How To Make Lo-Fi House

Welcome to our lo-fi house drum pattern guide and synth tutorial. Here’s we’ll make a full loop with lo-fi drums, sub bass, a tape effect pitch-wobbling degraded pad, digital piano and Motown vocal samples, all processed with lo-fi distortion and filtering. Also there’s some free samples and a free Ableton rack to download below.

The lo-fi house chord rack I made is available for free in the Downloads section below.

You can hear the lo-fi house loop we’ll be making here:

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See also: Our other drum pattern articles. You can find all our free Ableton presets here.

FOLLOW US FOR FREE SAMPLES, RACKS AND TUTORIALS…

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Some Tips For Making Lo-Fi House

The key to lo-fi music is degrading the sound with distortion or bit crushing, but then using a low-pass filter to take the harshness off. Then using lots of reverb on pads and synths for an ethereal feel. The result is a heavily distorted, but not too aggressive sound. Drum programming is normally fairly simple with punchy house beats made up of classic drum machine samples, swung heavily, and down sampled and down-filtered too. Sidechaining synth elements to the kick is also common for that pumping feel.

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How To Make Lo-Fi House In Ableton Live

Step 1 – set up a shuffled, degraded, down-filtered lofi house drum kit

Firstly I set up a lo-fi house beat with classic Roland drum machines and add background crunch and crackle. We’ll make a basic house beat and then add distortion and low pass filtering plus plenty of reverb for that lo-fi effect.

Set up a 4 to the floor 909 kick drum using this 909 sample pack in Ableton’s Sampler. And then use the filter in Sampler to take some of the top end off and add distortion and Shaper too. You can add an extra kick or two at the end of the bar every 2 or 4 bars to change it up.

Here’s a screenshot of the the lo-fi filtering and two distortions:

You can see in the image the Sampler settings for the kick. An important part of the aesthetic of lo-fi is distorting it a bit too much, but then softening the distortion with a low pass filter. You can do all of this in Sampler with the filter section, I use the OSR mode to add some drive and some soft Shaper, as you can see in the image, so you get that lo-fi crunchy distorted effect with the top rolled off.

Next for the beat I set up a high hat. I use another classic Roland drum machine here, the tr-707. I set up a simple high hat pattern using a 707 open hat (from our free 707 sample pack). I filter it down in the sampler, like I did before with the kick. Then I had a Delay unit and a Saturator with ‘digital clipping’ then another Auto Filter to add some drive and to take off the top end again. Then a reverb which takes off some of harshness of the distortion, but also adds that ethereal spacial feel.

Open Hat Drum Pattern:

I also had swing here. I’m using one of the MPC old school sampler settings that comes with Ableton and I’m going to add this swing setting to absolutely everything in this track so that it’s all really swung and funky. The setting I use is: “Swing MPC Funker 16th 70”, I set it at 100% timing and Global Amount 40%.

Then I add a 707 closed hat by copying the open hat channel, so that all the processing is already there, I swap out the sample and then I change the midi. Then I change some of the filter settings and set the EQ at the end of the channel to only allow high end frequencies through. I add another delay too for a longer and more dense delay chain.

Closed Hat Drum Pattern:

I add a 707 snare. I like the Roland tr707 sounds, they’re really good for lo-fi as it’s samples tend to sound really crunchy with a little bit of saturation. I copy the open hat channel, take out the delay and swap the sample, then adjust the settings to taste. What I do is cut the filter down a bit lower than I want and then use a filter envelope to push a really small bit through the filter very quicjkly for a snappy, tight snare.

Here are the settings of the filter envelope (plus the ‘lo-fi’ filter and distortion):

I want the snare to be tight and punchy, almost clap-like. Using a filter envelope really helps with this. These sound great in lo-fi music. I want plenty of digital clipping with Ableton’s Saturator for that sort of old school distortion that you get from down-sampling a drum sample in a old Akai sampler and riding it hot into a desk. I roll off the high ends again I use resonance as well so that it boosts the frequencies at cut off. Then there’s a reverb unit, and another filter to roll off more high end the high end of the reverb (again, with a resonance boost) and then an EQ to taste.

The simple snare drum pattern:

I think the snares are really important in lo-fi you want a really tight clapping snare and plenty of distortion, but then you take off the harshness of this distortion with filters, add some reverb and then take off some more of that harshness by rolling it off with a filter.

I then add a 707 ride. The Roland tr707 ride is an excellent ride, and is often over shadowed by the 909 ride which became iconic in techno, but the 707 is great too and really noisey. A little ride here and there really really does help the track along and gives it that sort of distorted blast. Rides really bring out the distortion they are basically just white noise. So to get this sound I copy the 707 closed hat and just change the sample and all the settings are there already . But I take off one of the delays and tweak the rest of the settings especially the EQ until it sounds good.

The 707 Rides Drum Pattern:

Then I want to add some background grit to this drum beat which you can do in many ways (an easy way is chucking a Vinyl Distortion unit into an fx chain and turning up the Crackle, which I’ve done in some of my dub techno tutorials). But what I do here is I get a sound of a fire crackling, which I sampled a while ago. You can sample one from Youtube here.

This is gonna add a lot of background noise to the beat that your ears probably won’t really pick out immediately, but it gives a really nostalgic feel to the beat. You can also use samples of vinyl crackle, tape hum or hiss or any machinery, even flowing water or rivers, waterfalls etc. It gives the beat some background crunch and nostalgia! I use the fire crackle sample and then I find a little loop that sounds good and I put it in the bar where it sounds a bit rhythmic, but also a bit ‘off’ too.

Fire Crackle Drum Pattern:

Here’s a screenshot of the fire crackle sample looped and filtered:

And I then use two filters one high pass and one low pass to get rid of the top and the bottom end as I do not want this noise filling up the whole frequency spectrum (it will do as it is almost white noise in places) and then I add a delay, digital clipper and a reverb like the other percussion, to give it some crunch. Then I roll off the highs again, give it some even more digital clipping from Saturator, so it is really lo-fi and crunchy, then I roll off the highs again and give it some drive with an auto filter, then EQ. Then adjust the levels, you want it to be subtle and not too prominent.

Here’s what the processed fire crackle sounds like:

The last thing I do for the drum beat is to group them all together and give then some crunch and drive with Drum Buss and then I add an Auto Filter and roll off the highs a bit. I add a little bit of Drive on the filter as well.

Here’s a screenshot of the drum group processing, with the important parameters to tweak circled in red……

This processing gels all the drums and crackle sample together. They might need mixing down again once we add other synths, pads etc, as the frequencies of them might clash. So for now, get the levels and processing roughly right and then we can tweak later on if needed..

Make sure every clip is swung with the same swing setting we set up for the hats, so everything is swung with same shuffled groove.

Here’s what the lo-fi house drum loop sounds like, you can just about hear that crunchy fire crackle before the ride:

Step 2 – set up an off-grid booming low sub bass

Next I’m gonna set up the sub bass… I copy the drum beat group just to get the same group processing for some continuity in the drive/crush/filter settings. Then I delete everything and just set up one channel with an Operator.

You could add everything to the same group as the drums, but they’ll be all just crushed together too much. It would be a nightmare for mastering engineer to master as well and a bit of a pain to mix down at the end, so I treat them separately in separate groups.

Then I set up an instance of Operator and give it a couple of low sine waves for a big fast sub bass and I set this midi clip (see below) I play around with the midi until I found the notes below that work. You can see that I’ve moved some notes a bit late. I’ve done this by feeling while listening to the drum loop so I get like a sort of ‘off’m slightly drunken feel baseline that’s just not quite right, and not clinical and on the beat. This also uses the swing setting from before, so everything is already swung to an extent, as well as the human errors I added.

You can see this picture showing the swing setting, midi AND midi errors:

As with all things lo-fi I want plenty of distortion or saturation so I’ve added a lot of drive to the filter drive on Operator and I filtered it down again heavily using an Auto Filter afterwards, and I’ve driven it there as well with the OSR setting and then I’ve distorted it even more with a Drum Bus with plenty of drive and crush.

Then to tidy up in terms of mixing I side chain it to the kick with the compressor and then I filter it down again and eq it so it all fits nicely together with the kick.

The sub bass should sound like this:

Step 3 – lo-fi house chords and pad

Here I’m now gonna set up the synths for the track which is gonna be a piano type sound but really lo-fi, and a lo-fi style pad. First of all I’m gonna make sure these are grouped together again like the drums, so I copy the sub bass group and then just delete the bass channel and set up my two synth channels in this separate group.

I made the rack for this pad sound, you can get it in the downloads section below.

Here’s the midi for the pad:

How I set up the pad: I use a chord tool so I can just play one note and it will automatically play a pad. I set it at +3 and +7 so it plays a standard minor chord which is good for a pad, then I add +12 so it plays another octave up for more high end, and then I add a +2 which is going to drag it out if tune a bit and be a bit nasty, like you’ve pressed the wrong key a little bit but I think you want that nastiness with lo-fi!

I set up a fairly simple synth patch in Wavetable with two saw waves and I detune them slightly (plus and minus 2 semitones) then give it some unison in shimmer mode with three voices and I whack the amount up so you get a very thick pad sound. Then as with all lo-fi sounds I add filter and distortion on filter 1.

Here’s the chord settings and the wavetable patch, showing the detuning, slow attack envelope, the chord settings, LP filter with distortion, and the pitch wobble with LFO2 in the mod matrix:

I give envelope 2 a long attack and send the filter to it for some slow movement of the pad. All fairly standard stuff, but then the main extra thing I do to make this a bit more ‘lo-fi’ is I add a little bit of a pitch wobble by sending LFO 2 to pitch which you can see on the mod matrix this gives it a bit of flutter like like you’ve recorded the pad to an old tape machine.

Then after that I add a chorus unit in vibrato mode to give it some more pitch wobble. So now you’ve got two pitch modulations at different speeds dragging this a little bit out of tune and out of pitch it’s like like it’s been recorded onto tape which is sort of that Boards of Canada sound that they’re famous for.

Here’s the Vibrato settings:

Then I add an overdrive unit for a bit more distortion and drive. I then add an Echo and a Reverb to give it from space and I add an EQ to take the top of the bottom off the sound this just gives it a bit of an unnatural sound as the highs and lows are missing. Then I had a Compressor and side chain it to the kick this is quite important for rhythmic pumping. Adjust the threshold to taste until it pumps and then after that distort it more, add an Overdrive unit and a Drum Buss for crunch and drive to give it that down-sampled, down-filtered grit. And then another Auto Filter to roll off more top end, then I EQ it again.

The lo-fi pad with ‘tape flutter’ effect sounds like this:

Then I set up a piano sound in the same group as the pad. I want a synth stab that compliments the pad.

Here’s the midi I used:

You can see in this screenshot the piano’s Chord unit, and Operator with filter drive, and vibrato:

I use Operator with a simple 2 note chord, with the root note and a plus 7 which I’ve done using a chord unit. Then I use Ableton Operator with a real simple patch of 2 sine waves (one is FM modulating the other), it’s filtered and driven at Operator’s filter for distortion. I then add a Vibrato Unit (built in to the Chorus unit) for tape-style pitch warble like I did with the pad. I Overdrive it, add Echo delays, and Drive it and filter it down with an auto filter. Then I add reverb. I sidechain it after the Reverb so the whole reverb pumps too. Then I distort it more with an Overdrive and Drum buss, before filtering down with an Auto filter.

Everything is swung with the same Swing settings as the drums.

The pad and piano sound like this when group processed:

Step 4 – sample and process acapellas

I then sample an acapella, I’ve got loads of Motown acapellas which are great, I use a Jimmy Ruffin one (you can sample this off Youtube here). Soul and Motown vocals work well, especially when pitched up or down. I add the vocals to Sampler and tuner them with a Tuner, I copy the effect chain from the piano sound as it have the distort/reverb/sidechain/auto filter settings already set up. I find a vocal that works and midi that fits.

Below are the midi settings and Sampler settings for the first vocal hit:

Then I copy the vocal and add another snippet form the same song. Just a simple chant will do. You want it to fit rhythmically with the rest of the elements in the track. I group the vocals together with a similar group processing as the other groups: drum buss and low pass filtering.

The lo-fi vocals sound like this:

Step 5 – go back and tweak the processing and mixdown

Once you’ve got all the elements in place you want to go back to each channel and group and make sure everything sounds good on it’s own as well as with each other element. This can be done by tweaking the levels, the EQs and also the filters. Also you might want to tweak the distortions on the groups and tame them down or even increase them depending on other elements you’ve added, and make sure they sit right in the mix.

Here’s the final finished lo-fi house loop we made:

Then after this you can sequence the loop out to a whole track. For more details on this patch, you can watch the video below. If you have any questions at all, please let me know in the comment section of the video, I’ll be happy to answer any. Also if you have any suggestions about future content or anything you’d like to see on the blog or Youtube, please leave me a comment on the videos.

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Lo-Fi House Pad Ableton Rack:

As part of this tutorial, I’m giving away an Ableton 12 rack to make lo-fi pads, with 10 macro set for the most important parameters. You can get this in the Downloads section below.

Here’s what the macros do:

Time: This makes all envelopes of Wavetable shorter or longer.

Global Mod: makes all Wavetable modulations more or less.

Filter 1 Freq: The main ‘lo-fi’ filter cutoff.

Filter Drive 2: drive distortion.

Unison Amount: adjust the unison here for a fuller, thicker pad.

Vibrato Amount: adjust the ‘tape-effect’ pitch wobble.

Early Overdrive: the overdrive early on in the effects chain

Late Overdrive: the overdrive later on in the effects chain

Crunch: Add crunch towards the end of the effects chain with Drum Buss

Final Final: adjust to roll off the frequencies at the end of the signal chain.

You can download this Ableton Rack in the downloads section below.

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How To Make Lo-Fi House In Ableton Live – Video:

Here’s a video tutorial and run down of the rack on our Youtube channel….

(video coming soon)

Please subscribe to the youtube if you haven’t yet: youtube.com/@studiobrootle 

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