House & Electro House

May 30th 2012

House music is a four beat genre with tempo’s ranging typically from 125-140 BMP. House’s roots are firmly rooted in 1970’s disco although the sound was really developed in Chicago and New York in the late 1970 and 80s, by DJ’s such as Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan while in Europe the early Italian sounds of producers like Georgio Moroder helped shape the sound. House was a distinct departure from Disco in it’s embrace of electronic instruments particularly bass sounds and synthesiser strings. Why not browse our House MIDI File packs here


In the UK during the early 90s House exploded out of clubs like
Manchester’s Hacienda as part of the massive Acid House movement of the
time. This was predominantly characterised by use of distorted Roland
TB-303 acid lines and darker sampled sounds, typified by A Guy Called
Geralds “Voodoo Ray” and D-Mob’s “We Call it Acid”.

Ibiza is intrinsically linked to the development of house and by this
time UK DJ’s such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling were playing
Ibizan tinged House across the UK. The mid 90’s saw super clubs such as
Liverpool’s Cream and Ministry Of Sound in London open their doors to
cater for the more commercial house sound, which by now was a chart
staple.

Hard House, often grouped under the Hard Dance umbrella bears little
resemblance to the genre from which it takes it’s name, and in sound is
more akin to mid 90’s hardcore, featuring sampled stab sound and the
ubiquitous Roland Alpha Juno II “hoover” noise (popularized by tracks
such as Human Resource’s “Dominator”) and making use of sampled vocal
acapellas.

Electro House or simply Electro in the UK has become one of the
dominant sub-genres in main stream House. Characterised by catchy
basslines and distinctive square wave lead sounds it is influenced
heavily by 1980’s Electro sound.

Modern UK House music has undergone a fusing of boundaries with other genres such as Trance and Electro.

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