Dance Music Production Vol 16 Deep House TUTORiAL

For Volume 16 we examine the theory and practice behind the production of Deep House.

Drawing on elements of Chicago house, soul, funk and Detroit music, deep house is often best known for its jazzy suspended chords, close-concentrated dissonant melodies, soulful vocal snippets and a general laid-back, deep feel to the music.

Spread across 3 DVD's and running close to 14 hours of video we examine the production of this genre step by step with a focus on the deep house style signed to labels such as Anjunadeep.

The tutorial begins with the general idea composition and sound design principles behind the trademark chord progressions, bass lines, vocals and counter melodies. During the course of the first disc, we work at building the basic backbone of the example track while introducing the theory of chord development, retrograde inversion, thematic development in the bass, chord "planing", chords suspensions, diminution, intervallic dissonance and bass/harmony/melodic counterpoint.

Using various examples in both theory and sound design we show how these can be used to create the jazzy feel of the genre.

With the compositional backbone of the track complete, in the second disc we move onto further sound design, this time examining the requisite processing techniques to help maintain the laid back feel and sound of the genre. We also investigate the sound design and programming behind the house style skippy drum loops and generation of the over-percussive elements, introducing further techniques such as displacement, modulation, cell patterning, multi-rhythmic programming and nulti-measure patterning.

Finally, for disc 3, we work towards completing our example track by tieing all of our ideas together. Beginning with a further examination of synthesis, effects busses and processing chains, we work to develop the track with further melodies and vocal hooks while working towards the complete arrangement.


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