WHAT THE FUNK IS HOUSE MUSIC ANYWAY?
Origins of the name
There is a great deal of controversy surrounding the origins of house music. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, underground warehouse parties became popular among the teenagers living in the America. One of these underground spots, attended primarily by gay black men, became known as "The Warehouse". The resident DJ at The Warehouse, Frankie Knuckles, mixed classic disco, European synthpop, new wave, industrial and punk recordings. Club regulars referred to his mixes as house music.
Others, including Larry Heard, aka "Mr. Fingers," claim that the term "house" reflected the fact that many early DJ's created music in their own homes, using simple equipment such as synthesizers and drum machines, including the Roland TR-808, TR-909 and the TB 303 "Bassline". These machines became known as the "Acid Machines," and were used to create the "Acid House" sound.
It has been argued that Chip E., in his early recording "It's House" defined this new form of electronic music. However, Chip E. himself claims the name came from methods of labelling records at the Imports Etc record store, where he worked at in the early 1980s. Music that DJ Knuckles played at the Warehouse nightclub was labelled "As Heard At The Warehouse", which was shortened to simply "The House".
Musical Elements
The common element of house music is a prominent 4/4 beat (a prominent kick drum on every beat, also known as four-to-the-floor) generated by a drum machine or other electronic means (such as a sampler). House music usually uses a continuous, repeating electronically-generated synth bassline.
Electronically-generated sounds and samples of recordings from genres such as jazz, blues and synth pop are then added to the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House songs may also include soaring, reverb-drenched disco or soul-style and gospel vocals and additional percussion.
House music is uptempo music for dancing and has a comparatively narrow tempo range, generally falling between 118 beats per minute (bpm) and 135 bpm, with 127 bpm being about average since 1996.
Far and away the most important element of the house drumbeat is the (usually very strong, synthesized, and heavily equalized) kick drum pounding on every quarter note of the 4/4 bar, often having a "dropping" effect on the dancefloor. Commonly this is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts (aka breakdowns). Add to this basic kick pattern hihats on the eighth-note offbeats (though any number of sixteenth-note patterns are also very common) and a snare drum and/or clap on beats 2 and 4 of every bar, and you have the basic framework of the house drumbeat.
This pattern is derived from so-called "four-on-the-floor" dance drumbeats of the 1960s and especially the 1970s disco drummers. Due to the way house music was developed by DJs mixing records together, producers commonly layer sampled drum sounds to achieve a larger-than-life sound, filling out the audio spectrum and tailoring the mix for large club sound systems.
Techno and trance, the two primary dance music genres that developed alongside house music in the mid 1980s and early 1990s respectively, can share this basic beat infrastructure, but usually eschew house's live-music-influenced feel and black or Latin music influences in favor of more synthetic sound sources and approach.
