Side Project: Lo-Fi Chill Track Post Mortem

(Photo by 20A GFCI)

The lo-fi side project is finally DONE. I'm pretty happy with how I went making a lo-fi track and I think this is one of my best works so far. I did some changes throughout the whole process as I wasn't really feeling it at times, but these changes made the whole track come through well. Really had fun making this track and will no doubt make another one soon. Anyway, let's get to everything that went down with creating "Lone Loft".

With any track I make, I always start with the beat, so that I can build my way up from it. The main reference track that I used for the beat was who knowz - SOFTJOSH as I really liked how swingy it sounded. I used Xpand!2's drum samples and created separate tracks: 1 for the kick, snare, and the ride so then I'd be able to fix up each instrument if I needed to. I made a similar beat to the reference track but changed the rhythm slightly and had all instruments play the same rhythm throughout, unlike the reference track where the rhythm changes in the chorus. After I was happy with the rhythm, I moved on to the rhythm guitars.

After playing around with chords, I decided to work with 2 chords: Amin9 and Gmin9. I recorded a bass melody in that key and then moved on to working with the rhythm guitars. In the first couple of days recording the rhythm guitars, I recorded a rhythm that played slowly over 2 bars and it just wasn't clicking with me and it sounded boring. Here's what it sounded like at this stage -> Demo

Changing The Rhythm

Not being happy with the rhythm of the song, I started with changing the beat first. I added an extra kick in there and it made the track more jumpy as it was hitting most of the main beats (1,2, -,-, 1, 2, 3, 4, Repeat.) I also ran these drum tracks through a bus to a lo-fi plugin to cut off some of the high frequencies as well as to tighten the sound. In the same plugin, I was able to boost the distortion which added more thump to the beat. After changing the beat, I went to change the bass melody.

The bass melody that I had was too smooth with the thumping beat and just didn't really suit each other, so I re-recorded some bits of the bass and plucked each note instead of sliding up and down the fret. This helped to bring out the kick as well as I played most of the notes on the same beats of the kicks.

With the rhythm guitar melody, I played around with different rhythms and decided to pluck the first string on the first bit and play the rest on the second beat and let it sustain for the rest of the bar as well the 2nd bar. When the bass joins in, the rhythm guitar plays the same pattern but in the second bar, the guitars plays on the 3rd, 3.5 and the 4th beat (in music note terms, 1 crochet and 2 quaver notes). It added to the jumpiness of the track as now all the beats in the bar were accompanied by one or more instruments. The sustain also brought out a psychedelic feel to it, especially with the effects being used (Jimi Hendrix preset on Guitar Rig, chorus, reverb).

I added another layer of the rhythm guitars when the bass joined in to make the mix sound more fuller but I played the chords at a higher octave to give the mix a larger range, and because the higher notes sounded really nice with the bass. After these small little changes, the track began to sound more like I wanted and it had a really chill vibe to it. Here's what it sounded like after the changes -> Demo

Main Melody

I then had to come up with the main solo melody as the track was becoming too repetitive on its own. Using the same presets as the rhythm guitars, I tried to come up with a melody being played at a high range as it'd stand out from the all the other instruments. The notes I used were: (square brackets: bars) [C,E,B--] [C,B, B,A,C] [Bb, A--] [G, Bb, D, A, A, A]. Not sure if you'll understand what I just wrote but those are the notes that I played in the four bars. I didn't really want to add anymore to the melody and plus, I didn't know what more I could add so I just played it on repeat but when I do end up extending this track, I hope to change it up a bit or add another harmony to it or something. Because the track was short too (about 1:45 mins long), on the last few bars of the song where it starts to fade out, I muted the second bar and added more sustain to the last note of the first bar.

Mixing and Editing

I bussed all the instruments through to an amp called SansAmp PSA-1 and it gave a really nice lo-fi sound to it as I was able to add noise and bring up the hi frequencies. With my previous lo-fi track, I used Space: a bloody great reverb plugin where it's able to emulate spaces from not only cathedrals and halls, but also post production locations such as a Mercedes van or a kitchen, which helped me to experiment. For that previous lo-fi track, I used a preset that emulated a staircase space and it gave a really nice lo-fi, living room kinda sound, where everything sounded muted and the bass and kick were the most prominent in the mix; really really nice stuff. UNFORTUNATELY :'( , my plugin expired just recently and well, I don't really have $500 lying around and didn't really have time to find the an alternative reverb plugin so I decided to try an amp emulator, as I felt it could produce a lo-fi sound too. For my next lo-fi track, I'll have to get the stems ready at home, then bring it to the midi studio as I know they have the Space plugin and I'll be able to mix there.

It was really hard trying to mix at the end with the amp emulator as I was listening to the same loud high frequencies for hours, then when I'd take a break, I'd come back to it sounding like shit and then I'd have to mix it again.

With the guitars, I removed all the guitar slides (sliding from chord to chord) as it made the track sound untidy and it just added extra noise that I didn't want. I also removed some of the low frequencies so no extra bass frequencies would build up and it helped the guitars sound clearer as well. With mixing the drums, I just made sure the kick came through the mix well and that the snare wasn't too loud for the ears as its frequencies really peaked at times. The crash was really difficult to bring out as its frequencies clashed with the guitars and if I brought the level any higher, it sounded like a wall of loud high frequencies and the crash sounded unrecognisable all together. It was also hard to tell where the instruments were panned to with the amp emulator (maybe I didn't pan hard enough idk). It could be because of the high frequencies and extra noise it brought to the mix, it was hard to tell? I tried EQing and other things but yeah, just didn't really work the way I wanted but it still sounded good enough to me at the end. Those were the only problems I had with mixing with the the SansAmp PSA-1 but other than that, it was still a good plugin to use if you're going for a lo-fi feel, but maybe if you're into more grungy lo-fi stuff. I'd still use it in future but I think I'd rather use sends rather than sending the whole signal through the plugin so that I'm able to adjust the wet and dry signals.

So that was my whole process for the lo-fi track I made! Hopefully it didn't sound too confusing. If I had time to show my whole process through a video, I would. Aside from the mixing problems I had, it was great learning different things and it was cool to experiment with settings and other things as well. By making tracks, it helps me to learn new ways to get the sounds I want as well as to learn how to use alternative ways and troubleshoot problems too. The lo-fi genre is such an interesting genre to get into and I really recommend everyone to get around to making a lo-fi track.