Styles of house music  

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House music has many sub-divisions:

  • Acid house: A Chicago derivative built around the Roland TB-303 bassline machine. Hard, uncompromising, tweaking samples produce a hypnotic effect. ex: Adonis, L.A. Williams
  • Afro house: A form of house developed in Brooklyn, New York which reflects the cultural heritage of Africa and the African Diaspora. Incorporates deep percussive elements, chants, and organic African instruments and voices. Artists include Osunlade, Jephte Guillaume, Ian Friday, Antonio Ocasio and DJ Sabine.
  • Ambient house (see ambient music): Mixing the moody atmospheric sounds of New Age and ambient music with pulsating house beats.
  • Baltimore Club: A form of house music in Baltimore built off of old samples drawing from a variety of genres of music and including heavy call and response and 'jingles' (singable choruses). Club music is still evolving in Baltimore, and has gone through periods of being driven by samples of popular music sped up and layered over existing loops from old house songs, to shouting out local neighborhoods and much more.
  • Chicago house: Simple basslines, driving four-on-the-floor percussion and textured keyboard lines are the elements of the original house sound. ex: Larry Heard, Steve Poindexter
  • Deep house: A slower variant of house (around 120 BPM) with warm sometimes hypnotic melodies. ex: Gemini, Glenn Underground, Kevin Yost.
  • Dream house: An oriented instrumental melody with relaxing beats. ex: Robert Miles, Nylon Moon.
  • Disco house: A more upfront variant of house that relies heavily on looped disco samples. ex: Jordan Fields, DJ Sneak, Paul Johnson and Stardust.
  • Electro house: A style of dance music which has rapidly increased in popularity since the early 2000s. A common misconception is that electro house is influenced by early 80s Electro, when in actual fact it has a lot more in common with Electroclash, Synth pop and Italo disco. ex: Steve Angello, Eric Prydz.
  • Epic house: A variant of progressive house featuring lush synth-fills and dramatic beat breakdowns.
  • Filtered house: A variant of disco house similar to French house (but with less Italo-disco and synthpop crossover) that incorporates pronounced use of filters (e.g. cutoff, flanger, phaser, chorus, and similar effects) and enhanced dynamics processing (usually resulting in pumping basslines and swirling percussion) to render a distinctively analog or "oldschool funky" feel to the production. ex. Risque De Funk Electrique, Ian Carey, Hott 22.
  • Freestyle house: A Latin variant of NY house music, which began development in the early 1980s by producers like John Jellybean Benitez. Seen by some as an evolution of electro funk.
  • French house: A late 1990s house sound developed in France. Inspired by the '70s and '80s funk and disco sounds. Mostly features a typical sound "filter" effect. ex: Daft Punk, Alan Braxe, Le Knight Club, Synthique
  • Funky house: Funky house as it sounds today first started to develop during the late 1990's. It can again be sub-divided into many other types of house music. French house, Italian house, Disco house, Latin house and many other types of house have all contributed greatly to what is today known as Funky house. It is recognizable by its often very catchy bassline, swooshes, swirls and other synthesized sounds which give the music a bouncy tempo. It often relies heavily on black female vocals or disco samples and has a recognizable tiered structure in which every track has more than one build-up which usually reaches a climax before the process is repeated with the next track. ex: Axwell, Seamus Haji and ATFC to name but a few.
  • Garage: This term has changed meaning several times over the years. The UK definition relates to New York's version of deep house, originally named after a certain style of soulful disco played at legendary club the Paradise Garage, although the original Garage sound was much more of an eclectic mix of many different kinds of records. May also be called the Jersey Sound due to the close connection many of its artists and producers have with New Jersey such as the legendary Shep Pettibone and Tony Humphries at Zanzibar in Newark, NJ. Not to be confused with speed garage or the British style nowadays called UKG or UK garage.
  • Ghetto house: A derivative of Chicago house with TR-808 and 909 driven drum tracks. Usually contains call-and-response lyrics, similar to the Booty Music of Florida. ex: DJ Godfather, DJ Deeon, DJ Milton, DJ Funk, DJ D-Man
  • Gospel house: Vocal house with either gospel choires as backing vocals or lyrics about Jesus or God. (Michelle Weeks, Jasper Street Company, Kurt Lykes, Kenny Bobien, Ron Carroll, Barbara Tucker etc.)
  • Handbag house: A form of uplifting vocal house music mainly from around the mid 1990s and played in more commercial-orientated dance music venues. Takes its name from the notion of groups of girls dancing around a pile of their handbags on the dancefloor! Examples include Loveland, Nush, etc
  • Hard house: In the US, a harder, more aggressive form of Chicago house. Sometimes contains elements of Ghetto House, Hip House. ex: CZR, DJ Bam Bam, Abstract Beating System. In the UK, hard house was what is now known as Hard dance
  • "Househop": The blending of mainstream Hip-Hop hits and House music. Differing from "hip house" in the 80s by its distinctly commercial-pop sound as opposed to the underground aspects of hip house. First reaching the mainstream in the HouseHop CD series by San Francisco radio host and music producer Ross.FM
  • "House-pop": House-pop is more also known as "commercial dance" music as it is not strictly House nor strictly Dance-pop. House-pop is the first cousins of Dance-pop. It usually features 4/4 beats and deep bassline as House and the incessantly catchy melodies of Dance-pop.
  • Hi-NRG: Called "high energy". Derived from Dance music and Happy hardcore, you could say what happyhard is to techno, is what HI-NRG is to dance, it usually has female voices with natural pitch, its tempo is also around the same as techno, eg: DJ Nick Skitz, Miquel Brown, Kristine W, Paul Lekakis.
  • Hip house: The simple fusion of rap with house beats. Popular for a brief moment in the late 80s. Most famous record is Jungle Brothers "Girl I'll House You." Other Hip-House artists include Mr. Lee, Outhere Brothers, 2 In a Room, Ya Kid K and Freedom Williams.
  • Italo house: Slick production techniques, catchy melodies, rousing piano lines and American vocal styling typifies the Italian ("Italo") house sound. A modulating Giorgio Moroder style bassline is also a trademark of this style.
  • Kwaito: House music that originated in Johannesburg, South Africa in the mid 90's. It is characterized by slow beats, accompanied by (mostly male) vocals - often shouted and not sung - set against melodic African loops.
  • Latin house: Borrows heavily from Latin dance music -- Salsa, Brazilian beats, Latin Jazz, etc. It is most popular on the East Coast of the United States, especially in Miami and the New York City metropolitan area. Another variant of Latin house, which began in the mid 1990's, was derived in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and is based on more Mexican-centric styles of music such as Mariachi. Artists include Artie The One Man Party (known best for "A Mover La Colita") and DJ EFX (known best for his remix of "Volver Volver").
  • Merenhouse Merenhouse is the combination of Merengue and House music, particularly Garage/House or House-pop. This style is most popular in the same places Latin House is most popular.
  • Microhouse: (or Minimal House) A derivative of Tech House with sparse composition and production. ex: Akufen, Todd Sines, Alton Miller
  • New York house: New York's uptempo dance music, referred to simply as club music by some. This type of house is popular in the extreme East Coast in areas like New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, New England, Boston, Philadelphia, and sometimes Baltimore and Washington DC.
  • Progressive house: Progressive house is typified by accelerating peaks and troughs throughout a track's duration, and are, in general, less obvious than in hard house. Layering different sound on top of each other and slowly bringing them in and out of the mix is a key idea behind the progressive movement. Some of this kind of music sounds like a cousin of trance music.
  • Scouse house: A sub genre of House music that originated in Liverpool, UK. This style is most popular in the north west and north east of England. It takes the word scouse from the local dialect and is a relatively new genre. The structure of the music is characterized by its very 'bouncy' texture and use of samples from happy hardcore tracks.
  • Tech house: House music with elements of techno in its arrangement and instrumentation. ex: Rino Cerrone, Dave Angel
  • Track house: A drum-oriented variant of Chicago house built around compact drum machines of the late '80s and early '90s. ex: Trackhead Steve, DJ Rush, Paul Johnson
  • Tribal house: Popularized by remixer/DJ Junior Vasquez in New York, characterized by lots of percussion and world music rhythms.
  • Vocal house: Composed of soulful vocals and often jazz loops.
  • Scouse house: Also known as 'Donk', 'Pumpin House", 'Bouncy House' or 'up-frount house' is Fast (Usually ~152BPM) Music with a constant beat, and a 'pipe' beat between each beat making a bouncy effect when dancing to it. This is a very high energy type of music. It is most Popular in parts of North West England, such as Wigan (Wigan_Pier#Wigan_Pier_Nightspot and Maximes) and Liverpool(Pleasure Rooms) and Newcastle in the North East of England. Scouse house is becoming popular amongst youths in certain parts of Scotland, such as Glasgow.
  • Italian House: - Still big today in places like Blackpool, England where it hit big in the early 90's and got the promotion nights named as 'ZONE'




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