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House
House is a style of electronic dance music. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American communities; first in Chicago, then in New York City, New Jersey, Detroit, and Miami. It eventually reached Europe before becoming infused in mainstream pop and dance music worldwide.
House is strongly influenced by elements of soul- and funk-infused varieties of disco. House generally mimics disco's percussion, especially the use of a prominent bass drum on every beat, but may feature a prominent synthesizer bassline, electronic drums, electronic effects, funk and pop samples, and reverb- or delay-enhanced vocals.
Musical elements
House is uptempo music for dancing, although by modern dance music standards it is mid-tempo, generally ranging between 118 and 135 bpm. Tempos were slower in house's early years.
The common element of house is a prominent kick drum on every beat (also known as a four-on-the-floor beat), usually generated by a drum machine or sampler. The kick drum sound is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts. The drum track is filled out with hi-hat cymbal patterns that nearly always include an open hi-hat on eighth note off-beats between each kick, and a snare drum or clap sound on beats two and four of every bar. This pattern is derived from so-called "four-on-the-floor" dance drumbeats of the 1960s and especially the 1970s disco drummers. Producers commonly layer sampled drum sounds to achieve a more complex sound, and they tailor the mix for large club sound systems, de-emphasizing lower mid-range frequencies (where the fundamental frequencies of the human voice and other instruments lie) in favor of bass and hi-hats.
Producers use many different sound sources for bass sounds in house, from continuous, repeating electronically-generated lines sequenced on a synthesizer, such as a Roland SH-101 or TB-303, to studio recordings or samples of live electric bassists, or simply filtered-down samples from whole stereo recordings of classic funk tracks or any other songs. House bass lines tend to favor notes that fall within a single-octave range, whereas disco bass lines often alternated between octave-separated notes and would span greater ranges. Some early house productions used parts of bass lines from earlier disco tracks. For example, producer Mark "Hot Rod" Trollan copied bass line sections from the 1983 Italo disco song "Feels Good (Carrots & Beets)" (by Electra featuring Tara Butler) to form the basis of his 1986 production of "Your Love" by Jamie Principle. Frankie Knuckles used the same notes in his more famous 1987 version of "Your Love", which also featured Principle on vocals.
Electronically-generated sounds and samples of recordings from genres such as jazz, blues and synth pop are often added to the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House songs may also include disco, soul-style, or gospel vocals and additional percussion such as tambourine. Many house mixes also include repeating, short, syncopated, staccato chord loops that are usually composed of 5-7 chords in a 4-beat measure.
Techno and trance, which developed alongside house, share this basic beat infrastructure, but they usually eschew house's live-music-influenced feel and Black or Latin music influences in favor of more synthetic sound sources and approach.
History
Precursors
House is a descendant of disco, which blended soul, R&B, funk, with celebratory messages about dancing, love, and sexuality, all underpinned with repetitive arrangements and a steady bass drum beat. Some disco songs incorporated sounds produced with synthesizers and drum machines, and some compositions were entirely electronic; examples include Giorgio Moroder late 1970s productions such as Donna Summer's hit single "I Feel Love" from 1977, and several early 1980s disco-pop productions by the Hi-NRG group Lime.
House was also influenced by mixing and editing techniques earlier explored by disco DJs, producers, and audio engineers like Walter Gibbons, Tom Moulton, Jim Burgess, Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, M & M and others who produced longer, more repetitive and percussive arrangements of existing disco recordings. Early house producers like Frankie Knuckles created similar compositions from scratch, using samplers, synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines.
The hypnotic electronic dance song "On and On", produced in 1984 by Chicago DJ Jesse Saunders and co-written by Vince Lawrence, had elements that became staples of the early house sound, such as the 303 bass synthesizer and minimal vocals. It is sometimes cited as the 'first house record', although other examples from the same time period, such as J.M. Silk's "Music is the Key" (1985) have also been cited.
Etymology
The origins of the term "house" are disputed.
The term may have its origin from a Chicago nightclub called the The Warehouse which existed from 1977 to 1982. The Warehouse was patronized primarily by gay black and Latino men, who came to dance to disco music played by the club's resident DJ, Frankie Knuckles. Although Knuckles left the club in 1982 and it was renamed Music Box, the term "house", short for Warehouse, is said to have become popular among Chicagoans as being synonymous with Knuckles' musical selections as a DJ before becoming associated with his own dance music productions, even though those didn't begin until well after the closure of The Warehouse.
Chip E.'s 1985 recording "It's House" may also have helped to define this new form of electronic music. However, Chip E. himself lends credence to the Knuckles association, claiming the name came from methods of labelling records at the Importes Etc. record store, where he worked in the early 1980s: bins of music that DJ Knuckles played at the Warehouse nightclub was labelled in the store "As Heard At The Warehouse", which was shortened to simply "House". Patrons later asked for new music for the bins, which Chip E. implies was a demand the shop tried to meet by stocking newer local club hits.
Larry Heard, aka "Mr. Fingers", claims[citation needed] that the term "house" reflected the fact that many early DJs created music in their own homes, using synthesizers and drum machines, including the Roland TR-808, TR-909, and the TB 303 Bassline synthesizer-sequencer. These synthesizers were used to create a house subgenre called acid house.
Juan Atkins, an originator of Detroit techno music, claims the term "house" reflected the exclusive association of particular tracks with particular DJs; those tracks were their "house" records (much like a restaurant might have a "house" salad dressing).
Pop Goes The House
Although House music was massive in the dance scene. House music also started to go into the pop scene in the late 80's with a new House music style known as Pop-House, House music with Pop which became extremely popular in 1987, 1988 and 1989 with Artists such as, Krush, Coldcut, Yazz, Penthouse 4, Pop Stars, Bomb The Bass, S-Express, Black Box which is an Italian Pop House group.
house, electronic, techno, bass, sounds
Last updated 800 days ago by spiky