Styles of house music

House music & Sub-genres:

• 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
• Ambient house (see ambient music): Mixing the moody atmospheric sounds of New Age and ambient music with pulsating house beats. ex: The Orb etc.
• Autumn house : A style of house music that emphasizes the transition of colors smells atmosphere and tempo surrounding the Autumnal equinox. ex Alvin Aronson
• Balearic House: Balearic House is an eclectic blend of DJed dance music that originally emerged in the mid-1980s. See Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Pete Tong etc.
• Baltimore House: A form of house music in Baltimore, Maryland Interchangeably referred as Baltimore Breaks 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.
• Bassline house: A sub-genre of UK garage that began to emerge into the mainstream in the UK in late 2007. It is an evolution of UK garage but with more emphasis on bass. The scene started in 2002 at the Niche nightclub in Sheffield, which lends an alternative name for the genre.
• Bay Area House: Notable for its blend of Jazz, Funk, Soul, Deep and Disco vocal. It is often light and fun sounding. It is comparable to Chicago House, as Mark Farina has been a major influence on the scene. It is unlike house in that it is rooted in the Californian music scene, where it draws reference to its influences (Downtempo, Hip-Hop, Soul, Funk). Bay Area House often incorporates minimal jazz and funk riffs to carry the beat, and also includes sampled jazz and funk solos layered over its house rhythm. See Lance Desardi, Carlos Alfonzo, Derrick Carter, JT Donaldson, and Andy Caldwell. Bay Area House record label pioneer is known to be OM Records, http://www.om-records.com.
• Blog house: Generally considered a pejorative term, Blog house is a catch-all for dance music primarily distributed through music blogs. Blog house breaks many of the established rules of house; abandoning the buildup-breakdown-buildup formula in favor of chaotic arrangement, including collaborations with rappers, and remixes of indie rock. It is often considered to be mainstreamed, and commercial. Its scene is more parallel to Rock & Myspace culture than it is to House Music Culture. It is not considered to be a true form of house music. It is more a form of the mashup/electro genres. ex: Justice, Steve Aoki, Van She, etc.
• Chicago House: Simple basslines, driving four to the floor percussion and textured keyboard lines are the elements of the original house sound. ex: Jamie Principle, Steve Silk Hurley, Mr. Fingers, Nitro Deluxe, Farm Boy, Frankie Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson, Jungle Wonz, Chip E. etc.
• Classical House: A variant of Disco House. Instead of using disco samples, it uses pieces of classical music looped together.
• Dark House: It is very similar to progressive house, and may feature a slight tinge of Detroit techno, but the beats are much slower compare to other sub-genres of house music. The name "dark" comes from the lowtempo beats and the words which give the image of being somewhere not pleasant. People are often confused as to what dark-house is, and what makes it different to progressive house. ex: Deep Dish, Satoshi Tomiie, Trentemøller, John Creamer & Stephane K etc.
• Deep House: A slower variant of house (around 120 BPM) with warm sometimes hypnotic melodies. ex: Gemini, Glenn Underground, Kevin Yost, MK.
• Disco House: A more upfront variant of house that relies heavily on looped disco samples. ex: Dimitri from Paris, Jordan Fields, DJ Sneak, Paul Johnson, Modjo, and Stardust, Stupid Disco, Shapeshifters, Freemasons.
• Dream house: An oriented instrumental melody with relaxing beats. ex: Robert Miles, Nylon Moon.
• Dutch House: A Style of House music from the Netherlands. Often referred to as "Dirty Dutch" It has a more harder and electronic edge, sound & beat. ex:Afrojack, Chuckie (DJ), Crookers, Quazar, Dano, Booming Support, Speedy Joe, Hardwell, Switch, AmneziA etc. Dutch House is often recognisable by its high pitched lead sounds, tribal drums and minimal structure.
• 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 fact it has a lot more in common with Electroclash, Synthpop and Italo disco. ex: Steve Angello, D. Ramirez, Wolfgang Gartner, Dj Bumel, Dj Krati.
• Fidget house: A style of house music that involved a very erratic melody, usually consisting of very short and high pitched notes, often produced by altering the pitch of percussion instruments, based around a repetitive bass line, and hypnotic beat. ex Switch and Hervé.
• Flash House: Also called Italo House or Euro House but being speacially from 1989 towards. In fact, all styles that became old fashion or oldies are Flash House.
• Freestyle house: A latin variant of NY house music, which began development in the early 1980s by producers like John 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 1990s. 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, Kid Creme, Seamus Haji, Martin Solveig, Basement Jaxx, Uniting Nations The Original, Bob Sinclar, ATFC etc.
• Garage: This term has changed meaning several times over the years. The US 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. It 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. There is also Garage House which is a style of US Garage. ex: Blaze, Colonel Abrahams, Phase II, Jomanda, NYC Peech Boys, etc. 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 and the Ghettotech style of Detroit. ex: DJ Deeon, DJ Milton, DJ Funk, DJ D-Man
• Glass House: A style of house music from York in 1990 and 1993 that is a mix of harcore/rave.
• Glitch House: House music mixed with Glitch music. ex: Oval etc.
• Groovin House: House music with groovy tempos, with a jazzy and uplifting rhythm.
• Handbag: 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: A style of house dating back to the early nineties, hard house is defined by its aggressive sounds and distorted beats. One of the most recognizable of these is the Hoover sound, invented by Joey Beltram and recently re-popularized by dj's like Surkin or Bobmo leading to a small Hard House revival another of one of the most popular Hard House tracks is Felix- Don't You Want Me, 1992.
• Hardbag House: A darker & more harder version of Handbag House.
• 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, e.g.: DJ Nick Skitz, Miquel Brown, Kristine W, Paul Lekakis etc.
• 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, The Outhere Brothers, 2 in a Room, Reel 2 Real, 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.
• Jazz house: The fusion of house rhythms and jazz atmospheres is a difficult style to pin down, most likely because so many artists have been influenced by jazz that it undoubtedly colors every house production ever put on wax.^[1] See: Joe Claussell, Roy Davis Jr., Faze Action, Larry Heard, Jazzanova, Mateo & Matos, St. Germain (musician) etc.
• 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-1990s, was derived in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and is based on more Mexican-centric styles of music such as Mariachi. Artists includes Proyecto Uno (known best for "El tiburón"), Artie The One Man Party (known best for "A Mover La Colita") and DJ EFX (known best for his remix of "Volver Volver").
• Leftfield house: Another house music sound from the early rave scene. ex: Leftfield, Rhythmatic etc.
• Madchester: Madchester was a music scene that developed in Manchester, England, towards the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The music that emerged from the scene mixed alternative rock, psychedelic rock and dance music.
• 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: Microhouse is a derivative of Tech house & Glitch House with sparse composition and production. ex: Akufen, Gamat 3000, etc.
• Minimal House: House music mixed with Minimal. It has a very futuristic house sound. ex: Egotronic, Todd Sines, Alton Miller, etc.
• New Beat: A rather brief phenomenon (even for the style-a-minute world of dance music), Newbeat emerged late in the '80s as a midtempo derivation of acid house.^[2] See: The KLF, Lords of Acid etc.
• 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.
• Oriental House: Oriental house is a heavy dose of samples featuring traditional Asian, North African, Middle Eastern instruments or vocals culled from Asian, North African, Middle Eastern folk music. See: Africanism All Stars, Sezen Aksu, Dana International, Amr Diab, Elissa (singer), Serdar Ortaç, Tarkan etc.
• Piano house: Piano House is the cousin of Italo House. However, piano house is filled with electronic piano strings. ex: baffa, Electric Choc, Denno Lenny, System, Eric Prydz, Alex Christensen etc.
• Pop House: Pop house or house-pop is more also known as "commercial dance" music as it is not strictly house nor strictly dance-pop. It usually features 4/4 beats and deep bassline as house and the incessantly catchy melodies of dance-pop. ex: Krush, Bomb The Bass, Coldcut., Yazz, Danni Minogue, Inna, Penthouse 4 etc.
• 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. ex: Deadmau5, John Digweed, "Liberation", Sasha, Dave Seaman, Nick Warren etc.
• Pumpin House: A style of house Music that grew in popularity that relies on steady pumped up rhythms ex: Eric Prydz, The Housecrushers etc.
• Rave House: The biggest of all rave house music ex: 808 State, Altern8, Cola Boy, Liquid Oxygen, Shut Up& Dance, Bay Ford, Fast Eddie, Lil Louis etc.
• Swing House: Swing house is a genre of electronic dance music that fuses 1920s-1940s jazz styles including swing music and big band with 2000s styles including house music, electro music, hip hop, drum n bass, and dubstep.
• Tech house: House music with elements of techno in its arrangement and instrumentation. ex: Benny Benassi, Dave Angel etc.
• Technohouse: House music with techno that was popular in the early rave scene. ex: Bizarre Inc., Tricky Disco, Forgemasters, Neux 21, Orbital, The Hypnotist, Cubik22, R&V, Space Opera, Chubby Chunks, Basstonik, Man With No Name, Model 500 Unique 3, etc. It is not to be confused with Tech house, which is a latter version of Technohouse.
• Tribal house: Popularized by remixer/DJ Junior Vasquez in New York, characterized by lots of percussion and world music rhythms.
• UK 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
• US Hard House: Sometimes referred as "New Style" in the late 90's, with many of its producers originating from Los Angeles, record labels such as UC Music, Abstract Records, Waxworks, where some of the best known labels. artists such as George Centeno, The Mad Man Darren R., Dj Venom, Dj Nemesis, Michael Trance, Mark V & Poogie Bear from the 90 to about 2005. Dj Tronic from Resistance Recordings, Splatterhouse, and many others took the mantle and even to this day produce the sounds.
• Vocal house: Composed of soulful vocals and often jazz loops.

References