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How to make lofi beats

Gazillion Industries · September 14, 2026 · updated September 24, 2026

Somewhere a cartoon girl has been studying at the same desk, in the same window light, for years, while a stream of dusty, swaying beats plays under her to an audience that never seems to leave. Lofi became the sound of concentrating on something else, which is a strange destiny for music this carefully made.

Lofi beats come from a few moves done with restraint: a slow tempo (usually somewhere around 70 to 90 BPM), jazzy extended chords or a soft sample, drums with heavy swing and their top end rolled off, a gentle crush of bit depth or sample rate, some tape wobble and noise, and a little sidechain pump so the chords breathe with the kick. Nothing should sound brand new, and nothing should be loud.

The short version

What makes a beat sound lofi

Lofi means low fidelity, and the sound is a deliberate list of flaws: a top end that stops early, a little noise underneath, pitch that drifts, drums that sound like they came off a record and not a sample pack. Its roots run through beat tapes and hip hop that sampled soul and jazz, and through producers like Nujabes, whose work on the Samurai Champloo soundtrack (2004) is a standard reference point for the mood. The trick is taste: flaws that sound chosen, not accidental.

Chords and samples

Lofi harmony is soft and a little unresolved. Seventh and ninth chords on electric piano, a muted guitar, or a chopped jazz or soul sample give it that late-night feel. Voice chords close together and keep velocities gentle. If you sample, pitch the sample down slightly and filter it; the slower, darker version usually sounds more like the genre than the original.

Drums

The drums carry the whole mood. Keep patterns simple, swing them hard so the hats lean, and roll off the top so nothing clicks. A kick and snare that sound a little crushed and a little far away do more than a pristine kit ever will. The full method is in how to make lofi drums.

Texture: crush, noise and wobble

Texture is what turns a chill beat into a lofi one. Reduce the bit depth or sample rate a little so the sound gets grainy and the top folds back on itself. Add a quiet noise bed. Let the pitch drift slowly, the way a worn tape or a warped record does. Each one should be subtle alone; together they make the whole beat sound like a memory. The details are in bitcrushing explained and how to make a sample sound old.

F(ilter)12 puts the crush, a filter and movement in one place. There's a demo on the page.

Movement

Lofi breathes. A gentle sidechain from the kick on the chords makes them swell between hits; a slow filter moving on the pads keeps a four-bar loop from feeling static. See auto filter effect for the filter side.

How to make a lofi beat

1. Set the tempo somewhere between 70 and 90 BPM.
2. Write four bars of seventh or ninth chords, or chop a soft sample.
3. Program a simple kick and snare pattern with heavy swing on the hats.
4. Low-pass the drums and the chords so the top end is soft.
5. Add a little bit or sample rate reduction to the drums or the whole beat.
6. Add a quiet noise bed and a slow pitch wobble.
7. Sidechain the chords lightly to the kick.
8. Keep the master gentle: warm, not loud.

Lofi type beats, and what the phrase is doing

"Type beat" is a search convention rather than a genre: it names the lane a beat sits in so somebody looking for that lane can find it. For lofi that lane is fairly narrow and the expectations are specific, which is useful if you are making one on purpose.

What a listener in that lane expects: tempo in the eighties to low nineties, drums that sit behind the sample rather than on top of it, an unhurried loop that does not develop much, and a top end that is soft rather than absent. The thing that gets left out most often is the last one — people take the treble off entirely and the result stops sounding warm and starts sounding like a bad upload.

The structural expectation matters as much as the tone. These beats are backgrounds first. A dramatic arrangement change reads as an interruption, which is why so many of them are a four or eight bar loop with parts entering and leaving rather than sections.

A chain that gets there

Order matters more than the individual settings, and this order survives contact with most material.

Pitch or speed first, while the sample still has its full bandwidth, because anything that resamples will drag whatever came before it along in pitch. Bit and rate reduction next, so the filter after them has something to tidy. Filtering third, gently. Noise near the end, because on a real chain the noise came from the medium rather than the source. Any compression last, so it responds to what the rest of the chain did.

The single most common fault is filtering before bit reduction, which leaves the aliasing with nothing in front of it and reads as harsh rather than warm. If a chain sounds brittle, check that order before touching any setting.

Questions people ask

How do I make a beat sound lofi?

Roll off the high end, add swing to the drums, reduce bit depth or sample rate a little, add a quiet noise bed and some slow pitch wobble, and keep the chords soft and jazzy. Subtle flaws, stacked, make the sound.

How do I turn a song into lofi?

Slow it down slightly, low-pass it, add bit or sample rate reduction, a noise bed and tape-style wobble, and sidechain it gently to a swung drum loop. For a finished record, those moves are an effect rather than a new production.

What BPM is lofi?

Most lofi hip hop sits somewhere around 70 to 90 BPM, slow enough for heavy swing and a relaxed feel.

How do you make a lofi type beat?

Tempo in the eighties to low nineties, a short loop that does not develop much, drums under the sample rather than over it, and a top end that is softened rather than removed. Process in order: pitch, then bit and rate reduction, then filtering, then noise.

Stock plugins that do this

What F(ilter)12 does

F(ilter)12 is our 12 bit sauce filter: a filter with a lo-fi section in front of it and an adaptive correction called AURA on top. SAMPLE RATE and BIT are the crush pair, and twelve bits is as clean as it gets. The filter has five shapes and six resonance shapes that travel with the knob, and AUTO FILTER moves it on a clock with SWING. AURA makes things sit better, invisible butter, air and lift, without sounding like anything was done.

The cartoon girl is still at her desk. Now there's something new playing under her.

Keep reading

• How to make lofi drums — Soft hits, heavy swing, low-pass, a little crush, saturation and a dark room.
• Bitcrushing explained — Bit depth, quantization noise, sample rate reduction and what 12-bit and 8-bit sound like.
• How to make a filter sweep — High-pass and low-pass builds, automation curve, resonance, and what to sweep.
• RC-20 Retro Color — The six modules in order, what Magnitude does, and where it differs from a filter.
• Best 12 bit sampler plugins — What 12 bit really does, how to test one, and the free options worth trying.
• Why does my beat sound like a computer made it? — Grid timing, identical velocities, silent gaps, full bandwidth and copy-pasted bars, with a concrete fix for each.
• How to get the sound of an old sampler without buying one — The old sampler sound is a stack of specific limitations, and you can apply each one on purpose.
• Adaptive EQ — A static EQ decides once. An adaptive one keeps re-deciding.
• SP-404 plugin — Four effects and one habit. The habit is the part no plugin gives you.
• Best lofi VST plugins — The four we make, sorted by job: bandwidth, tape, speed and drum bus density.