Cool Production in Lo-Fi Songs

And yeah, The Olivia Tremor Control do amazing things--they just do it with old equipment--does this make them lo fi?

Thus, the term "lo-fi"

'Cool' is subjective, therefore it is not remotely a working definition.

The term lo-fi refers to the use of inexpensive or vintage equipment - whether by design or necessity or both; it may be possible to capture something texturally which is very cool indeed by using such gear.

Conversely, you may have a rack of toys, a Neve desk and a stack of plug-ins and fail to dress up your songs in anything cool at all.

A 1/2"-tape machine with old heads is unlikely to offer the same degree of fidelity as any modern digital recorder, but will have other qualities.

Of course, the idea being that a lo-fi recording is essentially crippled from the start in a fidelity sense, but this can be its strength (or the probable relative paucity of fiddling-about options available to the lo-fidelist will again lead to some other leap of imagination and, hence, something 'cool').

I think the hi-fi term implies a wealth of available post-recording treatments, so the opportunities to create something 'cool' are abundant - but just as often work against you.

I do like a lot of lo-fi as a, um, genre but can't think of many especially cool bits of production right now.

And...Jandek!!!

The weird wavery guitar sounds on the first couple of Flying Saucer Attack records are very cool.

The murky, echoed production of those strange spoken pieces like "There Is No Matter" by Crescent is what makes them work.

The Basic Channel sound is basically destroying everything with filters to the point it sounds like AM, except with major low end on the bass.

Pole's sound was built on that broken Waldorf filter.

Some of Buckethead's really lo-fi recordings are really awesome: they're like the Pole Position soundtrack except with modems dialing and whizzburring overtop of it.

Lo-Fi is defined by its lack of cool production.

Thus, the term "lo-fi"

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...) (webmail), December 5th, 2003. (GeirHong)

That's true Geir. However, a lack of cool production is intrinsically cool. Once the lack of hi-fi production becomes cool, it's no longer either cool; it's only hi-fi. As I'm sure you agree.

I *think* they recorded the rhythm tracks in a parking garage for Crappin'... to get "natural reverb."
That's pretty damn lo-fi.

No. Didn't think that would be confusing, but my bad. Making a distinction between "hi-fidelity" (which means something objective) and "hi-fi" which doesn't. Very little rock music is hi-fidelity. Much jazz is or tries to be. Ditto classical.

I get your point but when a term becomes unmoored from its original meaning, I tend to tether it back there to try to see what people are getting at: hence I took "hi-fi" and "hi(gh)-fidelity" to be equivalent terms in yr original post.

"Hi-fi" (I'll accept) has become a descriptive term, specifically in regard to pop production, to mean something superficially shiny or airless or with some peculiarly mechanical lustre. "It's very hi-fi" is rarely a compliment. Perhaps this is partially where the lo-fi fetish comes from.

In this sense, it has little to do with "high fidelity" but might have something to do with the tools we associate with high fidelity recording.

One wonders where 'natural' recordings without much compression but achieved with fabulously expensive mics/pre-amps/etc in a fancy live room fit into this scheme. They have little "hi-fi" gloss but are emphatically high fidelity. The 'coolness' of their production is the lack of (perceived) production. Their sparseness and lack of adornment might be construed as "lo-fi".

steve albini to thread. because you've just described his production method exactly. and it's totally high-fidelity. that's the entire point behind it -- to use expert techniques and reliable equipment to create a recording that's highly faithful to what the musicians originally played.

and there's nothing remotely lo-fi about it. lo-fi does, in fact, have a well defined meaning, more than most terms that get thrown around my music fans and writers (like, say, "country" or "rap," currently the source of a marathon argument on the "why i love country music" thread, or "indie," a word that's at least as problematic as the last u.s. presidential election).

lo-fi means "recorded on cheap, crappy equipment." it's that simple and obvious. (and i think dlp's original definition of lo-fi as the lack of resemblance to the original sound is an equally good definition, because that's the basic thing that separates crappy equipment from good equipment, since faithfully capturing the original sound is the primary thing that good equipment is designed to do.)

lo-fi does *not* automatically imply a certain style. guided by voices were lo-fi in their heyday (and still occasionally are today). there are lo-fi rappers and metal bands, too. or, rather, there are rappers and metal bands who make lo-fi recordings, just like gbv is a rock band that makes lo-fi recordings.

norah jones' album was sparse and unadorned, production-wise, and was quite high in its fidelity.

bruce springsteen's "nebraska" was sparse and unadorned and was quite low in its fidelity.

whether you want to call either or both of them "cool" is an entirely separate discussion, and entirely up to you.

Second Mark's Keyboard Repair, that record sounds really great as a cheap recording. More $ would have ruined it.