How to Make House Music, Step by Step: Kick, Bass, Chords and Arrangement

To make house music, set your tempo between 118 and 128 BPM (124 is a safe start), put a punchy kick on every beat, add a clap on beats 2 and 4 and open hats on the offbeats, write a bassline that answers the kick, loop two to four minor 7th chords as stabs, organ or piano, sidechain everything to the kick, add a short hook, then arrange it in 8 and 16-bar blocks with a long intro and outro for DJs.

That's the whole recipe. The steps below take each part in order, with a concrete starting value and the reason it works. Every number is a place to start listening, not a rule.

House subgenres at a glance

1. Set the tempo and key

Pick 124 BPM unless you're aiming at a specific style from the table above. Choose a minor key: A, F and G minor are popular because the bass notes land in a range that sounds big on club systems. Our BPM by genre chart lists the ranges for every dance style, and the free key and BPM finder reads both from a reference track.

2. Program the house kick

Put the kick on every beat (four-on-the-floor). A good house kick has a short click for definition, a round body around 50 to 60 Hz and a decay that finishes before the next bass note, roughly a quarter note or less. Tune it to the key or a fifth away from the bass root so they don't fight. Keep it mono and make it the loudest element of the mix: it's the reference everything else is balanced against.

3. Add claps, hats and percussion

• Clap or snare on beats 2 and 4, with a short room reverb.
• Open hat on every offbeat (the 'and' between kicks): the single most 'house' sound there is.
• Closed hats or shakers on 16th notes, quieter, with 10 to 20% swing so the groove rolls instead of marching.
• Percussion: congas, rimshots and toms in syncopated patterns. Leave gaps; groove comes from what you don't play.

Every common pattern is written out step by step in our drum patterns by genre guide. Thump has house kits with swing and humanize built in, and its step grid plays the classic house pattern below.

4. Write the bassline

House bass answers the kick rather than doubling it. Three patterns cover most tracks: offbeat bass (one note on every 'and', the deep and classic house standard), octave bass (root, then the octave above, bouncing in 8ths) and the rolling 16ths of tech house (root notes on the off-16ths, the note on the kick left out or quiet). Keep the bass mono below about 120 Hz and follow the chord roots.

For acid house, use a resonant filter with short, accented 16th notes and slides; for organ bass, an M1-style organ preset played low does the job of both bass and chords.

5. Add chords: stabs, organ or piano

House chords are short loops played as rhythm. Use minor 7th and minor 9th chords (Am7–Dm7, or Fmaj7–Em7–Am7) as offbeat stabs, organ hits or a piano riff, looped over two to four bars. For piano house, play bright chord riffs on an acoustic or M1-style piano with syncopated, pushed rhythms. Our house chord progressions page lists the progressions with voicings and plays them live.

Afterhours turns one held chord into stabs, a rolling bass, a lead and pads in deep, tech, melodic, techno or afro style, locked to your tempo.

6. Sidechain to the kick

Duck the bass, chords and pads on every kick so the low end stays clean and the track breathes. Start with 4 to 8 dB of ducking that recovers by the next offbeat; push it further for the obvious pump of French and filter house. You can use a compressor keyed from the kick, or a tempo-synced volume shaper like our free Pump, which needs no routing. The full method is in how to sidechain.

7. Add the hook

House hooks are short and repeated: a vocal phrase of two to six words, a chopped vocal, a synth riff or a piano line. Repeat it every one or two bars and change it with filtering and automation rather than new notes. If you write your own topline, keep it inside one octave so it stays catchy over a long track.

8. Arrange it in 8 and 16-bar blocks

1. Intro (16–32 bars): kick and percussion, so DJs can mix in.
2. Groove (16–32 bars): bass and hats enter, then a hint of the hook.
3. Breakdown (16 bars): drop the kick and bass, bring the chords and vocal forward, build tension with a filter or riser.
4. Drop / main section (32 bars): everything in, hook at full width.
5. Second breakdown and drop (16 + 32 bars): a variation, a new layer or a key change of the hook.
6. Outro (16–32 bars): strip back to drums for the next record.

Change something every 8 bars: add or remove a percussion layer, open a filter, mute the bass for a beat. Our song structure guide covers EDM and house maps in more detail.

9. Mix the low end first

• Kick and bass: solo them together and make sure you hear both. Cut the bass where the kick's body sits, or vice versa.
• Everything else gets a high-pass: chords, pads and vocals rarely need anything below 100 to 150 Hz.
• Mono below about 120 Hz: club systems sum the low end, so keep it centred.
• Leave headroom: aim for peaks around −6 dBFS on the mix bus before mastering.

10. Master for the club and for streaming

Club masters for house commonly land around −9 to −7 LUFS integrated; streaming services turn everything to about −14 LUFS, so a separate, more dynamic streaming master often sounds better on Spotify. Keep true peaks below −1 dBTP either way. The order of the chain is in our mastering chain guide, and plugin picks for every step are in best plugins for house music.