Tech house is a hybrid of house and techno, built for the dancefloor and focused on groove more than melody. It sits around 124 to 128 BPM with a tight four-on-the-floor kick, a rolling plucky bassline that does most of the driving, crisp swung hats and percussion, and only minimal stabs and vocal chops for colour. It is warmer and funkier than techno, and more stripped back than house. 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.
Tech house is a hybrid of house and techno, usually around 124 to 128 BPM, built for the dancefloor and focused on groove more than melody. It keeps house's warmth and swing but strips the parts back toward techno, so the kick, the bass and the percussion carry the track and there is little in the way of big chords or a lead. The feel is warm, funky, hypnotic and stripped back, sitting halfway between house warmth and techno drive.
It is often associated with UK clubs and, over the last decade or so, with festival main stages, though people draw its boundaries loosely. Because it grows out of house, the foundations are the same. If you have not built a plain house groove before, the house music guide covers the four-on-the-floor kick, the off-beat hat and the arrangement that tech house sits on. Tech house is largely what you get when you take that foundation, tighten it, and take most of the melody out.
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 124 to 128 BPM | The club range, a touch faster and tighter than deep house |
| Kick | Four on the floor, tight | One punchy, dry hit per beat, the anchor everything leans on |
| Offbeat bass | Rolling, syncopated, plucky | Sits in the gaps around the kick and drives the groove |
| Hats and shakers | Crisp, with swing | The shuffle that makes it roll rather than march |
| Percussion | Congas, bongos, clicks | Extra swing and movement layered around the beat |
| Stabs and bleeps | Short and minimal | A little colour and hook, not a full melody |
| Vocal chops | Chopped snippets | A phrase or word used as a hook or a texture |
The quickest way to place tech house is against its two parents. It is more minimal and more techno-leaning than house, with fewer chords and less vocal, and it is warmer, funkier and groovier than techno, which tends to be harder, colder and more machine-like. Tech house keeps the human swing of house while borrowing the tight, repetitive drive of techno.
| Style | Leans on | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| House | Chords, piano, vocals, warmth | Soulful and full |
| Tech house | Groove, rolling bass, percussion | Warm and funky but stripped back |
| Techno | Repetition, machines, drive | Harder and colder |
Put a tight four-on-the-floor kick on every beat, add crisp hi-hats and shakers on and between the beats, and give them a little swing so the whole thing shuffles rather than marches. In tech house the groove is the track, so the kick and the percussion have to lock together and feel good on their own before anything else goes on top.
One kick on every beat is the engine, same as in any house track, but in tech house it is tighter and drier. Reach for a short, punchy kick with a clean low end and little ring, so it hits and gets out of the way of the bass. Keep it steady and keep it in the same place every bar. It is the anchor everything is measured against, and it is what lets the bass and percussion play around it without the groove falling apart.
Layer crisp closed hats and a shaker over the kick, with an open hat on the off-beats for the house bounce, then add small percussion such as congas, bongos or clicks to fill in the spaces. Keep each sound short and clean so they stack up into a busy, rolling pattern without turning to mush. This percussion layer is where a lot of the tech house character lives, so it is worth spending time on it rather than treating it as an afterthought.
A straight, gridded pattern marches; a little swing makes it roll. Nudge the off-beat hats and the sixteenth-note hats and shakers slightly late so they fall a touch behind the grid, and the groove starts to shuffle and swing the way tech house does. A small amount goes a long way, so add it until the loop pulls you in and stop before it starts to feel sloppy.
Write a rolling, syncopated bassline that sits in the gaps around the kick, often short and plucky, and repeat it until it becomes a hook. This offbeat bass is what drives a tech house track, so it carries the groove far more than any chord or melody does, and getting it right is most of the job.
A tech house bassline is usually short, repeated and syncopated, placed just off the main beats so it interlocks with the kick instead of colliding with it. A plucky, short bass sound with a fast decay works well, because each note stops before the next kick and the two trade back and forth, which is what gives the bass its rolling feel. Keep it in one low register so the low end stays clear. 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 tech house tracks sidechain the bass to the kick, so the bass ducks for a moment every time the kick lands and then swells back. That keeps the low end clean and turns the pumping swell itself into part of the groove. The sidechain compression guide walks through how to set it up. Use it when the low end feels crowded rather than as a rule, and let the bass and the kick interlock so the groove rolls forward.
Leave the melody out. Instead of big chords or a lead, use short stabs, bleeps and chopped vocal snippets for colour, and let the groove and the bass do the work. Tech house is stripped back on purpose, so most of the space above the beat stays empty, and the parts you do add are small and repeated rather than sung or played out in full.
A stab is a single short chord played briefly and cut off; a bleep is a short synth note or blip; a vocal chop is a word or a phrase sliced up and used as rhythm. Any of these, dropped in off the beat and repeated, gives the track a hook without ever becoming a melody. Keep them sparse, keep them low in the mix, and let them come and go rather than run all the way through.
The mood comes as much from what you leave out. Where house fills the space with piano and vocals, tech house holds back so the groove stays warm, funky and hypnotic. When a section feels flat, the fix is usually in the groove and the bass, the swing and where the notes sit, not in another layer piled on top.
Loop just the tight kick, the swung hats and the rolling bassline for a minute. If those three already roll and pull you in, the track will work, and the stabs, bleeps and vocal chops are the colour on top. 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 part.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The slow part is often the bass itself: finding a rolling, syncopated 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 rolling, syncopated bass note movement a tech house track rides on. 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 bass synth, 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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