4 Techno Screeches You Should Know

We start with a saw wave and add a lot of detune. Something a lot of people don't know is that you can change the detune range, which increases the amount of detune between the voices. If you change the mode from linear to super, the outer voices are extremely detuned and the middle ones aren't as detuned.

I want these screeches clicky and snappy. Taking the phase randomization down makes it more clicky, more analog, and 40 is great. For even more click I add LFO 1 on envelope, for example at 14 hertz, to the coarse pitch, and a kick attack in the noise on one shot.

My final compressor is the multiband. A lot of people don't know there's downwards and upwards compression. You can take down the downwards by taking the threshold down to zero, so we only have upwards, and you dial that in by moving the below. This adds that bright character these screeches need to pop out of the mix.

I'm adding this multiband everywhere. That's the one thing to take away from this. Most people's kicks and the whole track are very powerful, and then your presets get overshadowed. So add the multiband and put your effects in front of it, so it pumps out the reverb and delay as well.

This one starts again with 16 voices, tons of detune and the super mode. Then I use LFO 1 on Chaos Lorenz at a very high rate, even on 10x so it's faster, and add that to the coarse pitch. On top of that a very fast LFO and a slower LFO 3 on the main tune. This makes it extremely screechy.

Stacking distortions in Serum 2 will make your screeches a lot better. I use a Diode 2 first, then a hard clipper. It's a lot over zero dB, so take that down a bit. Then an EQ to roll off the lows, and at the end a soft clip without drive to clip it again.

The fourth one is experimental, a combination of everything we did with some tweaks. First add a filter in front of your very heavy distortion. I use the Reverb filter for now. You can use weird filters in general, where you have a lot of interesting frequencies. Dampen it to decrease the resonance and take down the mix.

Finally I add a ring mod in front of the first distortion. This screech is experimental enough to dial in a signature style, because everyone uses the previous three. If you really play around with these techniques, you can find one that works way better for you.