Good lo-fi names are soft and lowercase, like a note left on the kitchen table: a cosy object, a sleepy animal, a Japanese word, a full stop at the end. This lo-fi name generator makes producer aliases, collectives and beat tape titles for lo-fi hip hop and chillhop.
Eight good lo-fi names
All eight came from the generator, across aliases, collectives and beat tapes:
- kettle.: an everyday object and a full stop: the whole genre in one word.
- tsuki.: the Japanese word for moon, a nod to lo-fi's love of anime and Nujabes.
- sleepy attic: two words, all lowercase, and a room you'd want to nap in.
- puddles & biscuit: a duo named like two pets.
- lazy koala society: a collective that sounds as relaxed as the music.
- beats to make tea to: a playful take on the "beats to study to" streams.
- library card: a beat tape titled after something small and nostalgic.
- umi vol. 4: a Japanese word and a volume number, for a series of tapes.
How lo-fi names itself
Lo-fi hip hop draws on the dusty, off-grid beats of J Dilla and the jazzy instrumentals of the Japanese producer Nujabes, who worked on the soundtrack of the anime Samurai Champloo (2004). It found its huge audience on YouTube, through round-the-clock streams like the one on the channel now called Lofi Girl, which began as ChilledCow.
- Lowercase everything. Capital letters feel too loud for music made for 2am, so names stay small: marmalade, lamplight.
- A full stop after a one-word name makes it feel finished and quiet: chestnut., asa.
- Japanese words for the moon, rain or the sea are common, in honour of the anime and Nujabes. ame vol. 5 is "rain".
- Beat tapes are named after small moments: kitchen tape, plant sitting, the slow way round.
Using a lo-fi name
- Keep the lowercase everywhere, on Spotify, Bandcamp and your artwork, so the name always looks the same.
- Common words are hard to search. A name like fern is lovely but shared by a lot of people, so a full stop, a second word or "& friends" helps listeners find you.
- Number your tapes. "vol. 1", "vol. 2" turns single releases into a series people collect.
If you'd like to make the beats as well as name them, I've put together a free seven-step path to making lo-fi on my music site: what lo-fi is, the chords and structure behind it, the plugin that does most of the work, then a full track and mix, with free MIDI.
For neon instead of rain, try the Synthwave Name Generator. For something slower and sadder with guitars, there's the Slowcore Band Name Generator.
For more genres, see all the music genre name generators.