Future House

What it is

Gecko went to number one in Britain in 2014 and Oliver Heldens was still at school. The phrase had been coined a couple of years earlier by Tchami, who meant something specific by it: house tempo, deep house chords, and a bassline built out of a filtered growl rather than a plucked note. In practice it landed between the two things on either side of it. Quieter than big room and with more shoulder than deep house, and the drum programming reflects exactly that. Sixteenth hats with a little swing, a clap layered with a snap, a shaker doubling the offbeat, and the downbeat sixteenth left clear so the kick lands with nothing on top of it. Don Diablo and Curbi and a large Dutch contingent filled the charts with this for about three years, and the bass patch is still among the most copied in dance music.

What it sounds like

Rolling and mid-forward. Sixteenth hats at a swing setting just past straight, so the offbeat sixteenths land a few milliseconds late and the loop rolls rather than marches. The kick is medium, the clap is bright and short, and a shaker sits under the offbeat. The bass is the point: a saw or a square through a low-pass with plenty of resonance, the cutoff moved by an envelope and often by a second slow LFO, so a single held note changes vowel while it plays. Chords are a warm electric piano or a filtered pad. There is far more low mid here than in big room, and the mastering is deliberately less loud.

Key elements

• The growl bassA saw through a resonant low-pass with the envelope amount near maximum and a decay around 200ms, so every note opens and closes. Add a slow LFO on the resonance and it starts to sound like a vowel.
• Hats with the downbeat outEleven closed hat hits a bar, on the e, the and and the a of each beat, with the sixteenth the kick lands on left clear. It gives the kick a clean top and it is the small edit that makes the pattern roll.
• Swing at 0.53Barely past straight. Straight sixteenths at this tempo sound like tech house, and the tiny amount of drag is what separates the two on hearing rather than on paper.
• Clap plus snapA house clap layered with a finger snap high-passed at 1kHz, with a ghost at 60 on the and of 2 in bar two. The snap is what lets a backbeat survive underneath a loud bass.
• Open hat on the and of 4 onlyTwo in the loop, one at the end of each bar, with the closed hat pulled off those steps. Four offbeat open hats would turn the whole thing into a trance record.

How to get them

• BassOne saw, 24dB low-pass with resonance around 60 percent, envelope amount high and decay near 200ms, then a slow LFO on the cutoff at about a bar and a half so it never repeats exactly. Mono below 120Hz.
• Set the swing to 0.53Just enough to hear. Program the hats after the groove is set and check the offbeat sixteenths against the bass, so the two drag together rather than against one another.
• HatsThe e at 40, the and at 54 and the a at 46 of each beat, and nothing on the downbeat sixteenth. Pull the hat off the and of 4 and put an open hat there instead.
• KickAround 200ms with the click at 2.5kHz kept low. It should not be the loudest thing in the mix, because this style is mastered several decibels quieter than the festival end of the family.
• ChordsA Rhodes or a filtered saw pad playing sevenths, ducked 8dB with a 150ms release. Two chords is usually plenty and the bass will supply all the movement you need.
• PickupOne kick at 86 on the very last sixteenth of the second bar. Almost inaudible on its own and the whole reason the loop feels continuous rather than stitched.

Reference points

Oliver Heldens, Tchami, Don Diablo, Curbi, Mercer, and the Spinnin Deep, Confession and Hexagon catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.