How to Make Vaporwave

Last Updated: February 14, 2023

Vaporwave is an indie genre of electronic music. It is often inspired by music genres from the mid to late 1990s, such as smooth jazz, R&B and lounge music and often samples music from those styles. The genre's aesthetic often includes elements of 1980s and 1990s graphics design, early 90s webpage design, glitch art and cyberpunk. This article will show you how to make vaporwave music.

Steps

1
Figure out what subgenre of vaporwave you want to do. There isn't a real vaporwave, it's more a couple of sub-genre one derives from another. You can find out more about each one by researching Vaporwave subreddit wiki.^{[1]
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2
Browse the internet for some 70s, 80s, 90s music. This is the most common music sampled in vaporwave. One thing to note is vaporwave is highly, if not fully, sampled. New wave music based heavily with synthesizer noises and smooth saxophone leads seem to be the favorite for sampling from.

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3
Take the song into your favorite DAW. DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation (I.E. FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools, Sonar, Reason, etc.) and is the common tool today for making music. Once you have imported the song into your DAW, you want to do your best to match the BPM of your project and sync them together so it's easier to slice apart into samples/loops.
4
Make it slow. The most common rate of slowing down music to make it vaporwave is anywhere from 20-60 BPM slower than the original, and if it has vocals, make sure that it's slow enough to where the vocals sound eerie and almost nightmarish, and let that be your reference to how much to slow your track down.
5
Select your favorite part of the track and cut it.
6
Experiment. Try to repeat some parts, add effects, delete the parts than you hate, until it sounds good for you.
7
Save the file in any format you want. Flac is the best, but it's a really heavy format. Commonly, the most used is mp3 or mp4 if you want to upload it on YouTube.
8
Add artwork. Vaporwave was one of the first genres of the internet music movement (even though not the first to be popularized) and has the most unique style of graphic design and aesthetic culture. Many designs in vaporwave sport roman statues, 90s computers and technology, distorted low-res photos of nature and ethereal backdrops of a world that is only seen in dreams or imagination. Look up some popular designs of vaporwave and spend some time in a famous art program (namely GIMP or Photoshop) trying to understand what is commonly seen and how it's structured in vaporwave designs.
9
Spread your Work. Soundcloud and Bandcamp are the two most popular websites for spreading of vaporwave and other internet genres. If you do not already, register for an account on one or both, and follow their instructions to get started on uploading your music to the vaporwave community!

Community Q&A

Question

What would be some good effects to add?

Community Answer

I would recommend adding Reverb, Crackle and even pitch shift. Crackle adds an old-school vibe, making it sound as if it's being played on a scratched vinyl. Anything that adds feelings of nostalgia is generally well-received.
Question

How do I change the tempo in Audacity?

Synod

Community Answer

Go to "Effect" (at the top of the screen), then "Change Speed," or "Change Tempo" if you don't want to change the pitch, but it doesn't sound as good that way.
Question

Are repetition and audio effects, such as reverb and cassette crackle, also necessary?

Synod

Community Answer

Not necessary, but certainly a nice addition. Most fans and artists look down upon just slowing it down and adding nothing else.