Styles of house music

A

Emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines instead of lyrics. It has core electronic "squelch" sounds that were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer.

African music mixed with a house beat. Afro house is a sub-genre of house music, with its roots predominantly in South Africa. A fusion of kwaito, tribal, deep and soulful house music, in South Africa it is classed as deep house or soulful house, although it has its own unique sound and is reflected in the musical style – particularly in the “stripped back” original percussion sounds and rhythms of South African culture.^[1]

B

Also known as Balearic house, initially was an eclectic blend of DJ-led dance music that emerged in the mid-1980s. It later became the name of a more specific style of electronic dance music that was popular into the mid-1990s. Balearic beat was named for its popularity among European nightclub and beach rave patrons on the Balearic island of Ibiza, a popular tourist destination. Some dance music compilations referred to it as "the sound of Ibiza", even though many other, more aggressive and upbeat forms of dance music could be heard on the island.

Baltimore club is a style of house music closely related to the "booty bass" of ghetto house and Miami bass. It is characterized by a heavy use of looped vocal samples similar to ghetto house but with breakbeat drum patterns at around 130 BPM. These samples are often of popular hip hop and contemporary R&B songs or of pop culture references such as themes from television shows. It often features horns and call-and-response vocals similar to Go-Go. It originated in Baltimore in the late 1980s, Scottie B. being one of its innovators.^[2]

Emphasizes bass, similar to dubstep and grime, with most songs around 135 to 142 BPM. It originated from speed garage in Sheffield around 2002.

Big room house songs straddle Dutch house, often incorporating drops built around minimalist, percussion drops, regular beats, sub-bass layered kicks, simple melodies and synth-driven breakdowns.

C

The original house music. Simple basslines, four to the floor percussion, hi hats, early synths, influenced by jazz, disco, hip-hop and made popular with the gay community's support.

House music created by Christians. Usually the tracks contain Christ-centered lyrics.

Complextro is typified by glitchy, intricate bass-lines and textures created by sharply cutting between instruments in quick succession.

D

A (slightly) slower variant of house (around 120 BPM) with greater influences from soul, jazz, and funk. Artist commonly associated with deep house are Stefan Biniak and Black Loops.

Diva house or handbag house is an anthemic subgenre of house music that became most popular in gay clubs during the second half of the 1980s.

An oriented instrumental melody with relaxing beats.

A subgenre of house music from the Netherlands, originating around 2006. Not to be confused with "Dirty Dutch", which is a dance event from the Netherlands. Tracks are typically made up of complex percussion and drumbeats, dramatic buildups and short riffs of high-pitched synths.

E

A subgenre of house music that has had influence from '80s music. Though its origins are hazy – different sources claim influence from '80s-electro, electroclash, pop, synthpop, or tech house – it has since become a hard form of house music.

Generally a vocal style of house, Euro house emerged in the late 1980s and was developed in songs which retained a strong influence of dance-pop music, on the background of house music. The history of Euro house is related to the other Euro styles. It has evolved in parallel with Eurodance music along the 1990s, as many bands from those times, which employed this style, such as M People and Deee-Lite.

F

A style of house music that involved a very erratic, bouncing, skitchy, grimy, funky, squeaking melody, usually consisting of very short and high pitched notes, often produced by altering the pitch of percussion instruments, based around a repetitive bass line, and hypnotic beat.

A fusion of folk music and deep house, popularised in Sweden in the late 2010s.

A late 1990s house sound developed in France. Inspired by the '70s and '80s funk and disco sounds. Mostly features a typical sound "filter" effect and lower BPM.

Funky house as it sounds today first started to develop during the late 1990s. It can again be sub-divided into many other types of house music. French house, Italian house, disco house, Latin house and many other types of house have all contributed greatly to what is today known as funky house. It is recognizable by its often very catchy bassline, swooshes, swirls and other synthesized sounds which give the music a bouncy tempo. It often relies heavily on black female vocals or disco samples and has a recognizable tiered structure in which every track has more than one build-up which usually reaches a climax before the process is repeated with the next track.

A style originating in the mid-2010s, often described as a fusion of deep house and EDM, popularized in late 2014 into 2015, often blends deep/tropical/sax hooks with heavy drops somewhat like the ones found in future bass or future garage. eg: Don Diablo, Tchami, Oliver Heldens, Swanky Tunes, Shadow Child, MK and Cazzette.

G

One of the first house genres with origins set in New York and New Jersey. Garage house developed alongside Chicago house and the result was house music sharing its similarities, influencing each other. Garage house is generally piano oriented, a sound deriving from soul and disco, with a heavy emphasis on vocals, preferably female. One contrast from Chicago house was that the vocals in garage house drew stronger influences from gospel. Notable examples include Adeva and Tony Humphries. Kristine W is an example of a musician involved with garage house outside the genre's origin of birth.

Also known as G-house, it features minimal 808 and 909 drum machine-driven tracks and sometimes sexually explicit lyrics. Notable artists of this style instead DJ Slugo, DJ Funk, DJ Deeon, and DJ Rashad, among others.

A style of house music originating in Durban, South Africa.

H

A style of house music dating back to the early '90s, hard house is defined by its aggressive sounds and distorted beats. One of the most recognizable of these is the Hoover sound, invented by Joey Beltram and recently re-popularized by DJs like Surkin or Bobmo leading to a small hard house revival. One of the most popular hard house tracks is Felix - "Don't You Want Me", from 1992.

A style of house music which originated from Russia during the late '90s, drawing inspiration from UK hard house, bouncy techno, Scouse house, powerstomp and hardstyle. Hardbass is characterized by its fast tempo (usually 150–160 BPM), donks, distinctive basslines (commonly known as "hard bounce"), distorted sounds, heavy kicks and occasional rapping. One of the most popular hardbass tracks is DJ Snat's "Choose Your Power" from 2003.

I

Slick production techniques, catchy melodies, rousing piano lines and American vocal styling typifies the Italian ("Italo") house sound. A modulating Giorgio Moroder style bassline is also characteristic of this style.

J

House music mixed with jazz.^[3]

Juke house or Chicago juke characteristically uses beat-skipping kick drums, pounding rapidly (and at times very sparsely) in syncopation with crackling snares, claps, and other sounds reminiscent of old drum machines.

K

Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. It is a variant of house music featuring the use of African sounds and samples.

L

Borrows heavily from Latin dance music such as salsa, Brazilian beats, Latin jazz etc. It is most popular on the East Coast of the United States, especially in Miami and the New York City metropolitan area. Another variant of Latin house, which began in the mid-1990s, was derived in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and is based on more Mexican-centric styles of music such as Mariachi. Artists include Proyecto Uno (best known for "El tiburón"), Artie the One Man Party (best known for "A Mover La Colita"), and DJ EFX (best known for his remix of "Volver Volver").

M

Madchester was a music scene that developed in Manchester, England towards the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The music that emerged from the scene mixed alternative rock, psychedelic rock and dance music.

Minimal house or microhouse is a derivative of tech house and minimal techno with sparse composition and production.

Fusion of Dutch house and reggaeton at 108–112 BPM, largely coined by Dave Nada and Dillon Francis.

N

A rather brief phenomenon (even for the style-a-minute world of dance music), New Beat emerged late in the 1980s as a midtempo derivation of acid house.^[4]

Nu-disco, nu-house, or sometimes disco house (though this term can also refer to funky house and to a style of French house), is a genre which came about in 2002 as a renewed interest in 1970s and early 1980s disco, Italo disco, Euro disco and P-Funk.

By 1996–97, there was a steady flow of UK based hard house that threw away the fun and uplifting parts to incorporate the "Hoover" & other gritty, menacing sounding elements at a slightly higher tempo than the conventional hard house and thus, the style effectively became known as "Nu-NRG" when Blu Peter coined the phrase in a magazine interview.

P

Progressive house is typified by accelerating peaks and troughs throughout a track's duration and are, in general, less obvious than in hard house. Layering different sounds on top of each other and slowly bringing them in and out of the mix is a key idea behind the progressive movement. It is often related to trance music.

S

Swing house or electro swing is a genre of electronic dance music that fuses 1920s–1940s jazz styles including swing music and big band with 2000s styles including house, electro, hip hop, drum & bass and dubstep.

T

House music with elements of techno in its arrangement and instrumentation.

House music with elements of trance.

Popularized by remixer/DJ Steve Lawler in UK, and Junior Vasquez in New York, it is characterized by lots of percussion and world music rhythms.

Tropical house, often abbreviated as trop house, is a fairly new house music subgenre. It is pioneered by the Australian DJ and producer Thomas Jack. The name of the genre itself started off as a kind of a joke, but has since been gaining popularity among listeners. It is characterized by a summer feeling, incorporating instruments such as saxophones, steel drums, electro synths, and marimbas. The vibe is generally lighter and more relaxed compared to other genres such as deep house. Artists commonly described as fitting the genre include Kygo, Klangkarussell, Klingande, Matoma, Robin Schulz, Felix Jaehn, Sam Feldt, and Lost Frequencies.

W

Witch house (also known as drag or haunted house) is an occult-themed dark electronic music microgenre and visual aesthetic that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

See also

• List of electronic music genres
• List of house music artists

References