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Deep House Track Deconstruction

A 122 BPM deep house blueprint — swung 909-style drums, a round bass with a filter-pluck, seventh-chord stabs and a vocal snippet — with every element rebuilt in Live 12 and the restraint that makes it deep.

deep househouse122chordsstabsrhodesbassswingdeconstructionarrangementelectricanalog

The blueprint is a warm, late-night deep house track in the spirit of the classic New Jersey / Chicago / early-2010s London lineage: 122 BPM, A minor (with a lot of Fmaj7 and Dm9 colour), 208 bars (6:49) — a DJ-length arrangement. Mood: soft, swung, patient, with a bassline that walks rather than pounds. Three decisions make it work. One: swing on everything except the kick — hats, shaker, bass and chords all share a 56–58% MPC-style groove, so the kick is the only straight element and the groove hangs off it. Two: the chord stab is the hook and it is filtered, not arranged — the whole track is the same 2-bar stab pattern with the filter cutoff and the delay send as the "arrangement". Three: the low end is two instruments agreeing — a sine sub playing root notes and a rounded Analog bass playing the moving line an octave up, so the bass can be melodic without the sub ever moving fast.

Tempo
122 BPM. 1 bar = 1.967 s; 8 bars = 15.7 s; 1/16 = 123 ms.
Key
A minor. Sub root A0 = 55 Hz; bass line in A1–A2, chords voiced around A3–E4.
Length
208 bars = 6:49 (32-bar intro and outro for mixing)
Swing
Groove Pool: MPC 16 Swing 57% on hats, shaker, bass and stabs. Kick and clap straight.

Arrangement

The energy curve is a slow sine wave. DJ intro: kick and pad for 8 bars, hats enter at 8, clap at 16, the filtered stab at 24 — a DJ can mix in from bar 0 and the track tells its own story in the first 30 seconds. Groove (32–64) adds the full bass, with the stab still dark (filter ~800 Hz). The build (64–80) is just the stab's filter opening over 16 bars with the vocal snippet arriving at 72. Main 1 is the full track. The breakdown (112–144) pulls kick and bass, leaves stab (wet, filtered again), pad, Rhodes and the vocal; the shaker keeps time; the kick returns at 136 with a soft 8-bar build and the sub comes back at 140. Main 2 is Main 1 plus the delay send on the stab and the congas. The outro is 32 bars of subtraction for the next DJ.

Transitions: filter sweeps on the stab (Auto Filter cutoff automation, 16 bars), 2-bar drop-outs of the kick only (keeping everything else running is the deep house way — the room keeps dancing), and one short clap/snare build into Main 2. No risers.

Frequency layering

Deep house is mid-heavy and that's correct — the chord stab, Rhodes and vocal all overlap in 300 Hz–3 kHz and are separated by rhythm and level rather than EQ. The discipline is at the edges: nothing but sub and kick below 100 Hz, nothing but hats above 8 kHz, and the bass stops at 500 Hz so the stab's low voicings have room.

Element by element

Kick: round 909-style, soft click, slightly long

Instrument: Drum Sampler / Operator · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, minimal house, tech house

A soft, round four-on-the-floor kick with a longer body than techno and almost no click. It should feel like a thump through a wall.

  1. Drum Sampler (12.1) with a 909-style or soft analog kick. Decay 220 ms — longer than you'd use in techno. Punch 20% only. Sub section +2 dB tuned to A (55 Hz).
  2. Dip 2.5 kHz by 2 dB to soften the click. Drum Buss Boom at 55 Hz 20%, Transients −10% (yes, negative — rounder).
  3. Pattern: four-on-the-floor, velocity 110 on 1 and 3, 100 on 2 and 4 — the tiny accent makes the groove lean.

Variations: Operator kick — A sine, pitch env −24 st decay 60 ms, amp decay 250 ms, Saturator — for a cleaner, tunable version. See kick.

Clap: layered 909 clap + room, late by 8 ms

Instrument: Drum Rack · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, house, garage

A clap on 2 and 4, deliberately placed a few ms late and paired with a short, dark room reverb — the laziness is the deep.

  1. 909 clap, HP 250 Hz, a little Soft Sine saturation to glue the flam.
  2. Add a soft snare body at −8 dB, band-passed 180–400 Hz, for weight on 2 and 4 without a snare "crack".
  3. Hybrid Reverb Convolution with a small room IR, 0.6 s, as a chain inside the rack at −12 dB. Keeps the clap in one space.
  4. Track Delay +8 ms on the clap track. Not quantised laziness — the clap lands just behind the kick.

Hats and shaker: swing and velocity do the work

Instrument: Drum Rack + Groove Pool · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, minimal house

Offbeat closed hats, a constant 1/16 shaker with random velocity, and one open hat per bar. The groove comes from the Groove Pool, not from busy programming.

  1. Closed hat: dark, short (decay 60 ms), a sampled or 909-ish hat pitched down 2 st. Offbeat 1/8 only.
  2. Shaker: every 1/16, velocity randomised with the Velocity Shaper MIDI tool (random 25%) and a slight accent (velocity 100) on the offbeats. −12 dB under the hats.
  3. Groove Pool: drag MPC 16 Swing 57 onto the hat and shaker clips; Groove Amount 100%, Timing 100%, Velocity 30%. Commit the groove when you resample.
  4. Open hat on the and of 2, choke group with the closed hat, decay 300 ms.
  5. Soft Sine saturation at 2 dB on the hat bus for a tape-like roundness; the deep house hat is never shiny.
Try the Groove Pool swing on the kick too, then undo it — hearing the difference teaches you why the kick stays straight: the swing is only audible against a fixed reference.

Sub: sine roots, sidechained to the kick

Instrument: Operator · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, house, garage

A sine sub playing only the root of each chord, held across the bar, lightly ducked by the kick. It holds the floor while the Analog bass plays the movement.

  1. Operator, A sine only. Amp env: A 5 ms, D 0, S 1.0, R 100 ms. One voice, no glide.
  2. Write whole-note roots: A1 (bars 1–2), F1 (bar 3), D1 (bar 4), repeat; or follow the stab's progression root-for-root. Nothing faster than a half note.
  3. Compressor sidechained from the kick: 4 dB GR, release 90 ms. At 122 BPM the kick is 492 ms apart, so a 90 ms release means the sub is back at full by the 1/8 after each kick.
Deep house subs are often felt as the kick's "tail". With a sine at 55 Hz and a kick at 70 Hz, the sidechain dip creates a pulse where the kick's decay hands over to the sub — it reads as one long low-end event per beat.

Analog bass: rounded saw with a filter pluck, swung

Instrument: Analog · Level: intermediate · Genres: deep house, house, minimal house

The walking line: a mellow Analog saw through a resonant low-pass with a short filter envelope. It plays a syncopated, swung pattern in A1–A2, mostly on offbeats, outlining the chords.

  1. Analog: Osc 1 saw, Osc 2 square one octave down at −10 dB (adds roundness under the saw). Both to Filter 1: LP4 24 dB, cutoff 350 Hz, resonance 25%.
  2. Filter envelope amount +35%, A 0, D 180 ms, S 0. That decaying filter is the "pluck" — each note opens briefly then closes.
  3. Amp env: A 2 ms, D 300 ms, S 0.6, R 120 ms. Mono, Glide off (legato glides would make it reese-y).
  4. Saturator Soft Sine 4 dB for a tape-ish rounding; HP 90 Hz steep so the sub owns everything below.
  5. Apply the same 57% groove as the hats. The bass notes mostly sit on the swung 1/16 offbeats.
ParameterValueWhy
Filter cutoff300 Hz (intro) → 600 Hz (main)The bass's arrangement is its filter, automated over 16 bars
Filter env decay120–250 msShorter = more plucky; longer = more "wah"
Resonance20–30%A touch of resonance gives the classic rubbery house bass; over 40% it starts to squelch like acid
TD-3 owners: send the same MIDI clip to the TD-3 via External Instrument with the resonance low and the decay short — a 303 with no accent and low resonance is a perfectly good deep house bass, and the slide on tied notes is nicer than Analog's glide.

Chord stab: Analog saws + Electric blend, 7th/9th voicings, filtered through the whole track

Instrument: Analog + Electric (Instrument Rack) · Level: intermediate · Genres: deep house, house, garage

The hook. A short, warm chord stab playing a 2-bar syncopated pattern of Am9, Fmaj7, Dm9 and Em7 voicings. Its Auto Filter cutoff is automated across the entire track and is the primary arrangement device.

  1. Analog: 2 saws, Osc 2 detune +6 ct, Filter 1 LP2 at 1.2 kHz, resonance 15%. Amp env A 2 ms, D 350 ms, S 0, R 200 ms — a stab, not a pad. Polyphony 6.
  2. Electric tine at −6 dB blended underneath gives the "is it a Rhodes?" ambiguity. HP 300 Hz on it.
  3. After the rack: Auto Filter LP 24 dB with 10% Drive. Automate cutoff: 600 Hz in the intro, opening to 5 kHz by Main 1, back to 1 kHz in the breakdown, full in Main 2, closing over the outro.
  4. Echo at dotted 1/8 (369 ms at 122), feedback 35%, LP in the Echo at 3 kHz. The Delay macro brings it in for Main 2 only.
  5. Voicings: Am9 (A3 C4 E4 G4 B4), Fmaj7 (F3 A3 C4 E4), Dm9 (D3 F3 A3 C4 E4), Em7 (E3 G3 B3 D4). Keep the top note moving stepwise.
Automating a low-pass instead of adding elements keeps the harmonic content constant while the perceived "brightness energy" changes — this is why a deep house track can be 7 minutes of the same 2 bars and never feel static. The ear tracks spectral centroid as energy.
Live 12 Expressive Chords (12.2) or the Stacks generator in A minor with 9ths enabled gets you the voicings fast; then thin the chord to 4–5 notes by hand.

Rhodes for the breakdown: Electric with Chorus-Ensemble and a real player feel

Instrument: Electric · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, lofi hiphop, trip-hop

A longer, played Rhodes part that only appears in the breakdown and the first half of Main 2 — comped voicings with the same progression, lazy timing, a little tremolo.

  1. Electric tine model. Softer mallet, lower stiffness, pickup slightly off-centre for a bit of growl at high velocity.
  2. Play it in on Push or a keyboard and do not quantise. If drawn, use the Time Warp or Ornament MIDI transformations lightly, or apply the 57% groove at 50% amount.
  3. Auto Pan-Tremolo (12.3) Tremolo mode synced to 1/8, 25% — the classic Rhodes vibrato amp.

Vocal snippet: one phrase, Auto Shift tuned, filtered, delayed

Instrument: Simpler + Auto Shift · Level: intermediate · Genres: deep house, house, garage

A spoken or sung two-second phrase, pitched to the key, used as a call that answers the stab every 8 bars.

  1. Simpler Classic mode, Complex Pro warp so you can transpose ±4 st without chipmunking. Auto Shift to A minor with low correction so it stays human.
  2. Band-limit 500 Hz–5 kHz: the vocal is a texture, it needs no body.
  3. Echo in dual mode: left 1/4, right 3/16, feedback 45%, Duck on so repeats only bloom after the phrase. This gives the classic "phrase into a tunnel" tail.
  4. In the breakdown add the Auto Filter band-pass and automate it for a telephone effect.
Resample the phrase through the Echo with feedback at 90% for 4 bars, then reverse the resampled audio and use it as the lead-in to the vocal's first appearance.

Pad: Drift with slow Drift amount and a 16-bar filter LFO

Instrument: Drift · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, ambient, dub techno

A quiet, analog-ish pad holding the chord roots and fifths in the intro, breakdown and outro. Mostly inaudible in the main sections — it's there so the breakdown doesn't feel empty.

  1. Drift: Osc 1 saw, Osc 2 triangle +7 st at −6 dB, Drift amount 30% for analog wobble, voice mode Poly, Glide off. Amp env A 800 ms, R 2 s.
  2. Auto Filter LP with an LFO at 0.03 Hz (a ~33 s cycle, ≈ 16 bars at 122) and 20% depth — the pad slowly breathes.
  3. Sidechain it from the kick at 3 dB in the main sections so it pulses with the room.

Congas and perc: Impulse or Drum Rack, sparse, high-passed

Instrument: Drum Rack / Impulse · Level: beginner · Genres: deep house, afro house

A conga pair and a wood tick that arrive late in each main section to give it a lift without adding density. Pattern is sparse and syncopated.

  1. Hi and lo conga pads, HP 300 Hz, velocity-sensitive sample start (Simpler: velocity → sample start a few %).
  2. Pan hi conga slightly left, lo right. Same 57% groove. Short room reverb for depth.

Mix decisions

The deep house mix should sound like it was done on a console with the faders at reasonable positions — nothing is squashed, the kick and bass are the loudest things, the stab sits just under them, and the top end is soft. Headroom matters: aim for −14 LUFS-ish before the limiter and let the limiter do 1–2 dB.

Source (trigger)TargetAmount / settingsWhy
KickSubCompressor sidechain, 4 dB GR, release 90 msHands the low end back and forth per beat
KickAnalog bassCompressor sidechain, 2 dB GR, release 60 msLight — just clears the attack
KickChord stab + Rhodes busCompressor sidechain, 2–3 dB, release 150 msSubtle pump that reads as "swing"
KickPadCompressor sidechain, 3 dB, release 200 msKeeps the pad behind the kick in main sections
KickReverb returnCompressor sidechain, 3 dB, release 120 msReverb tail never muddies the kick

Width per element

ElementWidthHow
Kick / sub / bassMonoUtility Mono on the Low bus
ClapMono + room 110%Room chain width in the rack
Hats / shaker110%, shaker panned 20% RUtility
Chord stab125% + ping-pong EchoUtility after Echo
Rhodes110%Chorus-Ensemble provides it
Pad140%HP 200 Hz, widest element
CongasPanned ±15%Opposite sides
Reference the mix at low volume. Deep house is mixed for the back of the room at 2 a.m.: if the kick and stab are still clear at whisper level and the hats have disappeared, that's correct.

Build it yourself in 10 steps

  1. New Set at 122 BPM, A minor. Tracks: Kick, Clap, Hats, Shaker, Perc, Sub, Bass, Stab, Rhodes, Vocal, Pad. Buses: Drums, Low, Music. Drag MPC 16 Swing 57 into the Groove Pool.
  2. Kick four-on-the-floor, round and long. Clap on 2 and 4 with the room rack, track delay +8 ms.
  3. Hats on offbeats, shaker every 1/16 with random velocity, open hat on the and of 2. Apply the groove to hats and shaker.
  4. Sub: Operator sine roots, whole notes, sidechained from the kick 4 dB.
  5. Bass: Analog saw+square, LP4 350 Hz with filter pluck env, swung 2-bar pattern on offbeats. HP 90 Hz.
  6. Stab rack: Analog saws + Electric tine, 2-bar Am9/Fmaj7/Dm9/Em7 pattern, Auto Filter after the rack with the Cutoff macro. Dotted 1/8 Echo on a macro.
  7. Pad in Drift with the 0.03 Hz filter LFO; Rhodes part played in unquantised; vocal phrase through Auto Shift and dual Echo.
  8. Congas and tick for the second halves of main sections.
  9. Arrange 32 / 32 / 16 / 32 / 32 / 32 / 32. Automate the stab Cutoff macro across the entire track as the main energy control; Delay macro on for Main 2; 2-bar kick drop-outs at 110 and 174.
  10. Mix per the sidechain map, Low bus mono, light Glue on drums and master, limiter at −0.5 dB doing 1–2 dB. Check at low volume.

Variations

DirectionWhat changes
Minimal houseDrop the stab to a single filtered note, add micro-perc (clicks, rim) with heavier swing, bass simpler (roots + octave). See minimal house.
Tech houseTempo 125–127, kick punchier (Transients +20%), bass more aggressive (Roar on the Analog), stab replaced by a short vocal chop hook, less reverb. See tech house.
UK garage / 2-stepTempo 130–135, kick off the 2 and 4 pattern (kick on 1, and-of-2, 3), shuffled hats at 62%, organ bass, pitched vocal chops. See UK garage.
Dub house / dub techno crossoverStab through a Dub delay send (Echo with high feedback and filter), more reverb, kick darker, bass drops the pluck. See dub techno.
Afro house / amapianoTempo 112–118, log drum bass (Operator sine with pitch env and long decay, saturated), more congas and shakers, less chord stab. See afro house & amapiano.

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