House music is a collection of styles of electronic dance music, the earliest forms of which originated in the United States in the early- to mid-1980s. The name is said to derive from the Warehouse nightclub in Chicago, where the resident DJ, Frankie Knuckles, mixed classic disco and European synthpop recordings. Club regulars referred to his selection of music as "house" music. However, since Frankie was not creating new music at that time, it has been argued that Chip E. in his early recording "It's House" defined this new form of electronic music and gave it the name "House Music".
The common element of most house music is a 4/4 beat (a prominent kick drum on every beat) generated by a drum machine or other electronic means (such as a sampler), together with a continuous, repeating (usually also electronically generated) bassline. Typically added to this foundation are electronically generated sounds and samples of music such as jazz, blues and synth pop, as well as additional percussion.
House music is uptempo music for dancing and has a comparatively narrow tempo range, generally falling between 118 beats per minute (bpm) and 135 bpm, with 127 bpm being about average since 1996.Far and away the most important element of the house drumbeat is the (usually very strong, synthesized, and heavily equalized) kick drum pounding on every quarter note of the 4/4 bar, often having a "dropping" effect on the dancefloor. Commonly this is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts (aka breakdowns). Add to this basic kick pattern hihats on the eighth-note offbeats (though any number of sixteenth-note patterns are also very common) and a snare drum and/or clap on beats 2 and 4 of every bar, and you have the basic framework of the house drumbeat.
This pattern is derived from so-called "four-on-the-floor" dance drumbeats of the 1960s and especially the 1970's disco drummers. Due to the way house music was developed by DJs mixing records together, producers commonly layer sampled drum sounds to achieve a larger-than-life sound, filling out the audio spectrum and tailoring the mix for large club sound systems.Techno and trance, the two primary dance music genres that developed alongside house music in the mid 1980s and early 1990s respectively, can share this basic beat infrastructure, but usually eschew house's live-music-influenced feel and black or Latin music influences in favor of more synthetic sound sources and approach. As new recordings adhering to this general style emerged, The house genre divided into a number of subcategories and one of them is probably the reason you are here: Deep House Style.
Deep house is a style of house music. It is loosely defined by the following characteristics that distinguish it from most other forms of house music:
- relatively slow tempo (110-125 bpm);
- de-emphasized percussion, including:
simpler drum machine programming;
gentle transitions and fewer "build-ups";
less "thumpy" bass drum sound;
less pronounced hi-hats on the off-beat;
- sustained chords or other tonal elements that span multiple bars;
- increased use of reverb, delay, and filter effects;
- a featured solo R&B vocalist, often male, exhibiting soul, jazz, and/or gospel influences;
- jazz influences or samples in the instrumentation.
Not all of these need to be present or fully satisfied in order for house music to be called "deep house"; fans of the style typically just identify it by its subjective "feel" rather than by the presence or absence of specific elements. The term "deep house" first appeared in the music press in the late 1980s, usually in reference to the music of Larry Heard.
