Chill Vibes

Hello all! I hope everyone is doing well. I apologize for the late article, but my family and I caught the stomach bug. I wanted to get it done, but I did not want to push something and have it not be great enough for y’all! With that being said, I want to jump into something that has become an intrigue to my wife and me recently. This is the style of music known as Lo-fi.

We discovered this style of music completely by accident. We were watching a YouTuber give a guide for the new game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and he commented on how he had to change the song he was listening to because he was listening to the same tune for hours on repeat. So, he explained that he was going to do the “lo-fi” version instead and recommended an artist. After watching the video guide, my wife looked up the artist and he had several albums from various video games that I grew up playing with his unique style. The best way that I can describe this style of music is that it is very calming, chill, and something you wish to play to study or just simply relax.

According to a Bradford College article about the style of music, lo-fi came about in the 1950s when amateur musicians and artists would use outdated machines to record music. This would often change the sound of the original songs so artists would record other music with what they considered the “unnatural” sound of lo-fi. In my personal experience, it sounds very similar to how some of the late 1960s and 1970s music came about from recording songs backward. The Beatles have some tunes that do this and it creates a unique and trippy atmosphere when listening to it. In the 1980s and 1990s, the author of the Bradford article states that many musicians would record this way just to make their music stand out. We would use the term “indie” to describe it.

Lo-fi in recent years, has developed a unique relationship with the hip-hop genre of music. I use to play an online video game and I met a guy who created hip-hop lo-fi. It sounded like the original songs from prominent artists of the 2020s but with his own chill sound to it. Personally, I do not listen to much hip-hop but sometimes I do listen to classics like Run-DMC or the Beastie Boys when the mood strikes me. Lo-fi does help make this upbeat genre more relaxing to listen to.

So what is lo-fi? This is most likely something you may have not heard before. The textbook “Google” definition of lo-fi is: “of or employing sound reproduction of a lower quality than hi-fi” which makes it seem like it lowers the quality of the sound to make it its own. To me. lo-fi is taking something that is already of good quality and making it different. This is not necessarily bad or good, just different. That is the great thing about music though, nobody is right or wrong because it is based on opinion and taste. For those reading, if you have a favorite lo-fi rendition or song, share it! If you have not heard of lo-fi, see if you can find a song you like that has been made differently by this style!