Lo-fi: The “aesthetic” way of studying

Exam season is up and I am DEFINITELY not helping you right now

So because I don’t like studying (what a surprise), I constantly keep looking for some fun ways to jazz up my study sessions. I came across one such thing some while back, called Lo-fi.

Now I was going through youtube (which knows more about me than myself) and with all the Lo-fi’s I am listening to these days, recommended me a video about basically, What is Lo-Fi and how they made a lofi album themselves. I watched it and got info more on the technical part than about actual lofi. So I began my search

Good Question. This is what motivated me to make a whole blog on something…..so simple? But everything has a history so let’s dig it out today.

Lo-fi is the abbreviation given for “low fidelity” by its creator, Eric Mathews. Before going into what it is technically, let’s talk about the feeling listening to lofi gives off and why such huge amount of people like it. It has that dreamy, sitting on your balcony at 3 am, reading a book in autumn kinda vibes. I mean one can listen to it whenever they want to but these examples were only given to show the comfort level of listening to LO-Fi beats. It has that retro, nostalgic feel to it which makes a very nice atmosphere.

Lofi music beats slight imperfections to them, like distortions, cafe noises, humming, rain sounds etc, product of which, when combined together creates the perfect atmosphere to do anything that requires concentration.

Although lofi beats have become a buzzword recently, these have been around for quite some time now. Because of its aesthetics, Lofi has never been mainstream and nor is it clear when exactly it started to get recognized. Although similar kinds of music and beats are evident back in the 1950s, it is a bit difficult to presume that this was the time period when they started getting produced. Lo-fi’s boom can be traced back to the 1950’s when international hits like “My Song” by Johnny Ace (1952) came into the picture. Some other contributions which helped Lofi take off are- Groups like Beach Boys, The chills, Sebodah, Clean, Pavement etc.

Nostalgia

All because of that nostalgic feeling.

“Cyberspace,” suggests, “makes the bric-a-brac of nostalgia available in digital form, appearing more desirable than the real artifacts.” With purposefully making the songs lose quality and adding distortions, they make the sound feel aged and resemble songs produced much before, bringing the sense of familiarness and nostalgia to the listener.

And everyone clicks with familiar things, thus proving the big followers of this genre.

They not only create nostalgic memories but go way beyond that. They provide ”atmosphere” for different scenarios which might have never taken place . Nor ever will in cases like “Lofi beats for studying with Hermoine in the Gryffindor common room”

We know that music has immense power over someone’s mood. Upbeat, rocky songs can uplift your mood, while slow tempo songs can reveal the melancholy side of you.

But Lo-fi music is a combination of slow tempo, soft instrumentals and nature noises blended, which when together, don’t invoke any reaction emotionally from the person.

This makes the listener be in a state of relaxation or productivity. It does this by improving the brain’s cognition a.k.a it’s ability to work well, thus the reason why a lot of people prefer to listen to this kind of music when performing tasks that require brain’s attention

Like studying.

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So folks. Show’s over. You can go back to your houses

🙂

anyways you have reached the end of this blog. It’s been a while since I have written a more “researched” based blog ’bout something. But researching is always fun and so was writing this week’s post.

SO I hope you enjoyed as much as I did and look forward to reading more such blogs where I have to read a 100 other blogs before writing mine

:0

Until Next time

TA-TA !