Deep House
The chords come forward and the drums get quieter about it.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Everything here is quieter than the rest of the family on purpose. Kick around 104 rather than 118, clap in the high 80s, and the closed hat playing only the sixteenth offbeats at 46 and 58. The open hat lands on the and of 1 and the and of 3 and nowhere else, so the second and fourth offbeats stay empty and the bar reads as wide rather than driving. The conga sits at the and of 2 and the a of 3. Bar two adds a conga on the and of 4, lifts the last closed hat to 66 and drops a soft pickup kick on the final sixteenth.
What it is
Deep house came out of the same Chicago rooms as everything else here, but pointed at Larry Heard rather than at the front row. The Mr Fingers records of 1986 put jazz voicings and a Juno pad where a piano stab would have gone, dropped the level of the whole rhythm section, and let a track breathe for nine minutes. New York, then Detroit and Berlin, ran with it. A lot of music that is not deep house has since claimed the name, so it is worth being blunt: deep house is quiet, harmonically busy and slow to change, and a record that announces itself in the first eight bars is probably something else. Soulful house is the close cousin, with a live-sounding vocal in front and much the same drum programming underneath.
What it sounds like
Soft. The kick is round rather than clicky, the clap sits well behind the front of the mix, and the hats tick in sixteenths at a volume you have to lean towards. Above them: seventh and ninth chords on a Rhodes or a warm pad, a bass that walks a little instead of holding the root, and a conga or two placed off the strong beats. Reverb is used as depth rather than as an effect, so parts sit at different distances from the listener instead of all being equally wet.
Key elements
- Chords with extensionsMinor sevenths, ninths and elevenths rather than triads. The harmony is the reason the genre exists, so it has to carry more than three notes.
- A quiet rhythm sectionThe whole kit sits around ten decibels below where a peak-time record would put it. That headroom is what the chords fill.
- Offbeat sixteenth hatsThe closed hat plays the e and the a rather than the beat, so the pulse comes from the kick and the motion comes from the hats.
- Open hat on 1 and 3 onlyHalf the usual house allocation. Leaving the second and fourth offbeats empty is what makes the bar feel twice as wide.
- CongasA hand drum figure placed away from the grid's strong points, quiet enough to read as the room rather than as a percussion part.
- A bassline that movesNot one root note per chord. Something with a passing note in it, played on a warm sine or a sampled electric bass.
How to get them
- KickLong decay, no audible click, weight around 45Hz. Roll the top off above 4kHz so there is nothing sharp about it at all.
- ChordsPlay them on a Rhodes or a Juno, then run the whole thing through a light tape saturator and a low-pass around 8kHz. Voice them in the octave above middle C so they stay clear of the bass.
- HatsClosed hat on the sixteenth offbeats at velocity 46 and 58 alternating. If it sounds too quiet soloed, it is probably right in the mix.
- CongasTwo hits a bar, at the and of 2 and the a of 3, panned slightly apart and sent to a short room. They should sound like they are in the corner of it.
- Reverb as depthA long hall on the chords, a short plate on the clap, nothing on the kick. Different reverb lengths on different elements is what makes a mix feel deep rather than simply wet.
- Let it runWrite sixteen bars before you change anything. A deep house arrangement that moves every eight bars is a tech house arrangement wearing the wrong label.
Reference points
Larry Heard, Kerri Chandler, Ron Trent, Moodymann, Theo Parrish, and labels like Prescription and Guidance. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.