Goals

  • Understand the history of lofi chill beats, and how that informs the sounds that we hear in the study playlists that are so common on YouTube and Spotify.

  • Learn how to build your own tracks using simple tools and sample packs.

This workshop is all about music that I love and personally use to study/relax. It’s widely known genre-wise as lofi hip hop, or chill beats. The music, which has gained widespread popularity as a new form of Muzak/background music for productivity, takes its roots from jazz and hip hop. It is distinct in its style and uniquely derivative from a special sect of artists who grew in popularity in the mid-late 1990’s.

In this workshop, I will have 3 separate videos. The first two videos will namely dissect how this music comes into play, with its history and its signature components. The final video will be a simple tutorial for how to actually make these beats of your own accord.

The format is as follows:

Video 1) The History — I’ll be summarizing the history of important artists/composers who contributed to the sound and development of what we now know as “chill beats”. We’ll take a look at artists like J Dilla and nujabes, and their contributions to the lo-fi hip-hop and jazz sampling as part of beat-making. We’ll also take a cursory look at some of the jazz artists who were sampled like Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, and Robert Glasper, as compliments to the sound that would eventually be chopped into lo-fi hip hop beats.

Video 2) The Sound — we’ll dissect the elements of the music that give it that authentic “lo-fi” sound, including tape hiss, chopped up notes, and jazz harmony.

Video 3) DIY — Third, we’ll work on actually creating a beat using a free digital-audio workstation (DAW), a sample library and drum loops to make your very own chillbeat.

Resources

About the creator

Roger Romero

Roger Romero/Feralcat

Feralcat aka Roger Romero is a saxophone player, composer, producer and teaching artist living in Pittsburgh, PA. Romero’s work embodies the American dream; his compositions comprise a melting pot of musical genres closely intertwined with his upbringing as a first generation middle-class child of Dominican immigrants.