Snoman R. Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques

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basis of house music, no one had yet released a true house record, and in the

end it was Jesse Saunders ’ release of On and On in 1984 that landmarked the

ﬁ rst true house music record.

Although some aﬁ cionados may argue that artist Byron Walton (aka Jamie

Principle) produced the ﬁ rst house record with just a portastudio and a keyboard,

the track entitled ‘Your Love ’ was only handed to Knuckles for him to play as part

of his set. Jesse Saunders, however, released the track commercially under his self-

ﬁ nanced label ‘Jes Say ’ and distributed the track through Chicago’s Imports Etc.

The records were pressed, courtesy Musical Products, Chicago’s only pressing

plant owned and run by Larry Sherman. Taking an interest in this scene, he

investigated its inﬂ uence over the crowds and soon decided to start the ﬁ rst-

ever house record label ‘Trax ’. Simultaneously, however, another label ‘DJ

International’ was started by Rocky Jones and the following years involved a

battle between the two to release the best house music. Many of these consisted

of what are regarded as the most inﬂ uential house records of all time including

Music is the Key, Move Your Body, Time to Jack, Get Funky, Jack Your Body, Runaway

Girl, Promised Land , Washing Machine, House Nation and Acid Trax .

By 1987 house was in full swing, while still borrowing heavily from 1970s

disco, the introduction of the Roland TB303 bass synthesizer along with the

TR909, TR808 and the Juno 106 had given house a harder edge as it became

disco made by ‘amateur’ producers. The basses and rhythms were no longer

live but recreated and sequenced on machines resulting in a host of 303-driven

tracks starting to appear.

One of these budding early producers was Larry Heard, who after producing a

track entitled Washing Machine released what was to become one of the most

poignant records in the history of house. Under the moniker of Mr Fingers he

released Can U Feel It, the ﬁ rst-ever house record that didn’t borrow its style

from earlier disco. Instead, it was inﬂ uenced by soul, jazz and the techno that

was simultaneously evolving from Chicago. This introduced a whole idea to

the house music scene as artists began to look elsewhere for inﬂ uences.

One of these was Todd Terry, a New Yorker and hip-hop DJ, who began to

apply the sampling principles of rap into house music. Using samples of previ-

ous records, he introduced a much more powerful percussive style to the genre

and released 3 Massive Dance Floor House Anthems, which pushed house music

in a whole new direction. His subsequent house releases brought him insur-

mountable respect from the UK underground scene and has duly been given

the title of Todd ‘The God ’ Terry.

Over the years, house music mutated, multiplied and diversiﬁ ed into a whole

number of different subgenres, each with its own name its and production eth-

ics. In fact, to date there are over 14 different subgenres of house consisting of

progressive house, hard house, deep house, dark house, acid house, Chicago

house, UK house, US house, euro house, French house, tech house, vocal

house, micro house and disco house…and I’ve probably missed some too.

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MUSICAL ANALYSIS

The divergence of house music over the subsequent years has resulted in a

genre that has become hopelessly fragmented and as such cannot be easily

identiﬁ ed as featuring any one particular attribute. Indeed, it can be funky,

drawing its inspiration from disco of the 1970s; it can be relatively slow and

deep, drawing inspiration from techno; it can be vocal; it can be party-like or

it can simply be pumping. In fact, today the word house has become some-

what of a catch-all name for music that is dance (not pop!), yet doesn’t ﬁ t into

any other dance category. The good news with this is that you can pretty much

write what you want and as long as it has a dance vibe, it could appear some-

where under the house label. The bad news, however, is that it makes it near

impossible to analyse the genre in any exact musical sense and it is only pos-

sible to make some very rough generalizations.

Firstly, we can safely say that house music invariably uses a 4/4 time signature

and is produced either allegretto or allegro. In terms of physical tempo, this

can range from a somewhat slow (by today’s standards) 110 BPM to a more

substantial 140 BPM, but many of the latest tracks seem to stay around the

127 or more recently 137 ‘disco heaven ’ BPM. This latter beats per minute is

referred to as such since this is equal to the average clubber’s heart rate while

dancing, but whether this actually makes the music more ‘exciting’ in a club

has yet to be proven.

Fundamentally, house is produced in one of the three ways: everything is

sampled and rearranged; only some elements are sampled and the rest is pro-

grammed; or the entire track is programmed in MIDI. The approach taken

depends entirely on what style of house is being written. For example, the disco

house produced by the likes of Modjo, Room 5 and Daft Punk relies heavily

on sampling signiﬁ cant parts from previous disco hits and dropping their own

vocals over the top (Daft Punk’s ‘Digital Love ’ and Modjo’s ‘Lady’ being a prime

example). If you write this style of music, then this is much easier to analyse

since it’s based around the disco vibe. Generally, this means that it consists of

a four to the ﬂ oor rhythm with a heavily syncopated bass line and the charac-

teristic electric wah guitar. On the other hand, deep house uses much darker

timbres (deep bass lines mixed with atmospheric jazzy chords) that don’t par-

ticularly exhibit a happy vibe but are still danceable, while acid house relies

heavily on the squawking TB303. In fact, while all house music will employ a

four to the ﬂ oor pattern, the instrumentation used will often determine its style .

Consequently, what follows is simply a guide to producing the basic elements

of all types of house, and since you know how your choice of genre already

sounds, it can be adapted to suit what you hear.

HOUSE RHYTHMS

When it comes to producing house rhythms, nearly all house producers will

not use software sequencers preferring the AKAI MPC or E-Mu SP1200 samp-

ling drum machines. This is simply due to the solid timing that is requisite in

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house and can only be attained through using the internal hardware sequenc-

ers. Notably, of these the SP1200 has a maximum sampling rate of 12-bit but

this isn’t of any concern since it often imparts a harsher sound to the rhythms

which is sometimes required. In fact, after programming a house rhythm and

the subsequent timbres, it’s often worth reducing the bit rate to see if it hardens

up the beat for the subgenre of house you want to produce.

Generally, house relies heavily on the strict four to the ﬂ oor rhythm with a kick

drum laid on every beat of the bar. Typically, this is augmented with a 16th

closed hi-hat pattern and an open hi-hat positioned on every 1/8th (the off-

beat) for syncopation. Snares (or claps) are also often employed on the second

and fourth beat underneath the kick ( Figure 11.1 ).

This, of course, is only the start to a house loop and is based around the disco

patterns from where it originated and congas, toms, bongos, tambourines and

shakers are often added to create more of a feel to the rhythm but this does

depend on the subgenre. Where these are placed is entirely up to your own

digression, but generally they are best played live from the sampler’s pads (or

an attached keyboard) and left unquantized to keep the feel of the loop live.

This helps in acquiring the sampled feel that’s often exhibited, since more

often than not the loop will have been sampled from previous records.

More importantly, though, house more than any other genre relies on plenty

of drive. This can be applied in a variety of ways but the most commonly used

technique is to employ a slight timing difference in the rhythm to create a push

in the beat. Typically, this involves keeping the kick sat ﬁ rmly on all the beats

but moving the snares forward in time by tick or two. Then once the bass line

is laid down, its timing is matched to these snares using a sequencers match

quantize function. Alternatively, to provide a heavier sound, a clap is laid on

beats two and four (along with the snares) but these claps are then moved for-

ward in time by a couple of ticks. This results in the claps transient starting just

FIGURE 11.1

The cornerstone of

house loops

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before the snares which not only helps to thicken out the snares but also adds

drive to the rhythm ( Figure 11.2 ).

On this same theme, dynamics also play a vital role in acquiring the rhythmic

push required in the genre. Usually, the kick drum will follow the strong –

weak–medium–weak syncopation while the closed hi-hats follow a less-deﬁ ned

velocity pattern. The velocities of these will depend entirely on the feel you

want to acquire, but as a general starting point the main emphasis often lies on

the second and fourth 16th pulse of the bar as illustrated below:

Bar 16

Divisions

1 2345 6789 10111213 141516

MSWSM SWSMSWSMSWS

Kick Kick Kick Kick

Of course, this is simply a convention and convention shouldn’t always play a

part of music, so you should feel free to experiment by placing the accents at

different divisions on the beat. By doing so, the rhythm of the piece can change

quite severely. If you take this approach, however, keep in mind that the open

hat sits on the third (offbeat) of the bar, so generally the closed hi-hat should

remain weak here to prevent frequency clashes between the two.

For house kicks, the Roland TR909 is the most frequently used drum machine

but the Simmons SDS-5, Roland CR and the E-Mu Drumulator are also used to

produce the timbres. To my knowledge, however, only the TR909 has ever been

emulated in software form; so unless you’re willing to synthesize your own

kick, sample another house record, use a sample CD or source and pay for one

of these archaic machines, you’ll have little option but to use a TR909.

FIGURE 11.2

Thickening out the

snares (note how the

claps are slightly ahead

of time)

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The house kick is commonly kept quite tight by employing a short decay com-

bined with an immediate attack stage. This is to help keep the kick remain

dynamic but also prevents it from blurring and destroying the all-important inter-

play between kick and bass. Typically, a 90 Hz sine wave produces the best start-

ing point for a house kick with a positive pitch EG set a fast attack and a quick

decay to modulate the oscillator. Although using a pitch envelope produces the

best results, if the synth doesn’t offer one then a self-oscillating ﬁ lter will produce

the requisite sound and the decay can be controlled with the ﬁ lter’s envelope.

In many cases, this kick will also be augmented with a square waveform to pro-

duce a heavier transient that can then be later crushed with a compressor. For

this, the square wave requires a fast attack and decay stage so that it simply pro-

duces a ‘click’, once this is layered over the original sine you can experiment by

pitching it up or down to produce the required timbre. With this basic timbre

laid down, it’s then worth experimenting with the decay parameters of the square

and sine. Generally, a concave decay will produce the typical ‘housey’ character,

but for a deeper or darker house vibe a convex decay may be more appropriate.

Production-wise it’s worthwhile experimenting with small controlled amounts

of distortion to give the kick a little more character in the loop, but this must

be applied cautiously. If it’s applied too heavily, much of the bottom-end

weight of the kick can be lost, resulting in a loop with little or no energy. Also,

house kicks rely very heavily on compression to produce the archetypal hard-

ened sound. This should be applied now rather than when the rest of the loop

is in place since in the context of a typical house loop, this would mean that

the hi-hats, congas and toms are pumped with the compressor. This is gener-

ally avoided at this stage as the loop will be compressed along with the bass at

a later stage. Instead, it’s better to run just the 4/4 kick through the compressor

and experiment with the settings to produce a ‘hard’ sounding timbre.

Although the settings to use will depend on the sound you wish to achieve, a

good starting point is to use a low ratio combined with a high threshold and a

fast attack with a medium release. The attack will crush the initial transient of

the square producing a heavier ‘thump’, while experimenting with the release

can further change the character of the kick. If this is set quite long, the com-

pressor will not have recovered by the time the next kick begins and this can

often add a pleasing distortion to the sound. Once the kick has been squashed,

as a ﬁ nal stage it’s often worthwhile using the PSP Vintage Warmer to add more

warmth to the overall timbre.

Unlike the kicks, in the majority of cases the house snare is not sourced from

the TR909 but the E-Mu Drumulator due to its warmer, rounded sound. Similar

to the kick, however, the decay on the snare is kept particularly short to keep

with the short, sharp dynamics of the loop. This characteristic sound can be

produced through using either a triangle or square wave mixed with some pink

noise or saturation (distortion of the oscillator), both modulated with an amp

envelope using a fast attack and decay. Typically, pink noise is preferred over

white as it produces a heavier snare, but if this proves to be too heavy for the

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loop, then white noise may be a better option. Much of this noise will need

removing with a high-pass ﬁ lter to produce the archetypal house snare but in

some cases a band-pass ﬁ lter may be more preferable since this allows you to

modify the low and high content of the snare more accurately.

If at all possible, it’s worthwhile using a different envelope on the main oscil-

lator and the noise since this will allow you to keep the body of the snare (i.e.

the main oscillator) quite short and sharp but allow you to lengthen the decay

of the noise waveform. By doing so, the snare can be modiﬁ ed so that it rings

out after each hit, producing a timbre that can be modiﬁ ed to suit all genres

of house. Additionally (and provided that the synth allows it), it also permits

you to individually adjust the decay’s shape of the noise waveform. Generally

speaking, the best results are from employing a concave decay but as always it’s

best experimenting. Some house snares will also beneﬁ t from some judicious

amounts of pitch bend applied to the timbre, but rather than applying this

positively, negative application will invariably produce results that are more

typical to house music as it often produces a sucking/smacking sound.

If you use this latter technique, it’s sometimes prudent to remove the transient

of the snare in a wave editor and replace it with one that uses positive pitch

modulation. When the two are recombined, it results in a timbre that has a

good solid strike but decays upwards in pitch at the end of the hit. If this isn’t

possible, then a viable alternative is to sweep the pitch from low to high with

a sawtooth or sine LFO (provided that the saw starts low and moves high) set

to a fast rate. After this, small amounts of compression so that only the decay is

squashed (i.e. slow attack) will help to bring it up in volume so that it doesn’t

disappear into the rest of the mix.

Notably, it’s only the timbre for the kick and snare that truly deﬁ ne the house

sound and while in the majority of cases the remaining percussive and auxil-

iary instruments such as the open and closed hi-hats, congas, cowbells, claps,

tambourines, shakers and toms are sourced from the TR808 or 909, almost any

MIDI module will carry sounds that can be used. Plus, many modules today

carry the ubiquitous TR808 and 909 percussion sound-sets as part of the col-

lection anyway. Normally, none of these should be compressed as it can reduce

the high-frequency content, but having said that this is simply a convention

and you should always be willing to ‘break the rules ’, so to speak.

With the drum loop complete, it’s worthwhile cycling it over a number of bars

and experimenting with the synthesis parameters available to each instrument

to create a rhythm that gels together. This includes lengthening or shortening

the decay parameters, pitching the instruments up or down and applying subtle

effects such as reverb. The basic principle here is to make the loop sound as good

as possible before moving onto the subsequent processing. If it doesn’t seem to

gel properly together or seems wrong, then a common problem is that too many

elements are playing at once. Keep in mind that although house prides itself on

funky rhythms, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a complex loop to achieve this

and sometimes simply removing one element can suddenly make the loop work.

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Once the loop is ‘working ’ together, a common practice is to sample the loop

into audio and then run it through a compressor and noise gate. Whether

the gate or compressor comes ﬁ rst is a matter of individual taste but gener-

ally speaking the rhythm is compressed and then gated. As always, there are

no deﬁ nitive settings to use when compressing as it depends entirely upon the

sound you’re after. Having said that, a good starting point is to set the ratio

quite high with a low threshold and use a fast attack with a medium release.

Finally, set the make-up gain so that the loop is at the same volume when the

compressor is bypassed and begin experimenting with the release settings.

Shorter settings will force the compressor to pump and as a result make the

kicks more prominent in the loop while longer settings will be less evident.

There is no universal answer for the ‘correct’ settings, so you’ll have to try out

numerous conﬁ gurations until you reach the sound you need. Ideally, the best

compressors to use for this should be either valve or opto, as the second-order

harmonic distortion they introduce plays a large part in capturing the sound,

but if this is not possible, following the compressor with the PSP vintage

warmer should help things along nicely.

Following compression, it quite usual to feed the results into a noise gate and

use this to modify the loop further. One of the key elements of house loops

is that the sounds remain short and sharp, as this makes the entire loop feel

more dynamic since long sounds tend to mask the gaps between each hit

which lessens the impact as a whole. This also helps it to accentuate the often

funky bass rhythms that lie underneath as these tend to use quite long release

times to help ‘funk’ them up. As with compression, the settings to use on

a noise gate are up to your artistic interpretation, but as a start, set the thresh-

old so that it’s just lower than the kicks and snare, use a fast attack with a

medium hold time and then experiment with the release setting. The faster this

is set, the more the sounds will be cut, so you’ll need to ﬁ nd a happy medium

where they do not cut off too soon but do not decay for too long either. If

vocals are to be employed in the mix, it’s prudent to set the threshold lower so

that the open hats are also gated slightly. In house these are often at a similar

frequency to the vocals, and if they’re left too long they can mix with the vocals

which results in both drums and vocals loosing their dynamic edge. Finally,

remember that house music is a popular genre to remix, so it’s sensible to keep

a note of all compression or effects settings along with the original MIDI ﬁ les.

Most studios will create these ‘track’ sheets and it’s wise to do so too since

many remixers will expect a track sheet if they’re to remix the music.

Of course, it would be naive to say that all house beats are created through MIDI

and a proportionate amount of rhythms are acquired from sampling previous

house records. Indeed, these will have probably been sampled from other records,

which will have been sampled from previous house records, which will have been

sampled from other records, which will probably have been…well, you get the

picture. For obvious legal reasons I can’t condone this type of approach – it’s ille-

gal – but that’s not to say that dance artists don’t do it and so in the interests of

theory it would only be fair to cover some of the techniques they use.

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Almost every house record pressed to vinyl starts with just a drum loop, so

sourcing one isn’t particularly difﬁ cult, but the real skill comes from what you

do with it after it’s in the sampler. Fundamentally, it’s unwise to just sample

a loop and use it as it is. Even though there’s a very high chance that what

you’re sampling is already a sample of a sample of a sample of a sample

(which means that the original artists don’t have a leg to stand on for copyright

infringement), you might be unlucky and they may have actually written it in

MIDI. What’s more, it isn’t exactly artistically challenging; so after sampling a

loop it’s always worthwhile placing it into a sequencer and moving the parts

around a little to create your own variation.

Of course, this is the most simplistic approach and a number of artists will take

this a step further by ﬁ rst employing a transient designer to alter the transients

of the loop before placing it into a sample slicing programme. Using this tech-

nique, the loop does not have to be sourced from a house track as any drum

break can be manipulated to create the snappy sounds used in house.

Along with working with individual loops, many house producers also stack

up a series of drum loops to create heavier rhythms. Todd Terry and Armand

Van Helden are well known for dropping more powerful sounding kicks over

pre-sampled loops to add more of a heavy inﬂ uence. If you take this approach,

however, you need to exercise care that the kick starts in just the right place,

otherwise you’ll experience a phasing effect. Possibly the best way to circum-

vent this is to cut the bar into four segments where the kick occurs and then

trigger it alongside the new kick at the beginning of each segment to produce

a continual loop that stays in time. This also permits you to swap the quarter

bars around to create variations.

BASS

After the drums, the bass is commonly laid down since many genres of house

rely a great deal on the groove created from the interaction between the two. As

this genre of music has its roots ﬁ rmly embedded in disco, most house basses

tend to follow the atypical disco funk pattern, which can range from the rather

simplistic walking bass to more complex patterns produced by real bassists

improvising with the drum rhythms ( Figure 11.3 ).

The above bass line is only a very simple example, but house basses do not

have to be particularly complex and in many instances you’ll ﬁ nd that even an

incredibly unsophisticated bass can have additional groove injected into it by

simply changing the duration and timing of some notes ( Figure 11.4 ).

It’s important to note that the complexity of the bass often depends on the lead

instruments that are to lie over the top. Although some house music relies on

a particularly funky bass groove, the overlaying instruments are kept relatively

simple by comparison, whereas if the overlying elements are more complex

then the bass line should remain relatively simple. This is incredibly important

to comprehend since if both the bass and overlying instruments are playing

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FIGURE 11.3

Disco’s infamous

walking bass line

FIGURE 11.4

By changing the

duration and timing

of some notes, new

grooves can be created

complex grooves it can easily undermine the record, resulting in a miscellany

of melodies that are difﬁ cult to decipher. Thus, when producing house you

need to decide whether the centrepiece of the music is created by the bass or

the overlying elements. For instance, the piano in Laylo and Bushwacka’s ‘Love

Story’ produces the centrepiece of the music, while the bass acts as an under-

pinning and so is kept relatively simple. Conversely, tracks such as Kid Cr ème’s

‘ Down and Under ’, Stylophonic’s ‘Soul Reply ’ and Supermen Lovers ’ ‘Starlight’

use a more funky bass which is complimented with simple melodies playing

over the top ( Figure 11.5 ).

Some house basses, particularly those used in acid or deep house will follow

a simpler pattern similar to techno. Refer to the chapter on techno for more

information.

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As with the rhythms, the timbre used for the basses in house can vary wildly

from one track to the next. On the one hand it can be from a real bass guitar,

while on the other it could consist of nothing more than a low-frequency sine

wave pulsing away in the background to anything in between. Like much of

house music, this makes it incredibly difﬁ cult to pin down any particular tim-

bre, so what follows are a few synthesis tips to create the fundamental structure

of most house basses. After you have this, experimentation is the real key and

it’s worthwhile trying out new waveforms, envelope settings and modulation

options to create the bass you need.

The foundation of most synthetic house basses can be constructed with a sine

wave and sawtooth or pulse oscillator. The main waveform (the sine) provides

a deep body to the sound while the secondary oscillator can either provide

raspy (saw) or woody (square) overtones. If the sound is to be quite cutting

and evident in the mix then a saw is the best choice, while if you want to be

more rounded and simply lay down a groove for a lead to sit over then a square

is the better option. Listening carefully to the sound they produce together,

begin to detune the secondary oscillator against the ﬁ rst until the timbre exhib-

its the ‘fatness’ and harmonic content you want. Typically, this can be attained

by detuning ⫹ 5 or ⫹ 7 cents, but as always let your ears decide what’s best.

Nearly all bass timbres will start immediately on key press, so set the amps

attack to zero and then follow this with a fast decay, no sustain and a short

release. This produces a timbre that starts immediately and produces a small

pluck before entering the release stage. If the sound is too short for the melody

being played, increase the sustain and experiment with the release until it ﬂ ows

together to produce the rhythm you require. If the bass sounds like it’s ‘run-

ning away ’, try moving it a few ticks forward or back and play with the amps

attack stage. To add some movement and character to the sound, set the ﬁ lter

cut-off to low pass and set both the ﬁ lter cut-off and resonance to midway, and

FIGURE 11.5

The bass rhythm from

‘ Starlight ’ (notice how

the bass occurs before

the beat for additional

groove)