How to Make Hard Techno Screeches in Vital

Screeches for hard techno and industrial techno, built step by step in Vital from an initialized preset. You can use this for hardstyle too.

In this tutorial
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    My notes from this video

    01

    Mono with glide and legato

    Watch 0:27

    I start off with an initialized preset. Take down the release, because we don't want any release. Then take the voices down to one so it's mono, add some glide and put it on legato, just to make sure we're not going to get screech chords. That's our setup.

    You have to know a few places in Vital where you'll craft your screeches 99% of the time. The unison amount and the phase, the filters with resonance, the pitch with envelopes or LFOs, and the effects section.

    02

    Unison phase for a lasery sound

    Watch 2:00

    If I add more unison voices it gets more detuned. The phase is how random the phase starting point is. On 100% it plays the waveform at a different spot each time. If I take it down, it plays at the same start point each time, which results in a different sound when it's detuned. You get a more lasery sound.

    If you want it to sound more analog, just take down the phase a little bit. It gives it that initial click.

    03

    Bipolar LFO on the fine tune

    Watch 2:58

    For the pitch you can use an envelope or an LFO. Trigger means the LFO plays whenever I trigger the sound, sync means it's playing all the time, and envelope makes it play one time. I like to put the rate on seconds instead of notes, because I can go very, very fast.

    I put that LFO on sync mode and add it to the fine tune. You get a screechy sound, but it's out of pitch. Go into the matrix and put it on bipolar, so it hovers around the zero instead of going from one place to the other. It stays in key.

    Vital LFO 1 with a triangle shape, mode set to Sync and the frequency in seconds at 0.023 secs, for a hard techno screech
    LFO 1 on Sync, with the rate in seconds at 0.023 secs.
    04

    Envelope two on the voice transposition

    Watch 4:07

    You can also play around with the voice transposition. 12 is an octave. I put an attack on envelope two, not one, because envelope one is volume, so we'd also be changing the volume.

    Add envelope two to the voice transposition and it goes up an octave immediately. To make sure it doesn't go up too much, double click and enter a value of 12. Then change this envelope to create different screeches, like a stabby one or a dive bomb.

    Vital matrix for a hard techno screech: Lfo 1 to Osc 1 Tune with bipolar on, Env 2 to Osc 1 Transpose with an amount of 12
    Env 2 on Osc 1 Transpose with 12, and Lfo 1 on Osc 1 Tune set to bipolar.
    05

    Band pass and resonance into hard clip

    Watch 5:01

    In the filter I start off with something like an analog 24 or 12, with cutoff and resonance. But the filters don't really do anything until it's distorted, so once you play around with filters, add distortion.

    The mid band range combined with resonance sounds very dope, so I put it on a band pass and changed it to 24 dB, so it's tighter. For the distortion you'll probably use hard clip, because it's one of the only ones that's good with a lot of drive.

    Vital Filter 1 on Analog 24dB, blended to a band pass with a resonant peak, for a hard techno screech
    Filter 1 on Analog 24dB, blended to a band pass.
    What I use in this video

    Vital·FL Studio

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