By the late 1970’s, disco DJs had replaced most of the live funk bands across the clubs of America. Club owners wanted more value for money and one man with a bag of records was considerably cheaper than a full band. Just like the hip hop pioneers of the same era, disco DJs and producers embraced beat matching, sampling and synthesizing techniques that new technologies were making possible. As the disco era started to wane in the early eighties, Chicago DJs like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy began to edit elements of disco, funk and soul together, creating soulful but repetitive ‘dance floor friendly’
tracks. These early house producers then incorporated the Roland TR-303 bass synthesizer and the Roland TR-808 drum machine into their productions, giving the genre a much stronger electronic aesthetic.
Four-To-The-Floor
The disco revolution saw live drummers playing less syncopated grooves than they had previously working in funk bands. They introduced the four-to-the-floor technique (playing all 4 downbeats of the measure on the kick drum) into popular club music. House music kept this technique and was arguably the first of the electronic genres to use it. To this day it underpins the majority of all house music and that of its sister genre, techno.
Off-Beat Hats
The repeated introduction and removal of an off-beat hi-hat pattern against the four-to-the-floor kick drum, is a staple rhythmical motif of house music. This simple technique of introducing a prominent hi-hat hit on the quaver off-beat was incredibly effective at lifting the dynamics of a new section of music.
House Piano
The house piano riff is another notable feature in house music with its syncopated triplet time in the right hand playing around the rigidity of the four-to-the-floor rhythm track. Harmonically it is not particularly rich and rarely strays beyond using thirds in its chords. Sonically, house pianos have always sounded synthesized, mainly due to the limitations of the technology during its early years. Those limitations prevented decent velocity control so in early house productions, the piano sounds not only synthesized but also very flat in terms of performance. The stark, flat piano stabs of the early era became part of the fabric of house music and maintains to this day, despite the advances in piano programming and production.
Independent Study: Try researching artists that come under the banner of House music and see what you come up with. Discuss your findings with your peers.
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