LO-FI SONGS YOU SHOULD DEFINATELY LISTEN TO!
By: Radio Qaum
Tags: Songs, Lo Fi, Blog

Millions of music listeners have turned to lo-fi music to relax, study, and de-stress. The genre’s history and aesthetic show that there’s more to lo-fi than just chill beats.

What Is Lo-fi?

Lo-fi, or lofi, refers to a recording with less than professional or flawed sound quality. “Lo-fi” is short for “low fidelity,” and initially referred to a low-quality recording with audible imperfections, such as background noise or performance mistakes, recorded with inexpensive equipment — the opposite of high fidelity or hi-fi production.

Lo-fi represents a subgenre of electronic music that shares qualities with downtempo music, the chillwave scene, and lo-fi hip-hop. Lo-fi music mixed elements of house, jazz, easy listening, and hip-hop beats and samples with a DIY music aesthetic that emphasized the imperfect, homemade quality of analogue recordings. The result was dreamy audio with a relaxed, retro sound that many found ideal for background music, especially studying.

3 Characteristics of Lo-fi Music

Drum loops: Like hip-hop, lo-fi makes extensive use of drum loops to form its rhythms. Both electronically produced samples and live recordings of drums are used. However, beatmakers prefer live elements because they’re easier to manipulate with a digital audio workshop.

Jazz chords: Jazz chord progressions are also an important element in most lo-fi songs for their relaxed, thoughtful quality. Samples of rhythm — bass and drums — and piano are prevalent in the genre, but lo-fi artists may also incorporate horns and guitar, depending on the composition.

Samples: Though lo-fi is typically an instrumental music form, many lo-fi tracks feature samples and other effects to support the music. Vocal samples are not uncommon, with many drawing from anime to emphasize the connection between the two mediums. The crackle of a vinyl record is also frequently employed to suggest the warmth and nostalgia of an analogue recording.

Notable Lo-fi Music Artists

Chillhop Music: The Netherlands-based Chillhop Music channel on YouTube is among the top sources of lo-fi music. Like many lo-fi channels, owner Bas van Leeuwen uses the live stream as an online community for his subscribers to connect and communicate while listening.

ChilledCow: French artist Dmitri oversees ChilledCow, a music label and YouTube channel that does live streaming lo-fi music. His lo-fi hip-hop has earned millions of followers, as has his use of an image of a girl studying, culled from the anime feature Whisper of the Heart. The image, known as Lo-fi Girl, has become so iconic that Dmitri adopted it as the channel’s name and label in 2021.

College Music: Launched in 2013 by then-13-year-UK residents Luke Pritchard and Jonny Laxton, their CollegeMusic channel garnered over a million subscribers, which allowed them to launch their record label. The duo’s playlist theme — summer jazz, late-night beats, and more — are tailor-made for relaxing and studying.

Powfu: The Canadian artist Powfu scored a colossal hit in 2020 with “Death Bed (coffee for your head),” a lo-fi hip-hop track that reached №23 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

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Nivedha