Deep House production down to five essential elements.
Managing these will see you well on the way to producing the kind of tracks that hover flirtatiously over the border between night-club banger and eyes-closed.
1. Tempo
Deep House is a highly varied genre, and as such, quite a wide range of tempi are employed across the spectrum. I tend to find that 123 Bpm is a nice starting point, as you can nudge the tempo up or down depending on the sorts of sounds you end up using, or on how complex the higher percussive parts get.
Most Deep House tempi are about 122-123 Bpm, but rarely below 120 Bpm. However, it is more common to find tracks running at up to 130 Bpm, particularly at the more commercial end of the spectrum.
2. Groove
Example MIDI files demonstrating the techniques in this section can be found at the bottom of the page.*
The rhythmic structure of Deep House is quite classic in the way that different drum parts are laid out across the main drum loop. That is to say, there is a four-on-the-floor kick, with snares on beats 2 and 4. The off-beats, on every other 1/8 note, are typically marked with open hi-hats, whilst closed hi-hats flutter and skit across the high end on every 1/16 note not already occupied with an open hat, filling out the space.
That being said, it is the way this basic rhythmic template is embellished that really lets the originality of the producer shine through. Rimshots, clipped or alternative snares, stabs and small percussion sounds, etc., are added in highly syncopated positions within the loop to inject some funk, and respond to the main groove as driven by the bass line.
The basic, 1/4 note kick pattern of Deep House can be developed with added hits at key points in the track. It's perhaps a little cliché to double up the kicks to 1/8 notes in the final bar before a new section, lift or drop, but the technique does wonders for building excitement and making the track's form satisfying. Use the technique in a more interesting way to anticipate the adding or removal of a layer, perhaps at an unexpected point. Everyone expects some shifting of the layers at the 16-bar mark, but messing with your listeners' expectations and dropping some 1/8 note kicks crossing the bar line and resolving onto the 16 | 2 mark, for example, can make for the kind of surprise that makes your productions stand out. Accenting the end of a 4-bar loop with an extra kick towards the end of the last bar is another good trick to vary the rhythm a little.
3. Drum Hits
The main groove in a Deep House track is created by the interplay between the bass line, rhythmic embellishments in the drums and synth/ keys parts. Once we have the notes and groove schematic sketched out, it's time to start finessing the sounds.
Deep House drums tend to be based on the sound palette we all know as the TR-909. For the kick, I tend to use a medium-length decay, with the attack portion of the hit having a short, downwards pitch envelope. If the kick's amplitude envelope is too short, it'll sound like Micro House, and if it's too long, it'll sound like Trap. You'll know it when you hear it!
Snares tend to be a little bigger in more commercial Deep House. I prefer to start with a noisy, burst-type sound - either enveloped white noise, a 909 clap or the snare from a Boss DR100. On top of this, we can add character using a sampled tambourine, for example, and tie the layers together using bit crushing.
4. Basses
Bass sounds in Deep House tend to either be quite forward in the mix - working almost as a riff - or more muted, underpinning the groove. The difference here is one of timbre.
More forward bass sounds contain more harmonics - so using FM synthesis is a good way to achieve this sound. In Native's FM8, for example, we could modulate the carrier operator with ratios at odd-integer multiples of the carrier frequency. This will give the bass a lot of higher harmonics, which we can filter after the attack portion of the note, giving us a rounded bass sound.
Backgrounded bass sounds in Deep House tend to be sine waves, or rather saw waves filtered to the point of almost being sine waves. As an alternative, I like to use two slightly detuned square waves, heavily filtered to near-sine wave quality.
5. Background Sounds
One of the most important aspects of Deep House is the sheer amount of background sound. These parts add depth, variety and 'lift' to tracks, whilst not really being something that the listener is expected to actively listen to. I'm talking about things like quiet synth arpeggios which are added during the second 16-bar round of a 32-bar section, or a second shaker part which only appears on the repetition of a section. These kinds of tricks are almost a psychoacoustic engineering of the listening experience, and in Deep House, they can be the crucial difference between a fresh sound and a tiresome one.
They work by subtly shifting the ensemble of sounds that the track delivers when we have come to build expectations based on what has already been heard. Spaces that were there have been filled, but as the addition of these new layers coincides with other major events in the structure of a track, they are not so noticeable. The effect is that energy and excitement within a track are heightened almost subliminally.
This technique isn't exactly new - Motown producers knew very well the benefits of adding some judicious sparkle at key junctures, usually with large numbers of small percussion overdubs. However, it is the great number of these overdubs, and how you group and deploy them, that lets you really play with musical tension. Arps, small percussion, field recordings and reverb washes can all be snuck in singly, and then cut or re-added in new combinations to sculpt the ideal arc of musical excitement across the length of a track.
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