Can’t You Pay Attention to Alice?

After a semi-cathartic morning of writing, an extended stay at the dog park, and various small chores, I was in a neutral-positive mood when I sat down in the studio. A recent thread on VI-Control had been on the topic of Lo-Fi and appropriate libraries for that, so I shrugged off that nagging angel and gave in to the other one that said, “Hey, yeah, Lo-Fi is easy. You should do that!”

One library mentioned in that thread was stuck in my mind: Arturia’s Pure LoFi. I’m generally not a fan of trendy, and Lo-Fi is clearly quite trendy. I suspect we may be on the waning side of its popularity, especially the overbaked nostalgia and warbly tape sound,¹Actually, I think that’s been played out for at least a few years now, though I still happily and shamelessly use it, mostly because I like it. and there will come a day when I lay down my wow and flutter controls, but it is not this day.

Despite it being really low on my purchase priority list, I did end up upgrading my Arturia Collection on Black Friday. It includes this Pure LoFi library and while I hadn’t even bothered to download it for two reasons: first, if it’s a popular trend and a company has actually come out with a trend-focused library, it’s highly likely that those sounds are going to end up on a lot of things and overexposed; second, trendy libraries tend to be really obvious and stereotypical in their sound design. In this regard, Pure LoFi did not disappoint.

But you know what? Sod it. Let’s go for it. In fact, let’s make this a “single library challenge” day. I can only use sounds from this library with the exception of drums. Spoiler, I only made it three tracks in before it was unbearable.

This isn’t a slam of the library. Like most Arturia stuff, it’s actually done well, but everything I played had so much noise and warble and distortion that they quickly overwhelmed each other. There are controls to dial a lot of that back, but by this point in composition I had the chord structure and an idea about instrumentation, and didn’t really want to spend the time learning a new UI, so I went back to my go-to libraries for a lot of things and kept the Arturia tracks to move around for sonic spice.

This is probably a good tip any time you’re trying to nail the sound of a specific genre or style. The people that made that sound popular probably weren’t trying to sound like that, they were just trying to make a record. They weren’t running that Fender Rhodes through a six-figure 2” tape deck and intentionally screwing with the settings, they were just recording a Fender Rhodes and it was other things in the signal chain that did whatever it was.

Also, if you listen to a Lo-Fi channel on your favorite streaming service, you’ll likely find that they’re heavy on electric piano and jazz guitar, neither of which may sound particularly lo-fi. It’s going to be a sample or a hook-type sound that grabs you. Sometimes the beats are on-time and others, the off-kilter timing nudges are so extreme that it sounds like the drummer just smoked the biggest doobie of all time, downed a couple of beers, and took a spin on the gravitron just before sitting down to record. I don’t particularly enjoy that trend in Lo-Fi or hip hop, so I kept my drummer a bit more sober.

With the chords and general arrangement done, I started pulling things out, moving them to different sections, and getting the overall balance right. The formula is really basic for most of the stuff I hear on streaming, with the most common being Intro, A1, B1, A2 (Solo), B1, A1, Outro. That’s the structure for this one. Sometimes the second B section will be changed up a bit, but part of the allure of the genre is that it’s simple, predictable, and, in many respects, ignorable. There were several “Lo-Fi Hip Hop Beats for Studying” playlist recommendations being shown when I was clicking through to refresh my ears on the style.

There’s not a ton left to say about it other than I went back to “clean” sounds for the drums, bass, and electric piano, leaving the distressed sounds for the A section hook. The last thing I added were the classic Mellotron flutes sound as counterpoint (which was needed) and because Derek used them on cover day, so they were on my mind.

The only real production trick I used was to mute the “open hat” sound that is on the off beats in the B section, but send the signal to a big reverb pre-fader. This makes it just kind of appear in the wash without being an overt and potentially distracting addition.

The Bonus Track

Actually, Can’t You Pay Attention to Alice? was my second recording for the day. The first was when I was practicing and composing on a squeezebox. Olive started howling downstairs. She’s never done that when I’ve played it before, so it was an amusing surprise. I got my phone out to record it and she had already walked up and come into the studio. I hit record and started playing and she made her concern for my safety known throughout.

While working on the real track of the day, I decided that it would be fun to post a bonus track and title it The Critic, which gave me the idea for the other song’s title, and if you get the reference, you are a person of culture. I thought to just post it as-is, but you know I can’t leave things alone.

I brought the recording into Digital Performer, cut out a few of the isolated barks and whines, ran them through various delays and reverbs. Now it’s done. Setting the loudness levels for this was trickier than you might imagine. I’d already compressed it to keep the barks from being painful and/or damaging to ears or speakers. I mastered it to my usual -14 LUFS or thereabouts, but in context that’s way too loud. I lowered the limiter by 2 dB, which actually changed the overall loudness to -16 (it doesn’t always work out that neatly) and that sounded correct.

I decided to number it track 30 (I did two covers, so I’ll already be at 29 for the month). I suspect that I’ll forget that I did this and it will end up being a funny surprise whenever I listen to this year in its entirety.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

Can’t You Pay Attention to Alice: Pure LoFi, Keyscape, Trilian, XO, M-Tron Pro IV
The Critic: Woodstock Percussion Squeezebox, Berger Picard

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

Can’t You Pay Attention to Alice: Valhalla, FabFilter, Gullfoss, UAD ATR-102, PanMan
The Critic: Valhalla, Softube Tape Echoes, FabFilter

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Notes

• 1
  Actually, I think that’s been played out for at least a few years now, though I still happily and shamelessly use it, mostly because I like it.