How to do simple Lofi Hip-hop backing track

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(Edited)

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Hello friends! Yesterday, I decided to relax and indulge in my favorite activity: making music. I felt inspired to create something in the style of chill lo-fi. Music with a melancholic, calm, relaxing vibe, with a touch of retro, as if it's coming from a cassette tape.

I immediately came up with a simple chord progression in C major.
It goes:
Cmaj7 Am7 Dm7 G7

Let's take a look under the hood.

It's all very simple here. We have 5 tracks: pad, bass, piano, drum sample, and arpeggiator.

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All tracks are based on this chord progression.
For the pad, I used Ez Keys dream machine.
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I applied equalization and cut around 200 Hz so that the pad wouldn't interfere with the bass doing its job.

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Next, I played the bass part and applied equalization to my liking. I adjusted it so that the bass wouldn't interfere with the kick drum, but at the same time, it wouldn't lose its energy. I avoided using too many plugins on the bass and aimed to keep the track as simple as possible.

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Afterwards, I played the piano part based on the chord progression. Nothing extraordinary, just something abstract. Since I was creating a backing track, I needed to leave space for the instrument that would be played by a person on top of this track.

For the drum part, I took a beat that was freely available. I tweaked this beat a bit to my liking. I chopped, edited, and automated it the way I wanted.

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For the arpeggiator, I used the USynth plugin, which I've been really into lately. At first, I started with some preset, but eventually, I tweaked everything beyond recognition to my liking. Never rely entirely on presets; make the sound the way you want it.

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As for the equalization, it's simple. I just cut out what I don't need in the mix.

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On the master track, there are only two plugins. My favorite compressor, Kotelnikov, and the mastering plugin, Ez Mix.

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The compressor blends all the tracks into one cohesive unit. It's like sandpaper for a wooden board. I mainly adjusted it by ear, just making sure the peaks weren't more than -3 dB.

For Ez Mix, I chose the Rnb plugin and adjusted it to my liking. This mostly made the track more readable and louder since it has a built-in limiter. I set the volume to about -16.

Enjoy!

If you want to gets access to all my BT in high quality, welcome to Patreon: patreon.com/ImprovizBackingTrack
Here I post also some lessons, scales and tabs for guitar.


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