3 Flavors for Chords (2023 Lofi Hip Hop Tutorial)
Chords are the magic sauce that make music come alive.
They can be used to complement the melody, add texture to a boring beat, or just add a nice musical backdrop.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through 3 sonic flavors you can use to give your lofi chords some character.
Flavor 1: Warped and Whimsical
Want retro vibes with a twist? This flavor will give your chords a warm, magical texture that has just the slightest modern touch to it.
Follow these three steps to give your chords a modern nostalgic twist.
Step 1: Use an EQ to remove low and high frequencies, and to slightly boost mid-range frequencies.
This will help throw listeners back to simpler times when audio technology hadn’t advanced enough to hear all those nice lows and highs.
Here’s what I came up with using Ableton’s stock EQ Three. You may want to open up the low and high frequencies a bit more depending on how you want you chords to sound.
Step 2: Use iZotope Vinyl to add warp and dust.
iZotope Vinyl is an amazing free plugin loaded with controls to help you warp, squish, and texture your chords to give them a nice vintage sound. You can download iZotope for free here.
For this flavor, all we’re going to need are the Warp and Dust controls. Here’s what you need to do:
- Set the date to the 2000s. We’ve already cut the frequencies, so we don’t need iZotope to do this for us. Of course, if you think changing the date to something earlier, don’t let me stop you :).
- Set the “Scratch” level to 0. Scratch is a setting that will periodically clip your audio to simulate scratches in a vinyl record. If you think this sounds okay, then go ahead and play with this setting to your heart’s content. However, for this flavor I recommend turning it off.
- Turn the “Wear” knob all the way down. This one will distort your audio if it gets above a certain frequency or volume. Once again, do what you think sounds best, but I recommend turning this off if you’re going for “warped and whimsical.”
Here’s what iZotope Vinyl should look like at this point:
Okay! On to the stuff we’re actually going to use.
- Adjust the “Dust” slider to your liking. This will add some nice vintage dust to your chords. You can adjust the “Gain” knob underneath it to control the volume of said dust.
- Turn the “Warp slider up to 40. This will add some nice warping to the chords so that they wobble a bit.
Here’s what iZotope Vinyl should look like when you’re all done:
Step 3: Use a Phaser to take your chords to another dimension.
Finally, you’ll want to use a phaser effect to add some movement to your sound. This last one is pretty simple! Just add a stock Phaser effect (or use a plugin) to the MIDI/ audio channel with your keys.
You may want to adjust how much of the sound is influenced by the phaser effect by playing with the dry/wet knob.
Here’s what the phaser looks like in Ableton Live:
Quick Tip: Make sure your effects are in the right order.
In Ableton, your audio will be influenced from left to right – in other words, it will be passed through the effect on the left, then that new sound will be affected by the next effect on the right, and so on.
For this flavor to really pop, I recommend placing iZotope Vinyl on the far left. Add the phaser to the right of iZotope Vinyl and place the EQ on the far right. This way the EQ will squash everything down and you’ll have a nice, tight sound.
Here’s what this flavor looks like in Ableton:
If you create a track using this effect, tag us on Twitter (@levelupyourlofi) so that we can listen to it!
If distorted textures and dirty keys are more of your thing, you may want to check out the next flavor.
Flavor 2: Dark and Dirty
If you’re into something more intimate and grittier, follow these three steps to give your lofi chords a rough, textured flavor.
Step 1: Use an EQ to cut off the high end.
This flavor is going to leave your chords slightly muffled and throbbing with texture. You’ll want to take enough off so that your chords sound muted but leave enough high end in so that you can hear all of the distortion.
Cutting it off at around 1.8 kHz works pretty well. Here’s what our EQ looks like in Ableton:
Step 2: Use a saturator to add some punch.
The Saturator effect (not available in Live Lite) is a wave shaping effect that can really add some punch to your keys. I recommend selecting “Medium Curve” from the dropdown to add some edge. Remember to place the saturator to the left of the EQ on the effects chain.
Here’s what the Saturator looks like in Ableton:
Step 3: Use Vinyl Distortion to give it some color.
Drag a Vinyl Distortion effect (not available in Live Lite) to the right of the Saturator.
Vinyl Distortion is a handy effect that mimics distortion that you might hear during playback on a traditional vinyl record. There are two fields that we want to manipulate: Tracing Model and Pinch.
Tracing Model adds harmonic distortion to the incoming audio (in our case, this is the audio coming from the Saturator). Setting it at around 1.8 kHz with the gain at 50% (0.5) worked especially well.
You should play around with the effect, whether by dragging the circular icon or by typing/dragging values to get a sound you really like.
Pinch is very similar to the tracing model field, but it produces a much more resonant sound. Setting it at around 120 Hz at close to 20% gain works well, but you should experiment with the effect on your own to get a sound you like.
Here’s what my Vinyl Distortion effect looks like in Ableton:
(p.s… if you want to learn more about Vinyl Distortion in Ableton, you can read about it here)
Here’s what this flavor looks like in Ableton:
If you create a track using this effect, tag us on Twitter (or X?) (@levelupyourlofi) so that we can give it a listen!
If distorted sounds aren’t your thing, you’ll want to check out the final flavor.
Flavor 3: Smooth and Silky
Follow these 3 steps to give your chords a lush, soft finish.
Step 1: Use an EQ to shape the low frequencies and filter out the high frequencies.
This will make the piano sound as if it’s almost muted. I’ve found that cutting things out after about 1.00 kHz works well. Here’s what the EQ looks like in Ableton.
Step 2: Use a resonator to add some beautiful oscillation.
Ableton Live’s resonator is a fantastic little tool that is great for adding beautiful harmonic frequencies to any audio or MIDI channel.
All you need to do is drag the “Resonators” effect from the audio effects library onto the track with your keys and start adjusting the pitch values on each of the individual resonators. All the resonators do is take the incoming signal (II and VI take the signal from the left, III and V take the signal from the right), add some delay, and then add some delay to that delay.
The delays collide and begin to create some nice resonant frequencies that add really nice depth to whatever audio channel you happen to be working with.
You can adjust the dry/wet knob to your liking if the resonators start to feel like they’re a bit overpowering.
Resonators are one of those things that you really have to play with in order to get a sound you like. Here’s what our resonators look like in Ableton Live.
(p.s. If you want to go deeper into the world of resonators, check out this article by our friends at macprovideo.com who wrote this great article on resonators (we pulled a good bit from this article ourselves when writing this section about resonators)).
Step 3: Add reverb to top it off.
To get things sounding even more smooth and silky, try adding some reverb to smooth things out. Use at your discretion.
Here’s what our reverb looks like in Ableton Live:
Here’s what this flavor looks like in Ableton:
If you used any of these techniques in your projects, please consider following @levelupyourlofi on X to get bite-sized tips in your feed!
Check out more articles by us here.
P.S… if you want to learn more about lofi production, the K. Hart YouTube channel is an awesome resource for producers, so be sure to check it out!