Trap, drill and lofi all live on displacement - hits landing where you do not expect them. House does the opposite: a kick on every beat, immovable, and all the interest pushed into the gaps between. Learning it is the fastest way to understand why the other four genres feel the way they do. Play the grid.
Kick on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 - every beat, no exceptions. Clap on 5 and 13. Hats on the offbeats, between the kicks, which is what produces the forward pull. Mute the hat row and the groove collapses into a metronome: in house the offbeat is not decoration, it is the engine.
The kick pattern is trivial. Everything that matters is in what surrounds it.
Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, every bar, no fills and no variation. This is not a lack of imagination - a completely predictable pulse is what allows everything else to be syncopated without the track falling apart. Break it and the floor notices immediately.
On the offbeat eighths, halfway between each kick. This is the single element that turns a march into a groove: your ear is pulled forward toward the next kick by a sound that arrives before it.
A few milliseconds behind the beat on 2 and 4. Perfectly quantised, it sounds stiff; nudged late, it sounds like a room full of people. Layering two claps a few milliseconds apart produces the same effect and is what most records actually do.
Sidechain compression, or simply writing the bass so it does not sound on the downbeat. That pumping is not an effect added to house, it is the solution to kick and bass occupying the same frequencies four times a bar.
Shakers, congas, rimshots, a stray tambourine - quiet, panned wide, and never on the beat. This layer is what separates a house beat that works over six minutes from one that gets boring after thirty seconds.
The kick pattern is identical in all four. Everything else is what people are naming.
| Style | Tempo | Character | What to change |
|---|---|---|---|
| <strong>Deep house</strong> | 120–124 | Warm, jazzy, chords doing the work | Softer kick, extended chords, quiet percussion |
| <strong>Tech house</strong> | 124–128 | Dry, percussive, groove-led | Tighter kick, busy sixteenths, minimal harmony |
| <strong>Classic / Chicago</strong> | 118–124 | Raw drum machine, sampled vocals | Analogue-style kit, obvious 909 hats |
| <strong>Afro house</strong> | 120–126 | Polyrhythmic, percussion-forward | Layered hand percussion in three against four |
Four hits, then leave that track alone for the rest of the session. The discipline of not touching it is most of the genre.
Halfway between each kick. Play it and mute it a few times - the difference between a march and a groove is exactly this one row.
A few milliseconds. Or layer two claps a few milliseconds apart, which is what most records do and which sounds like more people.
If the bass sounds on the same instant as the kick, they will fight. Write around the kick before reaching for a sidechain compressor - it is free and it sounds better.
Shaker, conga, rim. Panned wide, well below the main kit, never on the beat. This is the layer that makes six minutes bearable.
Close it and open it slowly. House is a long-form genre and movement over time replaces the arrangement changes that shorter genres rely on.
The Step Sequencer for the grid, Quantum for the bass and stabs, Kaoss for the filter sweeps.
A kick on every beat gives up all the tension that displacement creates, and in exchange it gives the listener a pulse so reliable that nothing else has to be legible. Once the body has locked to the kick, the offbeat hats, the late clap and the syncopated bass can all pull against it without the groove ever becoming ambiguous. That is the trade house makes, and it is why house tracks can run seven minutes and change almost nothing while trap needs a new event every eight bars.
Four kicks a bar means four collisions a bar between the kick and the bassline, both living below 150 Hz. Two waveforms at the same low frequency at the same instant partially cancel, which is heard as a low end with energy but no weight. Sidechain compression solved this so thoroughly that the pumping became a stylistic marker in its own right - but writing a bassline that simply avoids the downbeat solves it too, costs nothing and often sounds better.
House is the control group. Trap, drill, lofi and phonk all derive their character from hits landing somewhere unexpected; house derives its character from a pulse that never does. Programming one after the other teaches more about rhythm than any amount of theory, because you feel exactly what displacement is doing. The overview is on the beat making hub, and the furthest opposite is the trap page.
Typically 120 to 128. Deep house sits around 120–124, tech house 124–128, and the tempo is far more fixed than in genres built on half-time feels.
A kick drum on every beat of a 4/4 bar - steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 on a sixteen-step grid. It is the defining rhythmic feature of house and most other club dance music.
The open hat sits on the offbeats, halfway between each kick. That placement is what creates the forward pull - mute it and the same pattern sounds like a metronome.
Because the kick and bass occupy the same low frequencies four times a bar and would otherwise cancel. Sidechain compression ducks the bass under each kick, and the resulting pumping became a stylistic signature.
Usually very little or none - house is the straightest grid in this silo. A few percent can loosen it, but heavy swing turns it into a different genre.
Yes - the grid on this page runs with no account. The full Step Sequencer adds eight tracks and saveable patterns, inside the subscription with a seven-day free trial.
How a beat is actually built - the grid, the swing, the genre. Play the pattern on the page, then open the full machine.
The anatomy of a beat: kick, snare, hats, swing and arrangement, on a grid you can click.
Read it → GuideBoom bap: 88 BPM, swung hats, a snare that lands late and a bass that breathes.
Read it → Guide140 BPM half-time, 808 glides, rolls at 1/16 and 1/32 - built on the same grid.
Read it → GuideSliding 808s, triplet hats and a snare that refuses to land where you expect it.
Read it → GuideHeavy swing, a dusty filter and a kit that sits behind the beat instead of on it.
Read it → GuideMemphis cowbell, distorted 808s and a mix that is supposed to be too loud.
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