For example, Tube Amp by Voxengo gives you a wonderful filter that sounds really tape-like, but if that touch is not enough, you have the drive knob next to it to adjust it to your needs. There are plenty of free plugins you can use to do this really quickly. The other easy way to give your layers the warmth and retro tape sound quality of the lo-fi style is by filtering the higher frequencies and adding distortion.īy filtering the higher frequencies of some of your instruments you can emulate the lack of that frequency range that old-recordings had.Īnd by adding a bit of saturation, you create the ‘damaged’ or bit-reduced effect we were talking about in point one. Or you can use an autotune such as Graillon by Auburn Sounds, which has a free version that includes the basic transposer, but also a ‘correction’ tool that can give you unexpected but desirable slightly distorted vibes when used on certain sounds. It is the case with Pitchproof by Aegean Music, an old-style shifter emulator intended to be used on electric guitars, which has the simple parameter of a transposer, but also gives you the chance to harmonize your sound. However, if you are using a third-party plugin, you can use one that is not only a transposer, but one that also gives you extra features that may add a special colour to your sound. Most DAWs have an easy way to do this with a transposer, as we can see in Ableton’s Live example below: But don’t worry, we want those imperfections to give your sound a more retro analog vibe.

The fact that you are stretching the sample will probably damage the quality of the sound. When choosing your sounds, you could go for a sample that is a few semitones higher in pitch than the tonality of your song, so you are forced to repitch it to make it fit. One of the ways to achieve this is by pitching your samples down. One of the main characteristics of a lo-fi sound is its warmth and unpolished finish. It’s the perfect time to leave perfection behind and just chill, letting inspiration and little accidents bring magic to your music. Feeling like creating looser, more relaxed beats today? Well we feel the same, so we’ll be sharing some of our favourite tips and free plugins to achieve an easy, lo-fi sound for your next track.

Free sample chopping software