Guest Adjective Posted October 17, 2007 Share Posted October 17, 2007 let's talk about the modern lo-fi fetish it seems to be inspired by old recordings of great music that was limited to and by that particular medium. that combined with some sort of disatisfaction with the cold and sterile nature of digital. i would think that at the time these artists were trying to survive all the imperfections and limitations of tape or whatever and not intentionally inject or amplify the imperfections in their mixes. what is it that makes people want their medium to have a voice (tape hiss, vinyl rice crispies, etc.) and not just the sound they've made from scratch? tape hiss and vinyl dust are really comfortable sounding noises, i can definitely see their appeal. because of it i've sat down and thought about what's comfortable about them for me, and use whatever qualities that standout as a qualifier for what sort of sounds i select. it has led me to use things like highway hum, distant crowds, fading in a lowpassed air conditioning vent, flowing water at -36db-ish, breathing, etc. i'm curious to know: what attracts you to lo-fi? what lengths do you go through to duplicate or simulate it? what have you learned from lo-fi? (has its comforting noises affected the way you choose sounds for hi-fidelity mixes?) whatever else you want to say about it, i'm mostly just fascinated by it, i like it, and i would like to hear your experiences with or any poetry you've written about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sneaksta303 Posted October 17, 2007 Share Posted October 17, 2007 or any poetry you've written about it. lol... i was going to post some stupid lo-fi limrick but decided not to embarass myself... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Moss Acid Posted October 17, 2007 Share Posted October 17, 2007 Where as I'm personally all about integrity of things; especailly my instruments. I'm gonna contridict myself and say most of the time i dont really care much if my music is lo-fi or not Though 'lo-fi' is somthing I'm not going to wallar in for the rest of my musical life. Logically I will never add noise/whatever to a track I've written on a computer alas I will never remove noise/whatever from a hardware recording though i will try and diminish noises before i press record. It is extremely easy to make lo-fi music but it gets teidiously boring, trendy and unlistenable; which is why i'm no longer making music in 192kbps, knowing this will let me compose tracks in the most highest of quality knowing my music will be rich in quality and non existant in unwanted noises, though this is more of a mental state of prefrence rather then a practical one (its like having some low-grade canvas to paint on or a high quality canvas, where you lovingly treat the canvas with the up-most of respect knowing its of the highest quality (or when you get a brand new exercise book at school and you take your time writing your name on with your bestest hand writing)) The fact I write 99.9% of my music on noisy analouge synthesizers around a really minimal set up (synths -> mixer -> tape player/laptop) so its bound to have a bit of hum here and there (which i used to glorify with some of the harshest compression to good effect about 6 months ago) but i deal with it. OVERDOING IT: I'm Sure I'm never going to\want to make amazing chart quality produced *plastic* music, most of the time this *plastic* music's overdone production tecniques masks the actual sound of *insert synth* (for good or bad?). and in most cases is a big No-No in contempary acid house music. its almost as bad as using lo-fi to be 'trendy'. 'Lo-fi' somewhat has become a novelty value, and after a while it has become completely annoying and in fact swallows dynamics and/or gives birth to a sound you cant escape (for the good or bad?). Chris Moss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ten fingers ten toes Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 Thinking about this made me write Your browser does not support the HTML5 audio tag this just now. I think it's fun to play around with but I don't have a big thesis of ideas about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aeser Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 as with anything, it can work in the right situations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pylonbitch Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 lo fi in and of itself as a result of crap equipment is a pain, because it's not part of the deliberate aesthetic of the sound. deliberate 'lo-fi'ing of a sound to degrade it adds character in a way that is impossible with the traditional methods of synthesis, and if you're good at it, it goes a long way towards evoking a certaion set of emotions in the receptive (see boc) it's a perfectly valid reaction to the 'hyper clean and produced' sound that advancing technology inevitably lends itself to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hahathhat Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 im not reading anything that i don't post in this thread out of principle for the longest time, i didn't "get" what the fascination with the 303 was. sure, it sounded nice, but i had a lot of other stuff that sounded nice. then, someone let me borrow a mc-202 and a 606 for a few weeks. it was a very distinct "oh, i see" moment. it was only once i had the 202 in front of me, got into the bizarre sequencer, and had the 606 synced along, and HEARD IT WHILE PLAYING WITH IT, did i get it. i still don't get the lo-fi thing. i follow the general guiding principle that if you do a crappy job recording it, you can't fix that later. that being said, there are many good ways to record things. i never had an "oh, i see" moment for the old lo-fi stuff like cassettes or records, probably because i have not used them enough yet, or in the right way. i understand the appeal on an academic level - tape compression, nice ambient hum, analog and a deeper reflection of reality at the time of the recording - but emotionally, well, it doesn't make the soldier rise to salute the flag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pantsonmyhead Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 low fi computer music...... que? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kcinsu Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 i guess it's because a perfectly clean thing doesn't have a "character" to it if your clean sound has no character, you aren't doing a good job. if you composed a melody on a computer program with a VST and then rendered it straight to a wav file - i could listen to it, work out the melody, use the same program you did use the same VST and get exactly the same result. only in theory. if you used presets, and absolutely changed no sound... then yeah... but once someone makes their own sound, unless you are looking directly at their settings, you will not get the EXACT sound... you could get close, but not exact. And if youre being creative enough, there is no way youd be able to recreate that sound. personally i think things being a little rougher (than outright clinical cleanliness) - whether through having things a little bit distorted or non-quantised - just helps to smudge things a little so that the artifice of the music is less obvious. listening to some really repetitive house music made very cleanly in fruity loops or something - i think you just start picking up on loops. the artifice of the music being consciously composed by someone sort of shows through because it. now if someone did that same track with the same material, but they had to fade the loops manually (ie. on a mixing board), and change patterns manually on a sequencer, and it was recorded live to volatile medium like a cassette tape... again, if the first thing you notice about a track, is that its too clean, it means its probably a bad track. you can have amazing cleanly produced music that has more character than tape fuzz. In fact, I think its borderline retarded to label something has character, based solely on such a simple thing as tape compression/fuzz what have you. yes, I understand the idea, I just think its being blown out of proportion and is overused. im not arguing that adding a bit of dirt to the sound cant be an effective production tool... but if it is your crutch to make something have "character" then you're not being creative enough. every little thing you do that isn't automated adds a bit of character to the music beyond just the notes themselves. and you can do it in loads of ways - on a computer or with outboard equipment or with different recording mediums or whatever. wait... define automated? are you saying that its good to not have control over stuff? if so I disagree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest boo Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 i :heart: synthesizers with my warm human soul spirit and that includes digital synthesizers, even digital digital synthesizers controlled by ultra-quantized midi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hahathhat Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 digitial vs. analogue is a snipe hunt really - you have to ask the question, COULD I FUCKING DO SOMETHING WITH IT you can build something analog that's worthless and something digital that's awesome. shunning or bigging up something because it's one or the other means you're a shit scenester that doesn't get the real point - sorry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Endoplasmic Reticulum Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 you can build something analog that's worthless and something digital that's awesome. shunning or bigging up something because it's one or the other means you're a shit scenester that doesn't get the real point - sorry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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