In this lesson you’ll learn how to make a hardstyle screech in FL Studio… with a PIANO! This screech piano tutorial is a unique, but funny way to learn more about sound design.
How to make a piano screech
To make a hardstyle piano screech, let’s use FL Keys. FL Keys is an FL Studio stock plugin that simulates a piano sound. Simply add it to the Channel Rack and route it to a free mixer track to give it some effects.
In the video, I am showing and enabling all the effects one by one. It’s a good way to listen how each effect affects the sound. But let’s discuss each effect here a little bit and why they’re there…
- The first effect is a flanger. The flanger creates some detuned movement in the sound, which isn’t naturally present in a piano sound.
- The second effect is an equalizer. The EQ shapes the sound before it enters a distortion effect later in the chain.
- The third effect is the Fruity Love Philter. The Fruity Love Philter creates a filter sweep, bark and some movement. This helps to bring the hardstyle screech to life.
- The fourth effect is a distortion unit (waveshaper). The distortion gives the sound power and aggression. It really allows the screech to arise.
- The fifth effect is an equalizer again. Extra EQing after the distortion can help to recover the balance in the frequency spectrum.
- The sixth and last effect is another waveshaper. The waveshaper simply limits the volume peaks and squeezes everything together.
And there you have it… a hardstyle screech with a piano. Do you still recognize a piano sound?
Hardstyle piano screech
When you play this hardstyle piano screech on different notes, it also sounds pretty neat. I didn’t do it in this video, but I’m sure it could make for a good distorted lead, playing a rough melody. May be that’s something you want to experiment with.
Do you ever make special challenges like this piano screech? Let us know in the comments, because I’m very curious about your creative sound design…
If you like to learn more about making a hardstyle screech, simply visit the Screech page on this website. There are a ton of screech lessons available. And if you want to listen to a real piano melody, visit my Hardstyle Piano Tutorial.
Plugins
In this lesson, the following FL Studio stock plugins were used:
- FL Keys
- Fruity Flanger
- Fruity Parametric EQ 2
- Fruity Love Philter
- Fruity Waveshaper
- Edison
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– Cep
Music producer & creator of Screech House