Progressive House
Sixteen bars of build, two beats of air, and a chord you can see from the back.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Kick on all four in both bars with a pickup sixteenth at 86 on the final step, nine in the loop. Clap on 2 and 4, plus a push at 78 on the and of 4 in bar two. The offbeat open hat is trance furniture and there is no point pretending otherwise: seven of the eight offbeats at 90 to 96, the last one given up to that push. Underneath it the closed hat is ghosts only, one at 44 on the a of each beat, with an extra at 38 on the e of 4 in bar two and the final one lifted to 48. Nine closed hits, none audible on their own. Then the ride, which is silent through the whole of bar one and plays seven eighths across bar two at 46 to 58. That entrance is a progressive house arrangement compressed into two bars: the same parts, one more of them, and no increase in volume anywhere.
What it is
Madison Square Garden, December 2011, and Swedish House Mafia are playing a room that size on a style which a few years earlier lived in Ibiza back rooms. The word progressive had been attached to British dance music for fifteen years by then and meant patience. What Axwell, Ingrosso, Angello, Avicii and Eric Prydz did with it meant something nearer the opposite. Tempo sits at 126 to 128, there are four chords, and the whole record is organised around a single moment. What is genuinely progressive about it is the approach: parts arrive one at a time across sixteen or thirty two bars, a filter opens over the whole span, and then everything cuts out for two beats. That gap is the invention, and almost every festival record made since has copied it.
What it sounds like
Warm where big room is hard. The kick is medium length with a soft click, the clap has a real plate behind it, and the offbeat open hat is inherited straight from trance. Underneath the open hat there is only a ghost sixteenth on the a of each beat, so the top end stays quiet until the ride arrives. Above the drums: a plucked saw playing eighths through a dotted delay, a piano doubling it an octave up, and a supersaw pad that only appears after the drop. Everything harmonic is ducked by the kick with a slow release, so the pad swells back in over the course of a beat. Reverb is long and generous, which is what a big room does to a record like this anyway.
Key elements
- Four chords and a pluckOne progression, sixteen bars long, played by a short saw pluck through a dotted eighth delay. The melody is the top note of those chords rather than a separate line written over them.
- The offbeat open hatSeven of the eight offbeats at 90 to 96. That is trance furniture and this end of the genre never pretended otherwise; what changed is the tempo and what is playing over the top of it.
- Ghost hats and nothing elseOne closed hat at 38 to 48 on the a of each beat, and no other sixteenth activity in the loop. It exists to keep the offbeat from sounding like a metronome, not to be heard.
- A ride across bar twoThe ride is silent through bar one and then plays seven eighths across bar two at 46 to 58. In a full arrangement it arrives halfway through a sixteen bar block, which is how these records lift without anything getting louder.
- Two beats of air before the dropCut everything on the last two beats of the build. No riser, no reverse cymbal, nothing carried over. The drop is bigger because the two beats in front of it were not.
- Slow sidechain release180 to 220ms on everything harmonic. Longer than tech house and shorter than a pad swell, and it is what makes the record breathe at this particular tempo.
How to get them
- KickAround 300ms, click at 1.8kHz, body at 55Hz, with a pitch envelope dropping a fifth over the first 30ms. Compress it lightly rather than clipping it, because this is not big room.
- PluckTwo saws detuned 12 cents into a low-pass with a 140ms decay and about 40 percent envelope. Send it to a dotted eighth delay at 25 percent feedback and high-pass the return at 700Hz.
- HatsOpen hat on the offbeats at 90 to 96, one closed ghost at 44 on the a of each beat underneath, and the rest of the sixteenths left alone. Put the two hats in a choke group so the ghost cuts the tail.
- BuildAdd one element every four bars across sixteen: hat, ride, second pluck, snare ramp. Automate a high-pass on the whole drum bus climbing from 20Hz to 400Hz over the final eight.
- The gapMute everything for the last two beats. Let a single reverb tail from the snare ramp fall through it and nothing else. Two beats is right; four beats is a different record entirely.
- ClapOne clap and one snare layered, into a 1.8 second plate high-passed at 500Hz, with the plate return ducked by the kick. Without that duck the tail fills the bar and the kick disappears.
- Write the four chords firstIf the progression does not work on a piano at half speed, the supersaw is not going to rescue it. This is the part of the style that separates the records people still remember.
Reference points
Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Eric Prydz, Alesso, Sebastian Ingrosso, and the Size, Refune and Pryda catalogues. 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.