Create a Perfect White Noise Riser

The white noise riser is essential to many modern electronic music genres. It serves a similar purpose as a long reverse cymbal. It gradually increases volume and intensity as a low-pass filter opens up when the sweep draws closer to the drop of a track. There are numerous ways to tailor sounds like the white noise risers. We'll examine how effects and automation may help in the following steps.

As usual, we have prepared a track in our SoundBridge: DAW with a short arrangement. It is a complete mix but lacks a white noise riser. We will generate it with the help of Serum by Xfer. Let's hear it. 

How To Make White Noise Risers

We will use Serum on a new MIDI channel in the SoundBridge: DAW. We will draw a MIDI block with the length of our buildup and concentrate on the noise generator in Serum, which can be found on the left side of the interface. Then, we will select the "BrightWhite" preset from the drop-down menu. On the right part of the interface, we will engage the filter and press "N" for the noise generator to be controlled by the filter. Moving forward, we will look down to the LFO1 section. We will set the LFO rate to 8 bars, and it is essential to click the "TRG" icon so that the noise riser moves from the beginning of the LFO curve. Next, we will draw a curve to make an excellent fade-in shape.

Finally, we modulate the LFO1 with the filter section by dragging and dropping the cursor icon onto the filter cutoff that one can see from the picture below. Let us hear where we are with our white noise riser so far.

~White Noise Riser

That's good, but it's not done yet. We will layer Serum's Oscillator 1 with the noise generator to make the sound more complex. To get an excellent pitch modulation, we'll modulate the LFO1 again, but this time with an OSC1 Coarse Pitch. We will get a wider sound by increasing the number of unison voices to 8.

While working with Serum, the final step will be to move to its FX section. We will use the FX section to polish the sound even more. As shown in the picture below, we have used some distortion for fullness, plate reverb, and an EQ to cut some low frequencies. Let's hear it!

Now, let's hear how it sounds in the full mix context.

If you liked this article, here are some more on risers:

• Create a Unique Riser Effect
• Tempo Sync Your Riser Effect
• Design Your Own Transition Effects
• 8 Bar EDM Buildup
• How to Make Massive Layered Buildups