It crackles and it rustles. In this 6-week audiovisual KISD project – initiated by designer and music producer Stefanie Grawe aka GRAY – 22 design students dedicated themselves to the love of lo-fi music and composed their own song. For this they dealt intensively both theoretically and practically with the associated production techniques, analyzed popular pieces of music and experimented with different sounds. Of course, they also designed a visual identity in the form of a cover artwork and music video. All results are now presented on this website.


HiOnLoFi – DUCKTAPES

Timm Sonnenschein, David Delmay & Connor Biermann



„Something is coming from the depth of your local park. Tapes were found – DUCKTAPES. This burning, new-school, old-school, electronic, enigmatic miracle of hip-hop music is a virtuous composition, that will bring joy to your ears. Preorder now, and get the Premium VHS-Edition of DUCKTAPES!“

DUCKTAPES stands for


Duct tape
because we approached the topic in form of a video collage, our videos are ‘taped’ together, with all the elements creating one piece.

Tapes
because we decided to create a mixtape and play with the vhs aesthetic.

Ducktales
because we have sampled cartoons to invoke a nostalgic mood
Among the early pre-digital shows, we had watched as children was the 90’s cartoon.


VISION


Our vision was to create a two sided mixtape.
Side A representing day
Side B representing night

This all is also represented in the footage and the mixes of our tape. You will find the A side filled with more active beats and daytime-footage. B Side is filled with night-time footage and more melancholic tracks.

MOOD




We tried to evoke a nostalgic, inspiring, but also melancholic mood in the listener. Since we all like to travel and explore collaborative art in cities, we tried to capture this feeling in our tracks, both with recordings of city scenes and our own, placing something like lettering and video samples on them. On the one hand, graffiti culture comes to mind, but we also took inspiration and footage from our travels, our feelings, cartoons and films from our childhood (late 90s/early 00s). Many of these films were copied from the TV onto VHS tapes, another important point in our aesthetic choices. Like city life, our work is also a kind of collage. Many small impressions from different periods of time are superimposed and put together to form a piece.

Musically, Side A was inspired by hip-hop artists who use samples in creative and innovative ways, such as old beats by Kanye West and J. Dilla, but also modern producers like Kaytranada, Cooking Soul and Wondagurl. Side B was more inspired by the classic Lofi Study vibe. But also artists like J dilla, MF DOOM or Eloquent inspired my workflow. The samples used range from old 70s soul and jazz records to 80s anime soundtracks, singer/songwriter tracks as well as splice samples. Additional vocal samples come from interviews with J. Dilla and Danny Pudi, an episode of ducktales, the film groundhog day, Rabbi Dr Abraham and other film scenes.

PROGRESS


In the beginning we did a lot of concept work that we had to compare to get a feel for the general vibe we wanted to have in our mixtape. In the first weeks of the project we just collected samples, experimented with different styles, shared beats and discussed what we could use. Since we are all fans of that somewhat rough collage style that has dominated low-budget music videos over the last decade, we decided to use that aesthetic but put our own spin on it by adding our own writing credits and extending the sample mentality into the visual realm.

SIDE A

I created the beats in FL Studio. My workflow was to start with a sample, which I then chopped up and rearranged over a simple 4/4 drum beat that was roughly between 70 and 90 bpm. Often I would change the original pitch, which created interesting rhythm variations as the tempo changed with the pitch while the track kept its minor or blues key. To make the drums stand out from the sample, I used an equaliser and applied the stereo delay technique to the kick and sometimes the snare. The sample itself was always cut off at the top ends and sometimes I applied a reverb effect. For the videos I used the video editor inshot on iOS. The lettering that can be seen in the video was recorded with a sketch app, cut accelerated and put over the video with Chroma Key. Finally, I used colour correction and distortion to achieve the VHS look. We chose the 4:3 format for the same reasons.

SIDE B

I produced tape side b with Ableton Live and Adobe Premiere. In the first two weeks my focus was on creating as many beat sketches as possible. It was important to me to generate a high output to be able to reduce it to the best possible later on. In week 2-3 I started to concentrate on 4 sketches and to develop them further. After the basic framework of the individual beats was completed, I started to think about the material of the video loops in week 3. It was decided from the start that we would create video loops in a VHS aesthetic, with side A focusing on day and side B on the night. I decided to shoot with a VHS camera to create the best possible atmosphere. After the video loops were done I took care of the fixed arrangement of the beats. My mixing process consisted of repeatedly listening to the tracks through different headphones/speakers. I made notes, changed what bothered me and listened to the whole thing again until I was finally satisfied.

We were all very happy with the music videos, we produced. Feeling, that we reached our goal of putting together 10 tracks, that each feel unique but still work together well, is definitely a motivation to keep on producing in the future. while working, we discovered new interesting techniques, like using screen recordings of sketching apps and using them in video editing, which we are sure will be used and explored further in our future projects. the whole mixtape is around 20 minutes long and can be found on Youtube.
© KISD / Image & Motion
SS 2022