Greetings to everyone,

I've tried a lot of EQ, saturation, and distortion techniques, but I haven't been able to get that result. How do I make the scream so high pitched? Do I need a specific mixing technique, or plugins that will help me achieve this result? Thanks for your help with this.

Link:

 

i spent a week trying to get that piercing scream sound and realized i was overthinking the distortion. it usually sounds way better when you stack subtle layers instead of just cranking one plugin to the max.

 

The way it sounds reminds me of the sound of extreme-resonance formants (the kind you'd get in a synth) making vowels. There might be some of that going on under all the distortion and EQ, so it strategiclally busts out a formant resonance when the vocal is sustaining something, and we hear it as extremely high pitch - but it's actually an extremely high resonance filter boost/formant tuned for that particular part.

If the vocal itself breaks apart too much under that treatment, you could instead apply the formants to a noise layer, and layer that in under the vocal for those parts.

 

Last edited: Apr 3, 2026 at 3:05 PM

To push it into that “inhuman” range:
Use pitch shifting plugins: Little AlterBoy, Waves SoundShifter or Melda MAutoPitch and +3 to +7 semitones (start subtle)

 

With such straight from a wrinkled ass sound quality it sounds more like a whistle rather than scream. And if you want a high pitched scream ask some female

 

my apologies but i dont hear any scream here

 

A scream sample, with white noise layered over it. (Fade in the scream only slightly.) Then apply a filter with 99% resonance and a cutoff frequency around “4395” to ‘7878’. And then add a bit of “Zero Square” distortion. Make sure keytracking is enabled. I just tried to recreate it in Serum 2, and it comes pretty close. Before the distortion, place an EQ and set a bell curve at “3296,” then boost it by 19 dB and set the Q level to 65. Next, link the frequency control to the “NOTE” at the bottom right of Serum so that it follows the note being played. You'll have to figure out the rest on your own.

Scream Sample https://samplefocus.com/samples/horror-scream