Lofi Girl Synthwave Is Candy (And I’m Fine With That)
Last night I did a deep dive into Lofi Girl’s synthwave channel, and it’s one I’ve always enjoyed. I know it’s “bad.” It’s like candy. But whatever—it’s not really bad, and I do subscribe to the notion that there are no guilty pleasures. There’s just: you like it or you don’t. That’s it.
One thing I noticed across the channel is that everything adheres to a very strict song form. So I went into AI to see what the deal was, and it’s basically:
4–8 bar intro 8 bar A section 8 bar A2 section 8 bar B section 8 bar A3 section 8 bar breakdown 8 bar outro
For me, that’s really helpful. I know I can be creative and put all the stuff together, but having a locked-in song form helps get the ideas out quickly. And the goal is to finish—finish within the time that I have—and to participate every day.
Did a test this morning and it worked great. It did take longer than an hour, but that’s because I was trying to figure stuff out. I found out you can replace sections when you’re copying sections/sequences in the MPC, and all kinds of stuff. So as I referenced yesterday, it’s a learning process. But making it more simple—removing decisions—is going to make this thing run.
And I am going to “cheat” a little: this one is good enough to use for Day One, and I’ve got a DJ gig that’s going to go super late on the 31st. So this helps me mentally get a couple days ahead. Not really cheating. I’m just starting a couple days early.