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How To Make A Lofi Hip Hop Beat: 6 Easy Steps
Lo-Fi is a type of music where imperfections are introduced into the audio signal deliberately to achieve texture or character. Lo-Fi is an abbreviation for Low Fidelity, so music producers often employ plugins that artificially degrade the audio to give their sound a vinyl quality. In this article we will explore 6 easy steps to compose a lo-fi hip hop beat.
Step 1: Creating the right Chord Progression
Lofi chords are a huge part of their sonic quality. Most loft producers sample old jazz and soul records to create a nostalgic feeling. We will be creating our own progression from scratch and then we will sample ourselves. Lofi hiphop can be anywhere from from 70-100 BPM, sometimes even slower than that. The BPM for our project will be 75 BPM. For sound selection, try to remember what type of instruments old jazz and soul records would use. Using those sounds to create our sample will help us create a more old timey vibe.
Look at the chords that we have drawn in the image above. We are using a rhoads preset to create these chords. You can use an acoustic guitar or any other instrument but the way you create your chords will change according to that instrument. Here we are using the chords Em7 - Am7 - CM7 - GM7 for the first four bars, in the second four bar cycle, we are substituting Em7 with Emadd9. You can experiment with the added notes on these chords, also use vinyl or modulation fx on the channel to make things sound more aged.
We are using the phaser-flanger device of ableton, as shown in the picture above, to modulate our Rhoads sound.
Step 2: Turning Your Chord Progression Into a Sample
Once you are happy with how your chords are sounding, freeze and flatten them to convert into audio. There are a few ways we can sample this. You can do manual edits in your Daw to create MPC like chops.
In the image above, you can see that we have made quite a few edits to our original sample after freezing and flattening. Have your metronome on for this section as it will help you to flesh out interesting patterns. We are also applying crossfades at clip edges to prevent any clicks and pops. Alternatively, you can add your freeze and flattened sample into a simpler and use the slicing mode to create patterns using midi.
In the image above, we have added our sample into a slicer and then turned on Slicing Mode. You can play around with the sensitivity and slice by settings for different sets of chops. You can now program you sampled melody using midi.
These are the notes we drew in with our piano roll for the simpler. We are going to use this as a variation on the main melody.
Step 3: Drums that sound old
The tone of your drum samples play a huge role in lofi hiphop. The drum programming itself is fairly simple. Go for drum sounds with some audible background noise, You can use some processing to lessen the high frequency response of your drum sounds. We also like to add distortion to our drums to make them sound more crunchy. Once you have your drum sounds selected you can arrange them directly on the track according to our grid, but we will use a drum rack. We are using a kick, snare and hit for our beat.
This is the pattern we have created, shown in the image above. Do not forget to vary the velocities of your hits as required. You can also use some saturation on the drums to fatten them up and add some more character to the sound. You can also experiment with different grooves on your drums, which will offset our midi from the grid, giving the beat more human touch.
We are processing our drums using Ableton's drum buss to add more harmonics and punch to our track.
Step 4: Creating a Groovy Bassline
Bassline in this genre of music is very different from one song to another. Tonally the bass sounds mellow and has much rhythmic variation built into it. Select a preset that has a solid low end with some subtle harmonies in the mids. For the notes in your bassline, you can follow the root notes of the chord, and then develop it further from there. We like to use a lot of octaves and melodic runs to keep things interesting.
As you can see, we have added our bass notes along with some melodic and rhythmic variations. Do not forget to add some processing to your bass if it is too quiet in the mix even when the volume is unchanged. We are using a saturator on our bass channel with the settings shown in the image below.
Step 5: Adding Fx and Foley
Textures are a major part of Lofi sound. The signature vinyl crackle is present on every track to give the listener the perception, that the song is being played from a vinyl record player. We are using a little bit of vinyl distortion on our main sample to simulate the vinyl crackle (image below).
You can also layer your sounds with foley to create more texture along with the vinyl crackle.
As you can see in the image above, the drums that have been programmed with midi is being layered with different foley samples to add depth and character to our drums. Vocal chops and one-shots also spice up your beat in a major way, making it more memorable for the listener. You can sprinkle in some more details with risers and down lifters for transition sections.
As you can see in the image above we added an impact sample and a white noise riser sample for our project. The impacts are placed at the beginning of every 8 bars, while the risers are placed at the 7th bar and 15th bar with varied lengths.
Step 6: Mixing Your Beat
Mixing a lofi beat is fairly easy. Make sure to balance your faders first and then you can experiment with the pan pot. As long as your sound is well balanced in terms of levels and stereo image, you are halfway there. Kicks and Snares need to be able to punch through the mix. Keep the drums as dynamic as possible. Your bass would also be mixed rather loud in the mix. Other instruments and synths can be balanced according to your taste. EQ out any undesirable low frequencies to make space for your bass sound. Getting rid of the lows in your hiatus, cymbals, fx and instruments, will also reduce muddiness of the overall mix. Sidechain compression is also used in this genre often as an aesthetic tool rather than a tool for mixing. You can sidechain various instruments to your kick and exaggerate the sidechain effect to emphasise on the lofi character of your track.
As you can see in the two images provided above, the side chain settings on my melody sidechain and bass sidechain are different. The melody sidechain has more exaggerated and audible sidechain compression happening to create movement in the sound, while the bass side chain is much more focused on attenuating our bass sound whenever the kick strikes without being necessarily heard. You can also experiment with some subtle saturation or soft clipping on you master buss to further drive in that lofi feel of your track.
If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:
How to Make Melodic Trap Beats_Part 1 (Drums)
Trap Drums are not complicated at all. There are a few basic elements that we need to make a bouncy trap beat. A trap drum kit consists of a kick, clap and hi-hat at its core. You can add other snares, vocal one-shots and percussion samples to fit your style. Our three core drum sounds need to be punchy and short. Trap beats have a tempo of 140-160BPM. We will make our beat in 140BPM.
1. The Kick
Trap kick drum selection is extremely important. The kick needs to sit perfectly with our bass/sub in the mix. A short kick drum with a very emphasised attack would cut through the mix much easier than a sub heavy low-kick. Drag your sample into an audio track and start laying them according to Ableton's grid. You can turn the metronome on for reference.
As you can see in the image above, we have altered the clip gain of a few kicks to give them a human feel. We are also using fades on the tail to articulate a few samples differently. We are not altering the clip gain of the kick on the first beat of the sample to create an accent.
We are also adding a transient shaper on our kick track to enhance its attack. You can use any transient designer plugin, but we are using Bitter Sweet V3 which is a free plugin. You can analyse the settings we are using, for reference, in the image provided below. Do not push your transient designer too much, it can easily make things sound worse. We are pushing the attack just by 6% to maintain the characteristics of the original sound.
We are also adding a saturator on our kick to add some more girth and presence. Distorted kicks are staple in the trap genre.
2. The Clap
The clap acts like an anchor to our beat. Select a clap sample with some punch. You can also use an 808 style clap with a little bit of distortion. Drag your clap into an empty audio track and lay them on every third beat of the bar.
As you can see in the image above, we are using fade to vary our claps. You can use the clip gain here too, to create variations. We are also high passing our clap at 346Hz to eliminate the undesirable low frequencies. Always listen to your sound while high passing. If you are too drastic with your filter then it will make the clap sound thin and weak.
3. The Hi-hat
We are using midi for our hat because it will easier for us to create rolls and and pitch variations later. Drag you hat sample into the device view of an empty midi track in Ableton. your sample will open up in a simpler.
We are using a 808 style closed hat sample here. We are laying down a very simple 8th note hat pattern as a starting point.
As you can see in the image above, we have varied the velocities these hats, keeping an accent on the fist beat of every bar.
Another characteristic of any bouncy trap beat is a hi hat roll. We are using some pitch and velocity variations on these rolls, to make our beat interesting.
If you hat sample has any low rumble in the spectrum then use a high pass filter to preserve the frequencies we require.
4. The Snare
A lot of trap beats use different snares to create variations and add bounce. We are using a short high-pitched snare for our beat. Drag your snare sample into an empty audio track. We will use the clip gain and fade to create some variation. We will also have the snare much lower in the mix, than our clap so that it almost sounds like a ghost-note. You can adjust the level of your snare according to you liking.
We are also high passing the snare track to remove the unrequited low frequencies.
5. The Percussion
Percussion samples will make your track stand out from the rest. Interesting percussion samples easily spice up any boring trap beat. You can use multiple percussion hits at different velocities to add some uniqueness to your sound. Percussions can also be used to create transitions and fills in your beat, although that technique is quite common among producers. We will be using a cowbell for our percussion requirements. Certain perc sounds like cowbells can be tuned to the key of our beat. We will program our cowbell hits first by dragging our samples into an empty audio track and then inserting a tuner on the same channel. Now when we play our cowbell, the note will show up on the tuner. Then we can use the clip transposition setting to set the pitch correctly. For our project we will tune the cowbell to an E note. Look at the image provided below for reference.
6. The Full Beat
Once you have programmed the individual parts you can go in and make some fine tweaks. You can also add some processing. We will be grouping our drums to keep the arrangement view organised.
As you can see in the image above, we have added a drum buss on our Drums group to add some harmonic excitement and punchiness to the beat as a whole. This adds some similar characteristics to every sound in the groove, giving them a similar colour. It is very important to be very moderate with your processing at this stage. We can fine tune the settings once we have finished the whole beat, then we will have a context for our drums should sound.
Watch this space for Part 2 and 3, where we will go over the bass and melody programming for a trap beat. We will also upload the whole project (Ableton Live Set) as a free download, once all three parts are uploaded.
If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:
How to Make Melodic Trap Beats: Part 2 (Melody and Chord Progression)
The melody and chord progression of our trap beat is extremely important for the vibe our beat is trying to create. Most trap beats are mostly based on minor scales. We will compose our melody in E minor.
In the image provide above you can see the notes of an E minor scale. Needless to say that our chord progression will also consist of a combination of these notes.
In Ableton, you can turn Scale Mode on so that the notes of your scale is highlighted on the piano roll. This will help us to adjust notes quickly.
1. Chord Progression
We will start off with writing our chord progression. The chords that can be used in our scale are E minor, F#dim, G major, A minor, B minor, C major and D major. Our chord progression for this beat will be: E minor | G major | E minor | B minor (i - III - i - v)
As you can see in the image above, we have varied the velocities of our notes to create a realistic feel to the chords. We are using a chorus heavy Electric Piano to make our chords. We are also adding some mid-side processing to make our chords sound wide in the mix.
Once we have the basic progression programmed, we can try some 7th or add9th chords to make our sound more interesting. If you look at the image below, we have added an extra 7th to our chords also varies the length, start and end positions of the notes to add a more realistic feel to our sound.
Now that our chord progression is created, we can move onto our melody.
2. Melody
For our melody section, we need to be able to create tension and release with the notes of our scale. The 2nd, 4th and 6th notes of our scale will create tension while 1st, 3rd and 5th will create release or resolution. An easy pattern to follow is to use tension notes at the end of a bar, while starting the next bar with a note that will release that tension. Let us say we add an A note on the last 1/8th note of a bar, then we will begin the next bar with an E note which will release the tension created by the preceding note. In the image provided below, the highlighted notes are our tension notes. Trap melodies also follow a basic call and pattern, where the first part of the melody raises a musical question, resolved by the following part.
We are repeating the call part of our melody (comprised of 2 bars) thrice, before playing our answer (also comprised of 2 bars) only once, thus creating our 8 bar melody.
Another helpful tip would be to fold your piano roll according to our selected scale so that only the pertinent notes are displayed. This will help us to create melodies fast.
3. Sampling the Melody
This step is absolutely optional, but a lot of producers like to bounce their melody and chord progressions into a single audio track. This helps us is experimenting with different chops and pitch variations. You can also try reversing certain sections to make your sound stand out. To consolidate your chord and melody into a single audio track, add an empty audio track (named Sampled Melody) and route the output of the required tracks into the Sampled Melody track.
Now arm the newly added track and hit the global record button. Hit stop once your sample is completely recorded.
Now we can slice up the audio as we like and add interesting variations in different parts of the melody.
As you can see in the image above, we have reversed our sample and adding some creative warping effects to make it sound interesting.
4. The Melody Section
After programming all your melodies and harmonies, it is important to group them so we can apply bus processing on these sounds. Control the lows of your melody sound so that they don't clash with our 808's and kicks.
The bus signal chain is displayed in the image above. The equaliser is cutting out low frequencies, the glue compression is adding some gain reduction to bring everything together and the redux is adding some texture to the whole melody.
Watch this space for Part 2 and 3, where we will go over the bass and melody programming for a trap beat. We will also upload the whole project (Ableton Live Set) as a free download, once all three parts are uploaded.
If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:
How to Make Melodic Trap Beats: Part 3 (Bass)
Trap basses generally consist of 808's. They have a long decay and are often distorted. 808 selection is extremely important for our final mix. You should always preview your bass sound with your kick in any genre of music, to see that they are not conflicting with each other. If our 808 is muffling the kick from the beginning, then processing will not be able to solve our problem.
1. Tuning 808's
808's need to be tuned correctly to the key of our beat. Once you have selected your 808, draw it into the device view of an empty midi track. Your 808 will open up in an instance of simpler. Insert a tuner after the simpler. Now we can monitor the pitch played by the 808.
We can adjust the transposition of our sample from the 'Controls' tab in the simpler. We will tune our 808 as such, that when we hit the C note on our midi keyboard, the sample is also triggered in the same pitch.
2. Programming the Bass
808's follow the kick drum. You can copy the kick pattern directly into your 808 and then make changes in the pitch.
As you can see in the image provided above, the 808 in being trigger along with the kick. Now we can vary its pitch so that we can follow the melody of our beat.
While varying the pitches you can experiment with the octave, fifth and fourth. You can also transpose your bassline up a few octaves to check if you bass melody is sounding good with the main melody, then transpose it back down.
3. 808 Slides
Slides add some interesting movement to your 808. To activate this function go back to the controls tab and select Glide and set the time according to your liking. Our glide time will be 107ms. This parameter determines, how much time it will take for one note to glide up/down to the next. Glide can only happen when our instrument is monophonic and we have overlapping notes.
Now, we can add some overlapping notes so that our 808 glides in-between them.
4. Pitch Bends
Pitch bends can add even more expression to your 808. We can bend both up and down, depending on what sound we want to create. You can use the envelope editor to draw your pitch bend curves.
As you can see in the image above, we have bent the pitches of quite a few notes. All these changes add to the dynamics of our 808 and help its presence in the mix.
5. Pitch Envelope
Adding a pitch envelope on our 808 can further enhance its punch. A pitch envelope determines how many semitones up will the sample play when triggered and how long will it take for the sample to come down to its original pitch (determined by the Decay Time of the pitch env).
6. Adding Distortion
Trap 808's are distorted to make them more present in the beat. If our 808 does not have much mid and high-mid content, then it can get buried when played on bad speakers. Distortion can make up for this disadvantage by adding some crunch to our 808. We need to use this effect in moderation so that we don't lose any low frequencies from the bass.
As you can see in the image above, we are using multiple distortion types to colour our 808. The trick is to use them minimally. All three effects together will add some nice midrange to our 808's.
Now that our 808's have been processed we can start recording vocal ideas and compose additional sections to complete the song.
If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:
