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HARDSTYLE SCREECH TUTORIAL | Sylenth1 & FL Studio 12 | Screech from Scratch #1

This lesson is all about making a hardstyle screech in FL Studio. It’s a screech tutorial where you can learn how to build one from scratch with Sylenth1 and a couple of other plugins.

The hoover screech

Hardstyle screeches come in endless forms. But there’s a very common type of screech many hardstyle tracks used over the years. It’s called a “hoover”.

Hoover screeches also come in many forms, but they’re very recognizable. They’re usually very detuned sounds and have a pitch slope. The pitch of the sound goes from higher to lower or vice versa. With a stretch of your imagination you can listen to a hoover screech as a braking car. The tires scratching over the road’s surface creating that noise.

They’re very common and pretty easy to make, so I recommend to start learning how to make them. It’s part of the hardstyle basics.

How to make a hoover screech

To make a hoover hardstyle screech, you mainly need a synth with a lot of saw voices. These voices need to be detuned. Or you could say: pulling them out of tune. This creates a fat screamy detuned sound.

In the video I use Sylenth1. I typically set the oscillators to 6-8 saw voices. Then I use the detune knobs. Don’t be too gentle. It’s okay to be a little bit aggressive here.

Pitch that b****

As discussed earlier, we also need a pitch slope. That’s why we want to give the screech a pitch envelope. The pitch envelope simply changes the pitch over time. Just play with the settings.

Additionally, you could also give your screech some pitch LFO. The LFO creates a pitch movement in the sound. I often like to give it a fast movement.

Push it to another level

Now, with all this stuff done, you’re almost there. It already sounds like a hoover hardstyle screech. If you want to push it to another level, just route your screech to a free mixer track and add effects.

It’s a very good idea to apply some EQing and may be some distortion. The EQ is useful to remove some low frequencies and to balance the sound. The distortion is useful to give the screech more aggression.

Again, this is a playful process. You have to go back and forth between the effects and the synth to make adjustments. Just experiment.

Plugins to make this screech

In this particular video, I decided to use the following plugins:

  • Sylenth1 (for the sound)
  • FabFilter Pro Q (equalizer)
  • iZotope Trash (distortion)
  • Fruity Fast Dist (distortion)

Which effects should you use? It really doesn’t matter. Anything can work. Just go with the plugins you like to use the most. You’re the one that has to work with them.

If you want to learn more about making hardstyle screeches, just visit the Screech page on this website.

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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