Our recent sample pack Essential House is on track to becoming one of our most popular releases yet! So, to help you get even more out of this stellar pack, we’ve put together a number of useful tips to help you take your House productions to the next level! In part 1 of this blog post we touch upon all the essential elements that your House productions need, like groove, drums, vocals and much more!
If you haven’t yet, you can check out the pack here: Essential House
1. Adding Groove
This is one of the most important aspects of producing house music, the “essential” which makes you shake your head or clap your feet. The easiest way to add groove to your production is with drums, that gives the main drive of the beat. Apply a certain swing or manual shifting forward or backwards from the grid of certain percussion elements can add that feeling. Your drum beat won’t sound that robotic this way, altough we talk about ‘electronic’ music here.
2. Kick & Bass
Staying in the drums department, the kick has a really important role in house music. I like to use punchy drums with a short attack because the baseline can integrate better, adding more low frequencies to the whole drive of the beat.
3. Simplicity is ‘KEY’
Most of the baseline rhythms are pretty simple, consisting of 3-4 notes, repeating and creating a movement. That’s why is also called “loop-based” music, because it has the tendency to be created from small parts (loops) which keep repeating a lot, but in the same time adding new elements every 8 or 16 bars gives the feeling of the track evolving.
4. Scales & chords
The use of chords is very important in House Music and very often used, as piano chords or stab chords. Depending of which feeling you to obtain, the use of major scales works best for happy “vibes” while minor scale works better for “moody” or darker gooves.
5. Vocal chops
The vocal rhythmic chops play an important part in house & tech house, most of the time add the main drive of groove and it’s also an easy way to spice up your track. Most of the times, the lower tones are the best addition to your house track, so go for pitching down a couple of semi-tones the vocal you use.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog, filled with more essential tips & tricks, coming soon!
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