
White noise sweep is something you’ve probably heard on every trance, house, techno and various other EDM style songs. It’s one of the basic effects used in build ups.
In this tutorial I will show you how to make a uplifting white noise sweep in FL Studio. It’s very simple.
1. Load a 3xOsc and choose ‘noise’ (that’s white noise btw) as a oscillator shape for each three oscillators. Also, assign the 3xOsc to a free mixer track.

2. Add a pattern to the Playlist, open the Piano Roll -view of the 3xOsc and draw a 8 bar long (or however long you want your sweep to be) note (C3 for example).

3. Open the Mixer and drop a Fruity Free Filter to the 3xOsc mixer track. Leave all the other parameters as is, but set Cutoff Frequency to around 125-130Hz (this is the starting frequency of the sweep).

4. Right click on the Freq -knob and choose ‘Create automation clip’.

5. In the Playlist, raise the second envelope point to 90-100% (that’s between 10-16kHz) or whatever you want the end frequency of your sweep to be.

6. Done.
Now, listen the end results:
I think this is officially called a ‘uplifter’.
If you want a more ‘whistling’ sounding sweep, raise the Q (resonance) level in the Fruity Free Filter:

Now check:
So in a nutshell, we are using low pass filter and automation to sweep the filter cutoff frequency from 120-130Hz up to 10-12kHz or more. You could’ve done this also by using Fruity Parametric EQ 2 and the effect would’ve been pretty much the same, though it’s faster to set it up using Fruity Free Filter.
Experiment by drawing different types of filter cutoff Frequency automation envelopes. For example, if you reverse the envelope, you’ll get a ‘downlifter’.

That’s it. 🙂
Check the video below:
22 Comments
Nice one 😀 Easy and effective 😀 thank you
This is a nice touch for many tracks! I like to use gross beat and select the side chain gate, add some reverb and delay for a downlifter. It can sound really nice 🙂
Gross Beat… hmm.. never thought of it.. thanks for the tip, Jon 🙂
ive followed your instructions to the dot, yet all mine is doing is staying at 125 Hz and not oscillating.. any suggestions as to what im doing wrong? im using FL Studio 9
Hey Matt, and sorry for my late reply!
Can you send me a .flp file or your project so I can have a look at it? You can contact me via the contact form.
i’m having the same problem, any quick ideas? I checked and rechecked that everything was the same, but it’s still not working.
wow this is a effective way to to builds up and its fun to mess with too. =D
Yepp! There’s so many uses for this technique.
Thanks for checking it!
Very thanks…
No problem, enjoy teh tute 🙂
Thanks man! Just what I needed. I find this good to use just before a drop in a dubstep piece.
I used this and it’s AMAZING, but how do I get rid of the noise that comes after? The white noise continues even after it is no longer active on the playlist.
Hey Jordan,
That is strange – noise should stop exactly where the note ends. Are you in the Song Mode all the time when this happens?
realy good one ……. thankx
thanks pal….
thanks man
I think ill have to start using white noise from now
I’ve tried the same works it just won’t cut out though. It continues to play after the pattern and this is in song mode.
This is really cool. I mean the white noise effect. Thumbs up petri
Hi,
I was wondering if there is any way to save the white noise sample for future use instead of having to make it every time.. Is there any way to do that?
Hey Dorian,
You can easily record it to WAV by rendering it (CTRL+R).
Awesome, just what I was looking for. Thanks a lot
3xosc + effector in vocal eff + love filter with one envelope in the cut is really amazing