Chicago House
The drum machine that started it, still running on 2 and 4.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Kick on all four, clap on 2 and 4, and the open hat only on the and of 2 and the and of 4 rather than on every offbeat. The closed hat plays eighths around it with a sixteenth ghost at 38 after beats 1 and 3, and the cowbell covers the and of 1 and the and of 3 so the bar never has a hole in it. Bar two adds a ghost clap a sixteenth after beat 4 and a pickup kick on the and of 4, which is the kind of edit those records made by hand on a mixer. Swing is at 0.56, close to where a 909 Shuffle knob lands.
What it is
House started in Chicago around 1984, in rooms where DJs were already editing disco records on reel to reel and then, once the drum machines got cheap, replaced the drums entirely. A Roland TR-707 or TR-909 played the whole rhythm section, a second-hand Juno or a bassline box played everything else, and the records went out on Trax and DJ International with almost no budget behind them. That poverty is audible and it is the point: the arrangements are long, the parts are few, and the groove has to carry eight minutes on its own. Everything else in this family descends from records made this way.
What it sounds like
Dry and mechanical in a way later house deliberately softened. The kick is short and clicky rather than deep, the clap is a 707 clap with its little burst of noise and no tail, and the hats have the metallic sizzle of a 909 rather than anything sampled. On top: a two-finger organ or piano riff, a vocal that is often one repeated line, and a bassline that rarely leaves the root. Reverb, where there is any, is a spring or a cheap plate, and the whole thing sits close to the front of the speaker.
Key elements
- Four on the floorA kick on every beat, tuned high and cut short. Chicago kicks click before they thump, which is why the records still read on a small system.
- The 707 clapOne clap on 2 and 4 with a short burst of noise and no reverb tail worth the name. It is the sound of the machine rather than the sound of hands.
- Offbeat open hat, but only twiceThe open hat lands on the and of 2 and the and of 4 rather than on all four offbeats. Putting one on every offbeat is a European convention that arrived later.
- CowbellA 707 or 808 cowbell on a syncopated figure, doing the job a rhythm guitar would have done on a disco record.
- One idea, heldA single riff, a single vocal line, and eight minutes of arrangement built from muting and unmuting parts on a mixer.
How to get them
- KickStart from a 909 kick with the decay about a third of the way up and the attack click clearly audible. Tune it near the root, then high-pass under 40Hz so the click carries the weight instead of the sub.
- ClapUse a 707 clap if you have one, and resist reverb. A short room at 0.4 seconds, mixed low, is already more than these records had.
- HatsSampled 909 hats with a short closed decay. Put the open hat and the closed hat in one choke group so the open hat stops dead when the next closed hat lands.
- SwingPush the offbeat sixteenths about 56 percent of the way to the triplet. The 909 called this Shuffle, and it is most of why these records feel handmade.
- BassA Juno or a sampled electric bass playing root notes in eighths, sitting slightly behind the kick. Keep everything below 100Hz mono.
- Arrange with the mute buttonsWrite one sixteen bar loop containing every part, then perform the arrangement by muting and unmuting in real time. That is literally how the records were made.
Reference points
Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles, Jamie Principle, Farley Jackmaster Funk, and the Trax and DJ International catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to copy.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.