Pattern
Sleepy beat
A kick that arrives late and a rim click instead of a snare. Turn the swing up and it starts to nod.
A free pack
Lo-fi afternoons
by The house band · 7 items · every one follows your project's key
Lo-fi sounds relaxed because every part of it is slightly late, slightly soft and slightly dark. None of that is an accident. Here is each ingredient on its own, playable, so you can hear what it adds.
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Free. It lands in your library, ready to drop into any project.
What is inside
Press play on any of them. They loop until you stop them.
Pattern
Rainy day
Four bars of seventh chords over a slow beat. The chords go 2, 5, 1, 6: a loop that never quite lands, so it can go round forever.
Recipe
Seventh chords
Ordinary chords with one more note stacked on top. That fourth note is the whole lo-fi sound.
Recipe
Lazy hats
Hats with a block that drops a few hits and another that softens every other one. No two bars are the same.
Recipe
Wandering bass
Long notes, a little walk up at the end of each bar to lead into the next chord.
Sound
Tape keys
An electric piano with the top rolled off and a touch of echo, like an old cassette.
Slow, swung and a little late
Sleepy beat runs at 78 beats per minute with the swing turned up. Swing delays every other step a little, so straight ticking hats start to lope. Set the swing to zero in your own project and the same pattern sounds stiff and mechanical. Turn it back up and it nods.
Notice that there is no snare. A rim click takes the backbeat instead, which is smaller and drier, and the kick often arrives a step after you expect it. Late and quiet is the whole attitude.
The chord with one extra note
An ordinary chord stacks three notes: the first, third and fifth steps of the scale counting from wherever you start. Seventh chords adds a fourth note on top. That one extra note is what makes a chord sound wistful instead of plain, and it is most of what people mean by a lo-fi sound.
Rainy day plays four of them in the order 2, 5, 1, 6. That loop never settles on home for long, which is why it can go round for an hour without getting tiring.
Rolling off the top
Tape keys is an electric piano with its filter pulled down to 1500 Hz. A low-pass filter lets the low part of a sound through and turns down the bright part, the way an old cassette does. Add a touch of echo and the sound sits behind you instead of in front of you.
Lazy hats uses two blocks: one drops a fifth of the hits at random, the other softens every second hit. No two bars come out the same, which is what makes a loop feel played rather than programmed.
Questions people ask
- What tempo is lo-fi hip hop?
- Usually between 70 and 90 beats per minute. This pack sits at 78. Slower than that starts to drag, faster stops sounding relaxed.
- What chords are used in lo-fi?
- Seventh chords, most often in a 2, 5, 1 pattern borrowed from jazz. The extra note on top of each chord gives the soft, nostalgic colour.
- How do I make drums sound lo-fi?
- Turn them down, swing them, swap the snare for a rim click, and close the filter so the bright top end disappears. Dropping a few hat hits at random helps too.
Now change it.
Drop any of these into a project and every step, note and sound is yours to move. That is how you find out why it works.