Help achieving LO-FI sound

KashewNutz

New member
I am recording hip hop, and I don't want the sharp, clear digital sound that is popular at the moment. I want to get a lo-fi underground hip hop sound and I'm looking for some tips on how to go about achieving it.

This is the sort of sound I want:
Ras Kass-Soul on Ice
Redman-Dare Iz a Darkside
Kid Rock-Early Morning Stoned Pimp
Method Man-Tical

Here is a clip of a drum break on the original recording and then how it sounds in an underground rap song:
megaupload.com/?d=9H1WTEV1w

Thanks
 
You might also want to post this in the rap/hiphop forum, some of those guys probably have some good ideas.
 
You have to get creative:

Plug a pair of headphones into a mic input and sing/play/rap into the earpiece.

Play back your tracks on a cheap radio with a tiny speaker and re-record them.

Take an SM57 and wrap a sock around it and record through that.

etc.

There are plenty of lofi/vinyl plugins that will add noise and some vibe, but it's not nearly as fun.
 
Resample to 8 bit.

Bounce tracks to cassette tape.

put analog distortion boxes in your send. If you don't want the distortion keep the gain low and the box will just grunge up the signal.

buy some old 12 bit FX processors from the 80s

filters, some synths let you run signals through their filters. You can also use plugins for this. Spaceman is a nice one.

extreme time-stretching can be interesting. Drastically stretch a loop and then compress it back to the original tempo.

Send tracks through guitar amps and mic the speaker. I use a bunch of practice amps - they are cheap and take up little space.

the cheap radio idea is good. I put music files into my cell phone which has a built in transmitter for your car stereo. For your receiver try to find an old one with analog tuning so you can set it a slight way off channel to get some interesting old-timey radio sounds.
 
Use whatever you would imagine broke, underground, rappers use when recording. Shouldn't take too much of an imagination...radio shack mic? boombox/tape recorder? Maybe a little better than that depending on how 'lo-fi' you want to get...
 
To begin with, cut everything below 350 Hz and above 3 Khz :) That should give you a telephone like effect
 
Another wacky idea I've tried is to setup your vocal mic so it is getting bleed from your speakers. Then use a noise gate set with a long release time. What you'll wind up with is these strange tinny sounding trails after each pause in the singing. Check out my song Lessons In Trust to hear it.

It was something I was going to fix in the mix but decided I liked it and left it in. :D
 
buy a 12bit sampler(optional),
sample at the highest pitch possible on your turntable,
then pitch it back at it's original tempo.

this is how "oldschool" rap producer were doing it in the 90's, due to the small sampling time sampler had in these days.
 
The 12-bit and 8-bit suggestions will give you a very "digital" sound, though certainly not clean or pristine. Digital and clean are not necessarily synonymous.

I like the idea of pressing vinyl. You can get what's called a dubplate or acetate of your recording, which is popular in the club scene:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubplate

Those will play about 50 to 100 times. If you want your recordings to sound low-fi, trying playing the dubplate a couple dozen times until the sound starts to degrade.

Also, you may want to try recording with darker microphones. The Kel Audio HM-1 and Shure SM7 come to mind.

Re-amping select tracks through a tube amplifier can also be quite effective.

If you don't want a digital sound, I suggest you use non-digital mediums and techniques!
 
Use my set up. All mainly old, often blue, a few bits borrowed 1 or 2 bit new.
Scuz it up with combo chip & tube pre (like Behri or Presonus make) where you dial in aX amount of routing through a "tube" section to add warmth that often really is scuzz, though can be very nice sometimes.
But running, quite hot, through a 4 track cassette or even into an old stereo cassette recorder with the noise reduction on for record & off for playback'd do the trick.
 
Everyone's already said it. Write beats that sound oldschool. Use analog gear (cheap analog gear!) and sample from vinyl. Or have a drummer come in and record a hi-hat, kick snare and some other misc. percussive instrument into a 4 track tape machine/usetape saturation plugins really clever like...Have a real bassist play and double it with a synth bass. Record to tape, tape tape or fake it. Keep it simple.
 
Thanks guys!
I knew that for a lo-fi analogue sound, essentially I need to get some old outboard equipment and experiment with micing up beats playing out of speakers and such. But I knew I'd get some other really good suggestions on here! Thanks especially for the information about sampling vinyl at a fast speed due to samplers' limitations, that is very interesting [=
 
Re-amping will definitely help. Play the tracks through a speaker and mic that. Mix it in with the original track for some air and punch.

Try some low-pass filtering to take out some high-end crispness. Maybe around 16 KHz on the backing tracks? Play around and see what you get.
 
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