A basic house track is built by starting from a strong kick and bassline and layering percussion on top

Marshall Jefferson describes the foundational house-production recipe non-musicians used: ‘the first thing you have to do is you have to start off with a strong Kick Drum and then you have to have a Baseline and from there you build on it you build on it with uh snare drums you build on it with the high hat you build on it with the rim shot with the claps.’ The four-on-the-floor kick and a locked bassline are laid first as the groove’s spine; snare/clap, hats, and rimshot are then stacked to add drive and detail; a vocal or spoken hook is added last. This additive, part-by-part construction — rather than composing a full arrangement up front — is why early house was makeable on a drum machine by people who ‘weren’t even musicians.‘

Examples

Steve Hurley built ‘Time to Jack’ this way, adding the slowed-down ‘time to Jack’ vocal over the drum-machine groove. ‘By 1985 every Chicago kid with a drum machine was making house music.‘

Assessment

Given a drum machine, order the layers you would add to build a basic house groove from scratch and explain why the kick and bassline come first.