Beatmaking
How to Make House Beats: Four-on-the-Floor Done Right
House is deceptively simple: a kick every beat and a groove that makes repetition feel like hypnosis instead of boredom. The craft is in the swing and the subtraction.
The skeleton
120–126 BPM. Kick on every quarter note, clap/snare layered on 2 and 4, closed hats on the 16ths with velocity dips, and the signature open hat on every off-beat ('and'). That's 80% of house drums.
Groove and shuffle
Apply 8–16% swing to the 16th hats and percussion only — keep the kick straight. Add one loose conga or shaker loop; the friction between straight and swung is the pocket.
Bass locks with the kick
A one-bar bassline that dodges the kick: play notes on the off-beats or sidechain the bass hard so the kick pumps it. Classic house bass is simple — root notes with one passing tone.
The 8-bar rule
Change something small every 8 bars: open a filter, add a vocal stab, drop the hats. House arrangements are long but never static — DJ-friendly intros/outros of 16 bars of mostly drums.
Builds without EDM cheese
House builds by removing (cut the kick for 4 bars, filter the bass) more than by risers. The drop is the groove returning, not an explosion.
Practise your pocket at 124 BPM →Free metronome with swing-friendly subdivisions and tap tempo.Frequently asked questions
What BPM is house music?
Mostly 120–126 BPM; deep house can sit near 118, tech house pushes toward 128.
Why doesn't my four-on-the-floor groove?
Everything's straight. Swing the 16th-note layers, dip hat velocities on the grid beats, and sidechain the bass to the kick.
How long should a house track be?
Club edits run 5–7 minutes with long mixable intros; a streaming edit of the same track can be 3 minutes.