This video is brought to you by Loopmasters' Loopcloud 4.0 a completely free
to download app where you can slice and it remix millions of samples and then
just you know drag them right into your DAW
boom done you can click the link in the description below to download it and
follow along with me in this video as I use it to help make the song we're about
to learn which sounds like this hello there my inspirations my name is InspirAspir
and today i'm going to teach you how to make a lofi hip-hop beat that
you can study and relax to Lofi is short for low fidelity this just basically
means the song has a lower production quality than your average professionally
produced track the lower production quality generally stems from
imperfections in the tracks such as white noise or vinyl crack static these
imperfections seem to replicate a nostalgic feeling these tracks tend to
be slower more of a downtempo beat and overall of course as i mentioned they
are just intended to be used to relax to to study and so first things first when
you go to produce a lofi i track you need to come across some good samples i
do the majority of my sample digging using Loopcloud 4.0 as i pointed out in
the beginning of this video this is a third-party application made by loop
masters you can download for free again link in the description below where you
can search for millions of samples loop cloud is really cool in that you can
search for your specific samples and then you can play them in the
application itself so you can get a sample for what samples you are
downloading maybe i'm looking for a downtempo classical guitar tonal see oh
okay here we go oh wait no that's actually pretty cool
honestly one of the things I love the most is that you can buy samples
individually once these samples are in your library you can edit them to your
liking you can adjust their pitch change the key that they're in you can adjust
their BPM this is all a very high-level overview there's so much more to it so
just take my word for it and know that there are plenty plenty more features so
now let's learn how to use these samples in the making of our song this lofi I
track first things first I wanted to focus on the percussion I really love
the feeling of a lofi downtempo beat first things first let's set our BPM
lofi tracks tend to be slower you're not restricted to this BPM but I chose
81 something in the lower territory here's what I made for my percussion and
I'll go through step by step layer by layer on how I made it first things
first are my kicks I went into Loopcloud and
I searched for Lofi samples and I searched through to find kicks that I
particularly enjoyed so I downloaded them and then just drag them into
Ableton boom done it's worth mentioning that I'm using Ableton as my DAW the
concept learn of this video can be transferred to any other DAW you don't
have to be restricted to just Ableton I dragged free kick samples that I liked
onto my drum rack in Ableton although I only ended up using two I laid out my
kick samples in this following pattern
on this may track I added in an EQ as well as a glue compressor to help tie
these two sounds together make it a little bit easier on your ears you don't
want anything to be harsh in the lofi track next I went to looking for
snares same thing as before I went searching for snare samples in Loopcloud
I found a few that I liked that I particularly enjoyed and then I added in
the samples that I liked on to this drum rack I laid out my snares in this
following pattern
and on my snares lair I also added an EQ a good EQ for snares is just boosting
the the mid lows kind of in-between the low and the mid and the very very high
ends together with my kicks this is the very basics of my drum beat the next
thing I went to looking for was some shakers notice I lowered the gain of
this layer up by a lot negative 27 decibels these shakers don't need to be
very prominent in fact they are meant to be very subtle one of those things were
you know it's there but you don't actively register that it's there if it
were taken away it doesn't feel right
later on in my track I added a second layer of shakers using Loopcloud I
found this cymbal loop however I didn't really like this second cymbal the every
other cymbal I didn't really jive with me so I sliced it up and laid it out in
this following pattern on both these shaker layers I added in the following
audio effects just an EQ to really accentuate the high ends and cut off all
the low ends I don't need this excess frequency range down here it's not
needed and a stereo finalizer if you follow this channel you know this is one
of my favorite plugins this just widens the sound of your track it really
emphasizes the stereo surround sound of your sample here is my two shaker layers
without any audio effects and then with them all together now my percussion next
I went to looking for high hats and other miscellaneous Folly percussion I
have this layer of high hats
where this sample in Loopcloud of course and
added in an EQ again emphasizing those high ends lowered this by 13 decibels
and then also added in some supplementary percussion folly
what-have-you this is my miscellaneous layer so I just found some generic
percussion that I liked just weird odds and ends samples so that everything so
far my kicks snares shakers and high hats and lastly I went to looking for
some cymbals so I found three different cymbals that I liked these crashes rides
my first one which I added a few audio effects on top of namely being an EQ to
accentuate the high ends cut off the lows a reverb and delay to add some
space into the sound a stereo finalizar and a dimension expander to widen my
stereo sound and a kickstart which I will get into why that's important later
without any audio effects and then with my second cymbal effect and then my last
big ride sample with similar audio effects you may notice the delay on this
one was to a different rate than my first sample I placed these cymbals at
the tops of certain bars a lot of times those after every four bars where it
felt most natural for build up to be for a crash to happen similarly paired with
these crashes I also have a reversed cymbal to build up so then all together
one more time my percussion sounds like this next let's move on to my layer of
chords this is where our song finally gets some life to it so I made a
separate MIDI layer and this was the chord progression that I came up with
I ended up making this track in G sharp minor from there I went to working on
sound design I wanted this layer of chords to be either strings or a choir
and I chose the latter so I found a serum preset that emulated
exactly what I wanted this choir dark choir preset
from here I added in sound effects such as an EQ where I cut off the low ends
and a bit of the high ends and I also added in a kickstart now I mentioned
this before this is important because I feel like this gives the track a bouncy
feel not in an energetic way maybe more of a wavy feel feels like you're flowing
and then I added in two compressors which I've side change to my kicks and
snares this allows my percussion to breathe a little bit it pops through
these cords a little bit better I added in a second layer of quartz same exact
concept just with a different preset i
grouped these two together and made sure I cut off the low ends with an EQ this
is important because it gives my bass room to breathe which is a perfect segue
because let's learn how to make the bass for the bass I made a separate MIDI
track I used the bottom notes of my chords as
inspiration not as a strict boundary for what notes my bass should play and then
I added in an instance of serum with an 808 preset now I know lofi doesn't tend
to be very bass heavy this is because it's meant to be relaxing and bass can
generally be pretty strenuous on your head especially if you listen to it for
prolonged periods of time that being said we can work with this and make it a
little bit more subtle
I added in a whole series of audio effects the most prominent being a
utility where I turned this into mono and an EQ eight where I isolate the low
ends the rest being compressors and saturators are just to bring out the
sound a little bit better I also added in a kickstart to give it
that same wavy feel as the chords so far this is what we have so far sounding
pretty good let's go ahead and add in a layer of leads I drew up this melody by
essentially played my chords added in a new MIDI layer and then just drew in a
melody that I thought fit with that layer of chords I have several layers of
leads so let's go ahead and go through a few of them first I have this layer just
an instance of serum and this EQ second layer leads third layer leads
fourth layer and a fifth layer that's a detuned piano all together all of my
leads so I know I kind of brushed through that just for the sake of time
sorry but the main takeaway here is that you need to drop a melody that you like
something that fits with your chords be sure to spend a good chunk of time on
this I'd probably spent a solid half hour just perfecting the melody just
getting something that I like and then once you have that stack a bunch of
layers on top of each other that complement each other and then on these
layers I added in a good bit of audio effects but the main takeaway here try
to eq to isolate only the frequencies that you need we don't need very low
ends we don't need very very high ends consider adding in a little bit of
reverb and some compressors to really make the sound punch out a little bit
better and then group all of these together add in some side-chaining to
your percussion again we want that to stand out and then you should have
something that plays well with the rest of our tracks so far
next let's consider adding in some backup melodies I consider what I just
made to be my primary melody and then I also want some supporting melodies going
on in the background just to make things a little bit more exciting I have two
layers here one being a piano and one being a guitar ish I mean simulated in
an instance of serum that sound like this and then my layer of pianos be sure
to add in all the audio effects that you need to your discretion group them
together and see how that sounds with the rest of your track
finally the nice little cherry on top of our beautiful little sundae is just a
bit of vinyl scratch this is just static sound normally this is considered
unwanted undesired in a professionally produced song but in this case the
little imperfections is exactly the mix in a bit of a low five vibe track so I
found this sample EQ'd just the high end we don't want anything too too crazy
in the low ends or even in the mids that clutters up the rest of our track
and just like that you've made a lofi track now granted I know it's not
perfect but at least it's something to get you off the ground maybe potentially
inspire you to make something of your own something of the like so I hope you
found this video helpful if you did please do me a favor and download Loopcloud
link in the description below it'll really help me out it'll help Loopmasters
out they deserve it that being said here is our lofi thank you
for watching guys I really appreciate it