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I tried to learn how to make lo-fi music — Part 2
Last year, I wrote about how I tried to learn to make lo-fi music as someone who didn’t know anything about music production. You can read about it here. I ended up buying a MIDI controller and set out to discover how to use virtual instruments and other resources to make better low-quality songs.
Between a full-time job and college (I’m in my 30s, but still an undergrad), messing with things 30 minutes at a time in the free time, I believe I succeeded in that. I’m still pretty much an amateur and still do a lot of things by “feeling”, but I have a better grasp of how things work now. So, here’s how things went in the following 8 months after my first article.
Having bought the Arturia MiniLab MkII, I also received a license for Ableton Live Lite, Arturia’s Analog Lab, and a piano from UVI. Analog Lab has a lot of preset synthesizers that sound great — at least for me, as it seems people on the internet still debate how good they actually are — so I immediately upgrade it for a version with over 7,000 presets. Analog Lab doesn’t give you access to the synths themselves (that’s a package that costs way more), but it’s possible to edit a few parameters. Considering that it has pianos and organs too, it seems a nice start for an amateur.
