Tech House
House arrangement, techno restraint, and everything on the grid.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Straight at 0.5, and it should stay there. Kick on all four with a pickup on the last sixteenth of bar two. Clap on 2 and 4. The hat part is where the character is: an offbeat closed hat at 84, a downbeat tick at 52, and a ghost on the a of every beat at 36, so the bar reads as sixteenths without ever getting loud. One open hat per bar on the and of 4, with the closed hat pulled off that step. The woodblock sits on the a of 2 in both bars and adds a single hit on the and of 3 in bar two.
What it is
The compromise that outlasted both its parents. It keeps the house kick and the house arrangement, borrows techno's dry sound design and its refusal to put a chorus anywhere, and aims at the middle of a DJ set rather than the peak. It came out of London in the middle nineties through Terry Francis and Eddie Richards, went to Ibiza, and has been the default sound of a large part of the club circuit ever since. Nothing about it swings: the grid is straight and the interest comes from where the percussion lands rather than from how the bar feels. A record with a bassline doing something clever on the sixteenths and no chords worth mentioning is usually this.
What it sounds like
Tight and dry. Short kick, short clap, hats with barely any decay, and a bass playing syncopated sixteenths where a deep house bass would hold a note. Percussion is small and wooden rather than warm. Reverbs are short and applied to single elements rather than across the mix. Vocals, if there are any, are one processed phrase used as a hook. Everything is edited to the grid and audibly so, and that is the aesthetic rather than a limitation.
Key elements
- Straight, no swingThe grid is dead straight at 0.5. Tech house that swings has turned into jackin' house, which is a different record for a different room.
- A syncopated bassThe bassline plays sixteenths off the beat while the kick holds the floor. That interlock between the two is the actual hook of the genre.
- Minimal open hatOne open hat per bar, on the and of 4. Four offbeat open hats push harder than this tempo and this much restraint can carry.
- Woodblock or claveA small, dry percussion sound on one or two syncopated sixteenths per bar. It is the only thing moving in the top end and it should stay that way.
- Sixteenth ghost hatsClosed hats on the a of each beat at velocity 36, under a loud offbeat. The bar reads as sixteenths without getting any louder.
How to get them
- KickShort, around 120 milliseconds end to end, weight at 50Hz and a click near 3kHz. Cut everything above 6kHz so the hats own the top of the mix.
- BassProgram sixteenths that avoid the downbeat entirely: the e, the a, the and. Use a short plucked sound and let the filter envelope do most of the work.
- HatsOffbeat closed hat at 84, downbeat tick at 52, ghost on the a at 36. Save the open hat for the and of 4 and pull the closed hat off that step.
- PercussionOne dry woodblock on the a of 2, and a second hit somewhere in bar two. Two hits are enough, and a busy percussion part turns this into tribal house.
- Sidechain lightlyDuck the bass by three or four decibels rather than the deep pump house uses. The point here is tightness, not movement.
- Edit rather than arrangeChange one element every eight bars, using a filter or a mute rather than writing a new part. The genre is built to be mixed with, not listened to alone.
Reference points
Terry Francis, Eddie Richards, Hot Since 82, Solardo, Michael Bibi, and labels like Wiggle, Hot Creations and Solid Grooves. 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.