In this article, I am going to cover some of my favorite techniques and tools that can be used if you want to give your productions a “lo-fi” quality.

The back album cover from Lonerism by Tame Impala, a band that simultaneously sounds well-produced and Lo-Fi. Some of my favorite recordings by bands including The Beach Boys, The Beatles, garage rock heroes The Kinks (and plenty of other artists that had access to top-of-the-line studios and engineers in their day), would certainly be considered lo-fi if they were recorded exactly as they were and released today.

Because of this, today’s bedroom recordings are arguably less “lo-fi” than the most expensive and best-selling records of decades past. Additionally, the quality of samples and virtual instruments has become about as “high fidelity” as it gets, with VSTs and sample libraries being created in world-class studios, enlisting the talents of some of the best musicians available. As a result, heavily saturated & noisy mixes with audible tape edits and imperfect performances are relatively easy to avoid. It’s now cheaper and easier to accurately record music without the sonic artifacts introduced by analog tape. What muddies the waters here is how recording technology has improved since its invention. If we go by the literal definition of fidelity - the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced - then lo-fi music can be defined as music captured without precision. Low fidelity or “lo-fi” music has roots that are difficult to pinpoint.

Lo fi plugin pro tools