House is a small number of parts locked to a steady beat: a four-on-the-floor kick, an off-beat open hi-hat that gives it the bounce, a syncopated bassline, chord stabs or piano, and a clap on beats 2 and 4. It grew out of disco and soul, and it still carries that feel. Here is what each part is and how they fit.
Works in any DAW, with any drum sounds and any synth or piano, hardware or software. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
House is a steady four-on-the-floor kick, roughly 120 to 128 BPM, with an off-beat open hi-hat riding on top, a syncopated bassline underneath, and chord stabs or piano for colour. The roots are in disco and soul, which is where the warmth and the swing come from. Take the off-beat hat and the bounce away and you have a plain dance beat; put them back and it reads as house.
The ingredients are consistent from track to track. Get them locked together first, then the style you build on top is a matter of which parts you lean on:
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 120 to 128 BPM | The house range, steady and danceable |
| Kick | Four on the floor | One hit on every beat, the anchor everything leans on |
| Open hat | On the off-beats | Sat between the kicks, this is the bounce that says house |
| Clap or snare | Beats 2 and 4 | The backbeat, the hit you clap along to |
| Bassline | Syncopated, locked to the kick | Bounces under the groove, often sidechained to the kick |
| Chords | Stabs or piano | 7th and 9th chords for the soulful, disco colour |
| Vocals | Chops or samples | A hook or a texture lifted from a sung phrase |
House is really a family, not one sound, and the differences are mostly about which of these parts you push forward. A few of the common branches:
| Subgenre | What changes | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Deep house | Lush 7th and 9th chords, softer drums, warm pads | Soulful and laid back |
| Tech house | Stripped drums, minimal stabs, a rolling bass | Tight and club-focused |
| Disco house | Sampled strings, guitars and vocals from old records | Bright and organic |
| Acid house | A TB-303 squelch line over the four-on-the-floor kick | Raw and hypnotic |
Put a kick on every beat, an open hi-hat on the off-beats between the kicks, and a clap or snare on beats 2 and 4. That off-beat open hat is the single most recognisable part of the groove, and it is what separates house from a plain straight beat.
One kick on every quarter note is the engine. Keep it steady and solid and do not let it move around much; it is the anchor everything else is measured against, and the reason a house track feels like it is walking forward at a constant pace. A short, punchy kick with a clear low end usually works better here than a long boomy one, which fights the bass.
Place an open hi-hat on the off-beats, halfway between each kick, so it answers the kick and the two of them trade back and forth. That call and response is the bounce people mean when they say a track sounds like house. Close the hat again before the next kick so the two do not blur together. Add closed hats or a shaker on the sixteenths if you want more drive, but the open hat on the off-beat is the part that has to be there.
A clap or a snare on beats 2 and 4 gives you the backbeat, the hit you would clap along to. Layering a clap over a short snare is common and gives the hit more body. After that, a little swing or shuffle, nudging the off-beat hats and the hats on the sixteenths slightly late, is what gives the groove its human, disco roll rather than a stiff, gridded feel. A small amount goes a long way.
Write a syncopated bassline that locks to the kick, often sidechained so it ducks out of the way each time the kick lands, and play chord stabs or piano over it using 7th and 9th chords for the soulful, disco colour. The bass and the chords together are what carry the harmony while the drums carry the groove.
A house bassline is short, syncopated and repeated, sitting in the gaps around the kick rather than on top of it. Keep it in one register so the low end stays clear, and place the notes just off the main beats so the bass and the kick interlock instead of colliding. There is a full walkthrough of writing one in the bassline guide, which covers locking to the kick and repeating a short figure until it becomes a hook.
Because the kick and the bass share the same low frequencies, many house tracks sidechain the bass to the kick, so the bass dips in volume for a moment every time the kick hits and then swells back. That does two things: it keeps the low end clear, and the pumping swell itself becomes part of the groove. The sidechain compression guide walks through how to set it up. It is a common house move, not a requirement, so use it when the low end feels crowded.
The classic house chord sound is a short stab, a chord played briefly and cut off, or a piano or organ line. Using 7th and 9th chords rather than plain triads is a large part of what gives house its soulful, jazzy warmth, and it is a direct inheritance from disco. Play the stabs off the beat, in the gaps the kick and bass leave, so they add movement without crowding the low end. A vocal chop or a short sample lifted from a sung phrase, dropped in as a hook or a texture, is another house staple that sits in the same space as the stabs.
Build the track in 8 and 16 bar phrases, bringing parts in and out at those boundaries, and use filter sweeps to build and release energy across them. House is arranged for a dance floor and a DJ, so it changes on a regular grid you can feel coming, with long plain intros and outros to mix in and out of.
The phrase length is the unit of the arrangement. The ear expects something to change every 8 or 16 bars, so add a part, drop a part, or open a filter on those lines and the track feels like it is moving even when the core groove never changes. Change things off the grid and it feels accidental instead of intended.
Loop the kick, the off-beat open hat and the bassline on their own for a minute. If those three already bounce and pull you in, the track will work, and the chords and vocals are icing. If it feels stiff or flat before the minute is up, the fix is in the groove and the bass, the swing and where the notes sit, not in another layer on top.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The slow part is the writing itself: finding a syncopated bass figure that locks to your kick and grooves, then getting it into the track as notes you can still edit.
REHEAT is a writing tool that generates the part for you. It writes the syncopated basslines that drive a house track, and the squelchy acid lines if you are going for an acid-house feel. Find a groove you like and you have two ways to use it: drag the MIDI straight onto a track in your DAW, or play it live through your own synth with the REHEAT MIDI DRIVER, locked to your kick. Either way the notes are yours to keep, to change the key, the sound or the timing later.
That is the point of writing the part rather than printing the audio. A bassline is worth more as notes than as a recording, because the notes survive every later decision about the sound and the arrangement.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. It runs as an Audio Unit, a VST3 and an AAX. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW too, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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