Disco house — reference sheet

Set these first

Open a new set, type these four in, then start making noise. Don't deliberate.

Tempo

122

Genre range is 118–125. Faster reads as tech house.

Key

A minor

Or F minor. All white keys, easy sample matching.

Groove

16%

MPC 16 Swing from the groove pool.

Loop

8 bars

Build the whole idea before you arrange.

The one-bar grid

Sixteenth notes across one bar. Program this in a Drum Rack and you have the genre's skeleton. Everything else is decoration on top of it.

Kick

Clap / snare

Open hat

Closed hat

Shaker

Conga / bongo

Tambourine

Full hit Ghost note, velocity 40–60 Offbeat open hat — the genre lives here

If it sounds flat, check this first. Kick on every beat, open hat exactly between every beat. That tension is the whole feel. Nothing else you add will fix a missing offbeat hat.

Drum layer rules

Same grid, different sound choices — this is where disco house separates from techno.

Kick

Short and punchy, not a long sub.High-pass around 40 Hz. The bassline owns the sub, not the kick.

Clap

Layer two samples: one dry 909-style, one roomy real clap.Send only the roomy one to reverb. That's the disco width.

Open hat

Offbeat only, and let it ring into the next beat.Cut the decay short and it starts sounding like tech house.

Shaker

Straight 16ths, velocity randomized ±20.Flat velocity is the single most obvious tell of a beginner beat.

Percussion

Congas, bongos, tambourine — real recorded ones, not synthesized.Nudge a few hits off the grid by hand, 5–15 ms early or late.

Groove

Drag MPC 16 Swing onto hats and percussion clips.Leave the kick and clap dead straight. Swinging everything turns it to mud.

Fills

Reverse crash on the bar before a section change.One per 16 bars. More than that gets tiring fast.

Working with a sampled loop

Disco house is a sampling genre before it's a synthesis genre. The hook usually comes from a record, chopped and reassembled — not played in from scratch.

1 · Find

A 4–8 bar section of a 70s or 80s disco, funk, or soul record.Look for strings, a guitar stab, or a horn line. Avoid anything with a lead vocal over it.

2 · Warp

Drop into Arrangement, set warp mode Complex Pro, enter the original bpm, then pull to 122.Use Re-Pitch instead if you want the vintage tape-speed character.

3 · Chop

Right-click the clip → Slice to New MIDI Track.You get a Drum Rack with one slice per pad, playable from the piano roll.

4 · Pitch

Transpose the whole loop into your project key with Simpler's transpose or a Utility.Check against a single held Am note on another track. Trust your ear over the numbers.

5 · Filter

EQ Eight, high-pass at 200–400 Hz.Clears room for your kick and bass. Almost every sampled loop needs this.

6 · Rebuild

Play the slices back in a different order than the original.This is the entire craft of the genre in one step. Reordering is where your track stops being someone else's.

Before you release anything. Recognizable samples need clearance. For learning, practice, and your personal library this is a non-issue — just know where the line sits before something goes public.

Chords — sevenths, always

Plain triads sound like pop house. The seventh is what makes it disco. If you only remember one thing: add the extra note.

Two-chord vamp · easiest

Am7 · Dm7

Two bars each, loop forever. A huge number of records are only this.

Classic loop

Am7 · Dm7 · G7 · Cmaj7

One bar each. The G7 pulls hard into the Cmaj7 — that's the lift.

Bright and lifted

Fmaj7 · Em7 · Dm7 · G7

Descending, warm. Good under a vocal chop.

Darker / late night

Fm7 · B♭m7 · E♭7 · A♭maj7

Same shape in F minor. Set the project key to F minor if you use this.

Voicing

Keep every chord between C3 and C5, and drop the root note.The bassline plays the root. Doubling it makes the mix muddy.

Rhythm

Stab on the offbeats, short notes around a 16th long.Landing chords on the downbeat fights the kick. Sit between the beats instead.

Bass

Root on the beat, octave jumps and passing notes between.Sidechain to the kick with a Compressor. Around 3–4 dB of duck is plenty.

Device chains

Starting points, in order. Add nothing else until you can hear a reason for it.

Drum bus

Drum Rack → Glue Compressor → SaturatorGlue at 4:1, slow attack, 2–3 dB of gain reduction. Saturator on Soft Sine, drive low.

Sampled loop

Simpler → EQ Eight → Auto Filter → ReverbHigh-pass in the EQ, then automate the Auto Filter for transitions.

Chords

Analog Lab V → Chorus-Ensemble → EQ EightReverb goes on a send, not inline. Keeps the chords sitting behind the drums.

Bass

Operator → Saturator → CompressorCompressor in sidechain mode, keyed to the kick track.

Master

EQ Eight → Glue Compressor → Limiter1–2 dB on the Glue. Ceiling at −1 dB. Do this last, not while writing.

Transitions

Automate Auto Filter cutoff upward over the 8 bars before every drop.This does more for energy than any element you could add. It is the arrangement.

Arrangement — count in eights

Times assume 122 bpm. Sections change on multiples of 8 bars, without exception.

0:0016 barsDrums only. Filtered loop creeping in from far away.

0:3216 barsBass enters, full drum kit. Groove is established.

1:0416 barsFirst drop. Filter opens, chords and vocal chop arrive.

1:3616 barsBreak. Drums out, chords and reverb only. Let it breathe.

2:0832 barsMain drop. Everything in, plus one new top percussion layer.

3:1216 barsOutro. Strip back to drums so a DJ can mix out of it.