.000 people lift up their phone and light up the festival ground, this is what euphoric hardstyle is all about and what you can achieve!
You thought producing raw hardstyle is one hell of an easy job. After the great success of our first article “How To Be A Raw Hardstyle Producer & Dj In 5 Easy Steps” it is time to catch up with our insider once again. If you thought playing at Mysteryland, Decibel main stage or Defqon.1 main stage needs years of hard work, you were wrong. All it takes is some sense for emotions, fitting vocals, other DJs who drop your track and consider it as real hardstyle or in exceptions just boobs and a ghostproducer.
You might think, the time is not the best to start a euphoric hardstyle act. And yes, that’s true, but we want to ask you – do you really want to get stuck at the Blue hardstyle area at Defqon.1? Qapital main stage? The Decibel Loudness area over decades as your highest goal you can achieve? Euphoric hardstyle takes as less effort as raw hardstyle, but the result will boost you into different dimensions, playing across the world, third world countries and in front of the most insane-hardstyle-loving-best-crowd-ever hardstyle-szene in Chile!
And remember: You can’t go for real hardstyle and mix up euphoric and raw. This won’t work and actually takes some more effort.
The Kick
Although you might think the kick is the most essential part in your track, we need to tell you the brutal truth – it’s not. It is within the rawstyle szene, but with euphoric you have a different aim. Your focus is your melody! If you want to be famous with euphoric hardstyle, you basically have two options regarding your kick, which depends on which direction you want to go. Melodic hardstyle or Hard Drop!
So, in case you decide for the second option, make sure your kick is as simple deigned as possible. It can almost sound like a tekstyle kick. Do not put too much bass in the tail, keep the punch soft. Zero effort! If you combine it with a simple big room-tomorrowland-Dj Mag Top 100-producers generic sounding lead, you’re the hero of the szene. You’ll be declared as out of the box, because you mix up styles. With this, it is almost guaranteed to play next to Martin Garrix, Steve Aoki, or these Dimitri guys at Tomorrowland, or at least as the opener at the Q-Dance stage!
If you have some more time left, we suggest to move on with euphoric hardstyle. What you do with the kick is simple – soften it as much as you can. Your kick should not distract from your great melody or the feeling you deliver through your track. Make it sound like a flat something, not even hearable in your music. On the other side, you can also go for a sustained and loud tail. It depends on your melody and the used lead sound. A combination of both should also do a great job.
But, no matter what you do, do not invest too much time in your kick. It’s just a side effect of this music and euphoric hardstyle specifically. One word should describe your musical vision, when producing euphoric hardstyle: accessibility!
Your aim is to claim the world’s biggest hardstyle stages? You need to produce music and therefore a kick everyone can possibly like. Times are great, hardstyle is expanding, it’s your time to shine and make everyone happy.! So, it is kinda like a conserve – it tastes like something, but without a specific taste, just to make sure everyone likes it!
With that said, we need to tell one additional point: If you have super, great, awesome and lovely vocals or theme in your track, that even the most manliest Angerfist fan would break out in tears, your kick can sound like everything – even like warm, moist fart. If all fails, rip the kick from Zatox, works like charm! Bum Bada Bing, you know.
The Sounds
You track cannot only exist of a great melody and a kick. You need some additional sounds to fill gaps, hide your ripped kick and to make your track sound filled. But, just like with rawstyle, keep it simple and definitely do not spend too much time on this.
You want to know what advices professionals will give you? We found out, at the moment for intro parts sustained and bright, massive big room house leads work perfectly. Maybe you can find some great examples in a Tomorrowland mainstage set, copy and paste the melody, make a similar lead and speed it up to 150 BPM. The great thing: just play it two chords higher for your climax part and you saved time on another lead for your main melody.
Combine your deep house lead, with a hard drop kick and the magic begins. To make it sound like hard drop, create a slightly harder punch, a very short tail and a lead sound you’ll find in every good sample pack. Make the melody go like Dam DaDaDam Dam Daaaam, throughout the entire 32 beats long intro and you’re done!
Also, piano sounds do a smooth job. You can use them within almost every part of your track. Let the kick play, let the piano play 1 beat after the kick and you have some sort of piano bass. This is really cool, let your track sound happy and takes max. 1 minute to produce. After 32 beats you should maybe have some sort of kick roll or add a snare.
Screeches? Who needs screeches in euphoric hardstyle? Just think of all the people swapping over to hardstyle – they can’t stand screeches and do not even understand them.
Nowadays you do not even need an intro part. So forget about all the additional sounds you would need – vocals + lead + background sound + kick = your track! Snares or cymbals operate in the background and sound as soft as your kick and track.
One cool, last tip in case you have some vocals, but have absolutely no clue how to underline them, so your part does not sound empty: either you go for your piano in straight on-beat rhythms, matching the chords of your vocal or you go for some sort of holy chor in the background. Kind of depends on your vocal.
The Vocals
Vocals within the euphoric hardstyle genre are more than important. They pretty much define this music and your track, together with the melody. We won’t lie, it’s slightly harder than with rawstyle. Vocals are often a new level when it comes to productions within your career. We highly suggest to start without vocals. Focus on your main goals – writing melody and establishing your lovely sound in the scene.
The faster you’ll rise, the better are chances to get hands on some great vocals. Maybe you’re already signed at a label, which can help to find an awesome and well-know vocalist. It also does not have to be very long. If you have one great term, play it over and over and over and over and over again.
However, great topics for vocals are love, desire, fears, melancholia, nature, beauty, space, the universe and everything which will make your little fan-girls cry. However, it is also possible to have some sort of out of the box vocals. It doesn’t even matter if you have a female or male vocalist. Some sad vocals, how stressed you are, that you lost your love, but that you’ll come back and be strong, underlined with a simple piano, are the perfect combination.
Hardstyle is not here to make you dance, it’s made for long, emotional breaks, immense build ups and goosebumps moments. Maybe write some vocals about your recently born son and how much you love him? Strings, bras and flowers flying towards you, while playing, are guaranteed!
But, you can also go for some more general vocals, with no message, just that you have vocals. It can be about the hardstyle scene, how awesome the Chilean crowd is, that you’re the ultimate hardstyle hero, cause you make it pop or short big-room-house vocals like 1-2-3 let’s go, put your hands up, mosh pit bla bla or make some noise!
Sometimes is that, the more childish your vocal sounds, the better it is, although you might don’t even understand what they are about. If you made it a little further, you might have the chance to have some awesome Villain vocals – the ultimate boost for every hardstyle track!
The classic build up
The build up of euphoric hardstyle is actually quite simple and does not take too much effort. If you follow this build up, you’ll be fine.
So, after the obligatory Dj intro, you can either completely skip the intro part and already move on to your main part, melody build up and climax. If you really want to have an intro part, keep it simple, end it after 32 beats. That’s completely fine!
The standard:
Start with the dj intro, followed by a short 16 beats long build up for your intro. let the your big-room-house elad come up and let one snippet of your vocal say some essential sentence or word, right before the beat drops. Let the intro part play.
After it is finished, your main part will start. use all the tactics we mentioned above, the right usage of sounds and synths, the right vocals, don’t forget about the piano and try to pull the listener into your music. The more they feel your song, the better! The vocals end, the melody starts. Either it is at full volume or if you have some time left, you start playing with the volume or some simple effects. After 32 beats the melody keeps playing, a snare is added, your vocals are added and it will all lead to the drop.
Your climax is playing, put in some kick-rolls. Yes, kick-rolls even slowly take over euphoric hardstyle. maybe you can gain some new fans, who are normally used to rawstyle. Create some sort of 16 beats or 32 beats long break in between your first and second climax. Then, for the second climax let your kick plus vocal plus melody play! You’ll become the main mf with this technique.
The I-have-the-most-emotional-vocals-ever:
After the Dj intro you instantly start with your main part and 1,5 minutes long vocal part. This and we want to make sure you understand it, this build up only works if you’re sure, your vocals can stem your whole track and at the same time hide all additional sounds. This part gives you the opportunity to pull out your phone and make the crowd move their hands to the slow rhythm.
Imagine: The vocal come to an end, an impact, silence, Villain will probably say the crowd shall touch the sky and then here we go: The melody starts playing at low volume, with a sick Fruity Loops filter, some claps are added, the snare starts to play, you start using your flanger effect, it’s so intense, omg, the crowd starts screaming, crying and cumming at the same time and finally the motherfucking climaaaaaaaaaaaax starts playing! Excuse me, I need break here …
The Marketing
As last paragraph we will provide some useful hints for the perfect marketing!
What you basically want to do, from the point you have your Social Media channel online, is: state clear your euphoric hardstyle music is the only and real hardstyle music! Keep posting pictures and quotes about quality hardstyle and how it’s done. Also, always underline your life starts at 150 BPM. Music is everything for you and melodies are the ebst way to describe your feeling <3
If you keep on pushing this side of hardstyle, combined with your music, people will instantly start liking you and agree with you. If you have the people on your side, you can finally enter stage two of your marketing: bash against rawstyle, every damn time you can.State clear that music is garbage, the music has no quality and that you experience the craziest changes within the scene. Also, rawstyle is unfair!!
But also emotional hardstyle quotes do a fantastic job. Something like “I am lost in hardstyle”, “Hardstyle forever”, “Euphoric Hardstyle <3” or even quotes from lyrics out of one track by yourself. Keep talking about the good things in life and how hardstyle changed you and will affect the listener. If you travel to a country post how much you love them in their language – that’s well appreciated! And last but not least, if you ran out of ideas, start a VLOG.
If you follow all these secret steps carefully, it is pretty much guaranteed that you’ll have success! We’ll see you within the DJ Mag Top 100 next year and pretty much all huge main stages across the scene. Your collab with Hardwell is only a few steps ahead. Follow these just revealed rules companies don’t want you to read and become the greatest euphoric hardstyle dj and producer in the scene!