House is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American and Latino American,] French and gay 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

The Paradise Garage nightclub in New York City

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.

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.

Leonard Remix Rroy, was a local DJ in Chicago back in the early 80's, who played at a small club on the South Side of Chicago,and he was the person who originally coined the phrase "House Music". His mother would give him her old Disco and R&B lps and he would play them at the small dance club he DJ for. He stated that the reason he called the music House was because it was music that was lying around the house.He would eventually put a sign in the window of the small tavern said "we play house music". Frankie Knuckles acknowledged this in a documentry named " The History Of House Music". Excerpts from the documentry can be seen on youtube, and Leonard Rroy can also be seen on youtube.

This last reference goes in hand with the idea that as disco music began to lose popularity many club DJ's or 'House DJ's' replaced the originals with these newer stripped down versions of disco hits, still incorporating the high energy elements to create this new sound.

Chicago years: early 1980s – late 1980s

Main article: Chicago house

House evolved from uptempo R&B and Disco music in the houses, garages and clubs of Chicago and New York City initially for local club-goers in the "underground" club scenes, rather than for widespread commercial release. As a result, the recordings were much more conceptual, longer than the music usually played on commercial radio. House musicians used analog synthesizers and sequencers to create and arrange the electronic elements and samples on their tracks, combining live traditional instruments and percussion and soulful vocals with preprogrammed electronic synthesizers and "beat-boxes".

Main stream record stores often did not carry these 12 inch vinyl singles, as they were not available through the major record distributors. In Chicago, records stores such as Importes Etc., State Street Records, JR’s Music shop and Gramaphone Records were the primary suppliers of this music. The record-store Importes Etc, is believed to be where the term “house” was introduced as a shortening of "Warehouse".

The music was still essentially disco until the early 1980s when the first stand-alone drum machines were invented. House tracks could now be given an edge with the use of a mixer and drum machine. This was an added boost to the prestige of the individual DJs. Underground club DJs like Ron Hardy and radio jocks the Hot Mix 5 played Italo Disco tracks like "Dirty Talk" and the "MBO Theme" by Klein M.B.O., Early B-Boy Hip Hop tracks such as Man Parrish's "Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop)" and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force's Planet Rock and Looking for the Perfect Beat as well as electronic music by Kraftwerk; these genres were influential to the Chicago genre of House.

Jesse Saunders “Jes Say Records” who had club hits with more “B-boy Hip Hop” oriented tracks like “Come to Me” by Gwendolyn and “Dum Dum” as well as the Italo Disco influenced “Under Cover” by Dr. Derelict released the first Chicago home made house hit, “On and On” (1984) which had hypnotic lyrics, driving bassline, and percussion. This was the first house record pressed and sold to the general public.

In 1985, Mr Fingers's landmark "Can You Feel It?"/"Washing Machine"/"Mystery of Love" showed a jazz-influenced, lush, sound that was created using a Roland TR-707 and Juno 6 synthesizer. This song helped to start the trend for the Deep house genre, which had a slower beat of 110-125 bpm. In the same year, Chip E.'s "It's House" is a good example of the Chicago house style. In 1986, Phuture's "Acid Trax" (1986) showed the development of a house music subgenre called acid house which arose from experiments with a 303 machine by Chicago musicians such as DJ Pierre.

In 1986, Nick Nicholson aka DJ Nick Nonstop created the "original" "House Nation" and "Jack My Body". "Jack My Body" was distributed on "SRO Records" and became a House crowd favorite that forced the crowd to "jack", which was/is considered a form of house dancing. "Jack My Body" is comprised of a simple drum beat influenced by the kick and snares found in "Let's All Chant" and a manual, hand-triggered sample of the phrase, "Ja-Ja-Ja Jack My Body, Jack My Body..." To this date, "Jack My Body" is still a classic house favorite among "House Heads".

Early house recordings were Jamie Principle and Frankie Knuckles' "Your Love"; "On and On" by Jesse Saunders (1985) and Chip E.'s "The Jack Trax" featuring the songs “It’s House” and “Time to Jack”, which used complex rhythms, simple bassline, sampling technology, and minimalist vocals. By 1985, house dominated the clubs of Chicago, largely in part due to the radio play the music received on 102.7 FM WBMX which was the brainchild of Program director Lee Michaels through WBMX's resident DJ team, the Hot Mix 5.