What are /r/LofiHipHop's favorite Products & Services?

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https://soundcloud.com/payetatek4/batignolles-sp404

new track I made this afternoon

rhodes samples are from here:

https://sellfy.com/liamkillen/p/lk-beat-battle-vol-2-on-the-rhode/

vocal samples are from an old french documentary about moped gangs in the 60s

thanks for the listen

Hey thanks for checking it out! Glad you like it. The drums are from a sample pack called “Care For Me” by Daedae pivot and the smaller percussion sounds I recorded to spice it up some more. I don’t think there’s really any special sauce, it’s just a really good sample pack. I got it on sale when it first came out but here it is now.

https://sellfy.com/daedaepivot/p/kNYv/

Any music of yours you want me to check out as well?

I have already spent days going through my acapella archive, containing more than a 1000 rap acapellas, chopping out all adlibs. If you want several hundred adlibs you can find them here: https://sellfy.com/marni

Thanks for the kind words! I try and answer the questions one by one.

• I started doing graphic design as a hobby once I got into Lofi Hip Hop, I grabbed the program Affinity Designer and started playing around with it while learning through youtube because I wanted to try and create my own designs after seeing all the cool artwork being done. Great program and worth checking out, but I do wish they had some features that illustrator has like the warp text feature.
• I would love to create album art for people in the future if possible. I think that would be amazing to do. As for making music, sadly I don't. I would love to try my hand at making some Lofi stuff if I ever do learn in the future though.
• Love working with more darker color palettes if I have the opportunity to, but It depends on the design. I'll check out adobe color cc for resources on color pallets though when I'm trying to figure out a good color combination that works. Worth checking out since you're a graphic designer as well!
• I'll either take the images myself or acquire the license legally from the owner.
• I think it varies from project to project depending on what I'm trying to accomplish with it. With the koi fish design I knew I wanted to do something with koi fish in particular after I noticed that a lot of the lofi music that I was listening to tended to focus on Japanese inspired designs and I thought the Koi Fish would be something new that I haven't seen yet.

A stem is an element(s) of the track rendered as a separate track, for instance in this example you would get separate tracks for the drums, bass, synth and Vox/FX channels, as if you were to do a remix.

I'm not really sure in which format they come in (whether rendered as separate WAV files or, for example, encoded into a multi audio track Mp4) either way, you get access to the individual elements in much greater detail than if you were to chop up a "regular" track.

As a tip, if they come encoded into an Mp4 file or something along those lines, you can, most likely, "separate" the tracks using VLC Media Player's Convert Media function. On the off chance VLC isn't able to handle it (I doubt it, it's open source and chews through pretty much anything you throw at it), a quick Google search should do the trick, as I'm afraid I'm not really that familiarized with Beatport's stem format's specifics, but I'd be willing to bet that, whatever it may be, there's a way to "separate" the stems into different files without any need for manual internal resampling (recording your audio interface's output inside the box in real time).

EDIT: Grammar, again (also, I just noticed they added the ability to preview the stems directly through the store since my last visit but, again, the only practical experience I have with their stems format was buying a Current Value release when they first launched the format to cross-reference my bass when doing sound design and it came encoded into a multi track Mp4, I don't know how it is nowadays).

That is a good idea. Introducing to you a recording application on the phone that I often use Voice Recorder - Audio Recorder: Clear voice recording, no time limit, has an interesting cut and voice change feature.

Anywhere really, I got this midi controller that I use with my computer and Ableton (DAW) when I want to do stuff on the computer. You don't need a midi controller to get started though, you can do it by hand in the DAW. The controller just offers a more tactile response that lets you finger drum.

https://www.amazon.com/Akai-Professional-MPD218-Controller-Software/dp/B0116X17JW/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=mpd&qid=1621873171&sr=8-2

hey folks, I am making mental health app with video games, and just added LoFi music into it with beautiful visuals. The music is exclusive from one of the members of the sub - Tmpecho

Check it out https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Vortle.SnowHome

SP 404 OB-4: I got one and as you say, it's a bit on the pricey side to play outside and risk it getting rained on or stolen or something So I got a cheap speaker from Amazon, the one I got is this one: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09H36GT21/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_2K4XNZ0555P6HW9S4606?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

If you only play with the SP, no need for a mixer. For a setup with many inputs, I'll probably go with the 1010music bluebox but again, probably only for indoors gig because it's a bit pricey to put outside...

To play the music, apart from the SP, you could use a blackbox, an MPC (a live or a one with a battery pack) or any sampler for that matter but I think the SP is pretty complete for a live gig and has also the performance aspect spot on with the button and knob fiddling. Just my 2 cents.

Websites like this have a bunch of good photos and you could just edit it a little bit and i think you would have something pretty dope

also https://www.photopea.com/ is basically a free online version of photo shop

I would recommend checking out some free image/video resources such as unsplash.com or places like that. You will want to find sources that are free, and have no copyright attached to them. Some other sources I use for clients in marketing are:

• Pixabay
• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Stocksnap.io

There are tons of other resources, but those are my favorite. Hope you find them useful!

Really appreciate that! Thanks for listening. Since you liked the drums, feel free to download the samples I used for free here. A friend of mine made them :) keep up the great work! Feel free to drop a like back if you feel so inclined ✌️

Appreciate that a lot! Glad you picked up on the details like that. If you’re interested, all the perc and drums sounds are from this free kit that my friend made. Feel free to use them as well :) liked and followed you on SoundCloud also 🙌 that track you posted is a cool how you had some boom bap influence with calmer and mellow instruments around it. I like the medium slow tempo it’s at a lot and def keep it up with the vocals. Always nice to have vocals in it 🔥 keep up the great work, looking forward to following your growth!

Thanks for listening! Since you liked those percussion sounds, you can download them all here for free if you want :) a friend of mine made a contest on who can make the best track out of those drums and this is what I came up with that day. Feel free to leave a like to help me get this track onto his main playlist if you feel so inclined and keep up the great work yourself!

Heads up all. "Friday" is kind of ambiguous. Depending on your timezone, what's Friday for you could be someone's Thursday, or Saturday.

For now, the bot operates in PST (Pacific Standard Time). It will allow playlists on Fridays from 0:00 PST to 23:59 PST.

If you're confused about what time that is for you, please check out a timezone converter. Here, I've gone ahead and googled it for you.

I don't know if I should remove this or not because it's not a looping gif but it is just one shot over and over without much variation so I'm going to let everyone vote until midnight tonight and see if it lives or not.

https://www.strawpoll.me/15497555

Im sorry for the self promotion but i have a soundkit with 24 drum sounds and 15 rain sounds only for $2.50 i have been using it for my lofi production https://payhip.com/b/Qfgk

Aso's Lofi & Foley kit is only $5. Only has snares, hats and foley atmosphere fx but I have it and it's good.

If you want something free, I made this kit and posted it on r/MHH earlier this year. https://sellfy.com/p/49yv/

You're probably going to have to do your own processing to get them to sound like aso, but everything was sampled directly from vinyl so it has that warmth and grit. And it's free.

sure you don't want to just do an online class? Most people I know that go to music school are in a lot of debt. I never went to college for music and I'm pretty good with theory. I made quizlet flashcards to memorize keys and modes, then ran 2-5-1 chords through the circle of 5th and 4ths to understand how keys work together. I bought a jazz real book and try to play new songs each week with improvisation to help with different scales. Feel like you can get all that knowledge for less than $4,000. I certainly did. Now if you want to play in a symphony or teach in a classroom go to college for music. If not maybe look at community colleges or Udemy.com for music theory.

Just get the myvolts usb-ac cable and you can power it from your laptop or from a wall.

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https://www.amazon.com/MyVolts-Compatible-Roland-SP-404-Sampler/dp/B00GC0UZZM

lofi nuki radio - 24/7 calming hip hop beats

I recently created an Android app that streams calming lofi while displaying nostalgic 90s anime gifs. Would love to get some feedback/reviews on it:) I'm always adding in songs so shoot me a message with any requests. Hoping it can help relax you guys as much as it does me.

this is a great book to read in regards to sample-based hip hop, has a lot of interviews from producers and is quite academic with the way they go around the topic. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Beats-Sample-Based-Hip-Hop-Culture/dp/0819566969 i've been using it for my own essay and is an overall interesting read

there's really only a small few of them that i've seen, the most notable being WeAreMachines, if you look his name up with "tutorial" next to it you should find it.

there's really not too much difference between lofi and regular hiphop tutorials, it just depends on the style and what that person is using. Try looking up FL hip hop tutorials, and try to stick to ones strictly using FL as some people might be using an MPC or an SP. but try looking up Old School Hip Hop tutorials and Boom Bap tutorials, those are more in line with the lo-fi style

a soundcard is a piece of gear that processes audio. computers come with stock soundcards but they usually don't sound as good as a dedicated one, and don't have inputs and outputs for running external gear like you would a guitar cable into an amp

Generally the cheapest you'll find them is around $100, which if you're going to buy one new i'd suggest Focusrite as they hook it up with some software effects https://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-2i2-GENERATION-USB-Recording/dp/B005OZE9SA

but if you look around on ebay or amazon or possibly even craigslist you might find one for maybe 30 if you're lucky, but more likely around $50 for a decent one

I do! Don't have a lot of beats so far but I'm working on it haha. You can check them out here if you want.

Also if you really want to learn music theory I recommend the book "Music Theory for Computer Musicians" by Michael Hewitt, you can also "borrow" it online if you catch my drift. It's a series of 3 books if I'm not mistaken (second covering harmony and third one composition). Then maybe you'd want a piano scales book (like this). Knowing your scales is pretty important if you want to compose music, you'll have to practice those and the book is really helpful for that. You can also find free versions online of similar books (I think r/piano has a link for one in their beginner's guide).

But again, really not that necessary for lofi hiphop unless you want to go deep. Music theory however is not wasted knowledge, so go for it if you're really motivated.