2nd
my ghetto version of "lo-fi"
So… I’m still getting comments from people who don’t understand that I purposely made my record sound the way it does, and apparently think the recording quality of my album is just really bad… which is kind of funny to me. But I thought I should at least take some time to show a little of what went into making this record sound “lo-fi” or whatever it should be called instead. There are probably a dozen different ways to achieve the same thing in half the number of steps, but this is the way I did it.
Below I’ve posted some screenshots of the effects chain on one of my lead vocal tracks, to give people an idea of the process of getting this destroyed sound (and I guess to demonstrate that it was the result of work and experimentation and passion, not shoddy recording).
And as a final note: I know not everyone appreciates what I did on this record, which is totally fine. But it’s what I was into when I made it, so that’s why I’m explaining it.
Manually going through the vocal tracks to trim the volume. This was a pain, mostly because I sing with a ton of sibilance.
Lopping off a bunch of high end to tame some more of the sibilance, especially in anticipation of the next step…
Adding the overdrive to dirty the sound up. This is where that distorted sound comes from. The plug-in I used gives an insane amount of control over it, and with lots of possibilities comes a mind-boggling amount of time experimenting to get just the sound you want. I must’ve tried dozens of settings for this plug-in alone on each track I used it on.
EQ on both pre-filter…
…and post-filter. Notice how much I’m still rolling off the top end, cause the overdrive added so much treble.
A de-esser, because the sibilance is still noticeable this far down the chain.
a tiny bit of verb to give it some space.
Final result = people wondering why the recording quality is so bad.
