Getting Started With Zach Gaf's Musical Approach
Zach Gaf operates under the stage name AZD and has built a catalog that sits somewhere between indie folk, electronica, and hip-hop. I've spent more hours than I care to admit deconstructing his production choices, so here's what I've actually learned from working through the tracks. The core of his sound isn't any single technique. It's the layering approach. He builds arrangements from small melodic fragments — often just two or three notes played on guitar or piano — and then stacks textures on top until the track breathes on its own. Start by picking one simple riff. Record it dry. Loop it. Then add a second element that contrasts rhythmically rather than melodically. That contrast is where most of his songs get their movement.
The Rise Of Zach Gaf Unpacking The Genius Of A Previously Overlooked Music Prodigy
When people talk about his "genius," they're usually pointing to something harder to name. His vocal production stands out most. He treats his voice like another instrument rather than the focal point. You'll hear him layer harmonies that sit low in the mix, almost buried, which gives the track weight without drawing attention. I've found that most producers trying to replicate this end up burying the vocals so far they become unintelligible. The trick is to keep the lead vocal present and clear, then push the harmonies back about 6 to 8 decibels relative to the lead. That's the range where it feels natural. Another detail that rarely gets discussed is his use of room ambience. He records a lot of elements in actual rooms rather than using reverb plugins. I tried this myself with a basic USB mic in a small bedroom and got results that were close enough for early demos. The difference between that and a convolution reverb plugin is subtle but real — the reflections have a natural decay curve that's harder to fake. If you don't have a good room, a cheap plate reverb patched in after the fact will get you 80 percent there. One specific problem I ran into was timing. His tracks often feel loose because the beats aren't quantized to a grid. At first I thought this was just a stylistic choice, but when I tried copying it, my arrangements fell apart. The tempo would drift and every element felt disconnected. What I eventually figured out was that he records to a click track but deliberately plays slightly off it, then compiles the best takes. He doesn't quantize them afterward. I started doing the same — recording multiple passes without syncing anything, then choosing the take where the micro-timing felt most human. This took longer per track but saved me from spending hours trying to make rigid sequences sound alive.
Here's the part nobody mentions: this approach doesn't scale. If you need to churn out five tracks a week, the live-performance method becomes a bottleneck. I had a project deadline where I needed three finished songs in ten days and this method was going to take twenty. I switched to programming drums with slightly randomized velocities and using humanize functions on MIDI instruments. It's not as good, but it's acceptable and it shipped on time. Know which projects deserve the extra time and which ones just need to be done. His use of acoustic guitar is also worth studying closely. He often picks a melody with his right hand while letting open strings ring underneath, creating a harmonic bed without strumming. It's a fingerstyle technique that's common in classical guitar but rare in modern indie production. Try recording a single guitar playing both a bass line and a melody simultaneously. It takes practice but it frees up space for other instruments instead of filling the low end with a separate bass track. There's no single downloadable pack or preset that replicates his sound. Searching for "Zach Gaf sample pack" or similar terms won't give you anything official. What you can do is study his released material on streaming platforms, isolate individual stems if you can find them on YouTube (there are some stem downloads for educational purposes), and reverse-engineer the arrangement. I spent about three weeks mapping out the frequency spectrum of "The Love Still Going" using an analyzer plugin. His low end is remarkably clean — very little sub content below 60Hz. Most of the warmth comes from the midrange, around 200 to 400Hz, where the acoustic guitar and vocal layers stack together.
Get the Full Details
A few practical tools I use when working in this style: Ableton Live for the looping and layering workflow, Stockton Audio's free EQ plugin for surgical adjustments, and Reaper for faster turnaround when I'm editing vocals. If you're on a tight budget, Reaper's trial is fully functional and the routing flexibility alone makes it worth switching from most other DAWs for this type of work. The main limitation of this whole approach is that it demands patience and a tolerance for imperfect results. You can't iterate quickly. Each take needs to feel right before you commit, and committing means moving forward rather than endlessly tweaking. I've abandoned tracks that would have taken another day of fine-tuning and just released them as-is. They turned out fine. That's honestly the most important thing I've picked up from studying his catalog — knowing when a track is done is more valuable than knowing how to make it perfect.
