Lo-Fi Hip Hop continues to go from strength to strength, especially with the emergence of YouTube channels such as Chilled Cow, ChillHop, The JazzHop Café amongst others. The question is, from a producer's standpoint, how do you create that aesthetic for yourself?
Whilst the beats can sound deceptively simple, it can be hard to get the swing right in the drums or the nostalgic chords sitting just right, as well as dialling back the quality to get the amount Lo-Fi just right!
So, we’ve pulled together a simple selection of tips and tricks to help get you Lo-Fi Beats grooving in just the right way.
The Drums
The beat patterns can be extremely simple in Lo-Fi Hip Hop, it’s more a case of getting the swing right and making sure you choose the right sounds. Whilst you can process the drum sounds after, you’ll be doing a lot better by selecting sounds with the same vibe from the get-go. Think of Kicks, Snares and Hats that have some background noise in them already, are slightly muffled or already very saturated and compressed with less high-end information.
Once you’ve found some sounds you can put them in a drum rack and get a pattern going. You can keep the pattern really simple, but the trick with the swing is to go off-grid with the hats, and you keep the kick and the snare on the grid (or very close). With the first hi-hat, you can place it on the downbeat on the grid, but with the second hat, on the offbeat, you want to place it push it back slightly so it lags and creates a swing. This might require some experimentation to get it right, but once you do it will be worth it!
You can see an example of this in the picture below:
Once you have a decent pattern set up, you can then apply some filtering, saturation and compression to your drums to get a more cohesive sound. If you have any tape saturation plugins, they work great. Or you could go full DIY Lo-Fi and record your beat through a low-quality speaker, then layer that in with your original version to get an extra layer of grit in there.
The Chords
Next up, you’re going to want a nice 4 bar Rhodes chord progression, some simple minor chords perhaps with a little jazzed-infused Major 7 chord in there. Once you have a progression, (you can also detune it a bit whilst playing it in), freeze and flatten it to audio. You can then work old-school hip-hop-style and chop up and rearrange the chords around your beat. Again, you can then apply a low pass filter, some saturation and some sidechain compression to the kick to get it pumping and sounding Lo-Fi.
The Bassline
The bassline, can again, be simple, but needs to enhance the rhythm with subtle syncopation that makes it dance around the beat. A simple sine wave will work; but may need some saturation or distortion to beef it up a bit.
Melodies and SFX
Now that you have the foundations set, you can really get creative! This is completely up to where you want to take it, but you could look for some saxophone samples to chop and add some dusty vibes to or heavily distort a piano VST to add some extra melodic content. Layering in some vinyl crackle is always a good option to really add to the Lo-Fi aesthetic. As is finding some vocal chops to run through a filter and add some delay and reverb to them to add to the haunting tone of a track. White noise sweeps will also work well for certain key parts of the track, as will some SFX one-shots to mark the end of an 8-bar section for example.
Lo-Fi Samples
Now that you have the foundations in place for a Lo-Fi Hip Hop beat, you could do a lot worse than digging into this collection of Lo-Fi samples from XXL Audio and Prime Loops. Here are just a few for you to check out:
Like it smooth & dusty? Grab these 140+ ultra-mellow Hip Hop Samples, arranged over 5 truly unique Construction Kits, incl. one-shots and Maschine Kits!
A melancholy selection of 180+ laid back keys, atmospheric bells, mellow pads and blissful Rhodes featuring WAV (in Dry and Analog-processed versions) & MIDI files!
Way back in October, 1972, The Matsushita Electric Company, better known as Panasonic, launched the SL1200 turntable under their Technics brand. This was the second in their new range; the first being
It’s a spring day in 1969, a band named ‘The Winstons’ are tirelessly working away in a studio in Atlanta, Georgia. They’ve just cut their new single ‘Color Him Father’ and are struggling
Introduced by AKAI in 1988, the MPC series delivered a pioneering and intuitive piece of digital equipment that would go on to revolutionize electronic music, and, in particular, Hip Hop.
Developi
In the age of Lo-Fi Hip Hops’ burgeoning popularity, it has become de-rigeur in modern day production, in multiple genres, to achieve a sound that has a more real-world, gritty aesthetic as a direct
Created by Moog Music and released in 1970, the Minimoog was one of the first portable synthesizers to hit the market, became an instant classic and has gone on to change music forever!
The Birth
‘Trap Soul’ is the budding new star to emerge from contemporary R&B. First gaining notable success and prominence around 2016 with breakout stars Fetty Wap and Bryson Tiller achieving Top Ten
The music industry loves sampling and a new joint study by Bose and Currys has gone in-depth to highlight some of the most groundbreaking and popular music samples of all time. If you take a listen th
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a huge rise in Lo-Fi Hip-Hop, which has grown and grown thanks to an underground scene of YouTubers, Twitch streamers and DIY musicians. These Lo-Fi hip-hop track
Few types of music allow you to experiment creatively with the freedom to cherry-pick from just about any other genre quite like hip hop does. Since its emergence in the late 70s and early 80s, hip ho
If you're looking for some useful hip hip production tips and tricks to make your hip hop tracks hit harder, you're in the right place. Untie your tongue and test out these 10 hip hop production techn