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How to Make an Easy Hard Techno Screech in Serum

If you're struggling with screeches for hard techno or hardcore techno, I'll show you how to create a very easy one in Serum.

My notes from this Short

01

16 voices with a lot of detune

I set mono legato and the pitch bend, then open up the unison to 16 and get a lot of detune.

Take the random knob of the phase down a bit, but not too much. This really adds that analog feeling to the synth.

02

Envelope and chaos on the coarse pitch

Take envelope 2, give it a little bit of attack so it opens up, and add it to the coarse pitch. Now we have this nice screechy effect on the pitch.

Right click the coarse knob and put it on Chaos 1. Go to global, find Chaos 1 and open up the rate to maximum. Now you decide how much detune you want by taking down the output of the chaos.

Serum oscillator and envelope 2 for a hard techno screech: unison on 16 voices and envelope 2 with 87 ms of attack
16 unison voices up top, envelope 2 with a bit of attack below.
03

Soft clip and a moving low pass

Get a distortion on soft clip and drive it a little bit. Take a compressor and take that down a bit.

Then an EQ in low pass mode with another envelope on the frequency, so every time it plays it has a little bit of movement. It also cuts the bass, so it's a win-win.

What I use in this video

Serum

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