The trick here, however, is to ensure that your piano sounds treated but that your beats retain their heft, and don’t sound as if they’ve been through a bit-crusher seven times. The initial focus here should be to purposefully lower the quality of your sound. We encourage you to use this tutorial as a foundation that you can later build upon with your own stylistic garnishes. Many incorporate vocal samples from film and TV, others use natural ambiences, and some even bring in elements of acid. You’ll notice that besides the numerous sonic similarities between these songs and mixes, which include vinyl-style crackle, muffled drums and detuned instruments, each producer still has their own unique approach. You’ve probably heard this genre of music before, perhaps without being aware of it.
Alternatively, you could go directly to the genre’s established producers, which include HM Surf, bsd.u, and Kupla. Searching for general terms such as ‘study music’, ‘relaxing lo-fi hip-hop’ and ‘chill-out sounds’ will likely yield a plethora of appropriate piano sounds that will help you tune your ear to the right frequencies for this tutorial. If you’re new to lo-fi hip-hop or just want to dip your toes in before diving deeper and producing your own beats and melodies, we recommend you check out some of the regular lo-fi streams on YouTube or one of the many ready-made playlists on Spotify.
