House Drum Machine: Program Four-on-the-Floor Grooves in Your Browser
House runs on a four-on-the-floor kick — one on every quarter note — with an open hi-hat sitting on the offbeat eighths so the groove pulls forward in the gaps between kicks. Claps land on beats 2 and 4, a shaker or closed hat keeps the 16ths moving, and the whole thing stays dead straight: swing is zero, and the push comes from velocity and placement instead. Most classic house sits between 120 and 126 BPM, and the detail to listen for is the open hat getting choked short by the next closed hat, which is what turns a cymbal wash into that clipped "tss-tsss" bounce.
How to program house drums
- Put the open hat on the offbeat eighths — exactly halfway between each kick — and give every hat variant the same choke group. When a closed hat cuts the open hat's tail off you get the clipped house hi-hat instead of a smeared wash; move that closed hat one 16th earlier or later and hear how much the feel changes.
- Don't rely on the clap alone for beats 2 and 4. Layer a short, bright snare underneath it at roughly half velocity: the clap gives width, the snare gives the transient that survives on small speakers. A second clap a 16th after the main one at about 0.3 velocity fakes the classic tape-echo slap.
- Give your bass note the offbeat eighths too, tuned to the same root as your chord stab, with a short decay so it clears out before the next kick lands. Then stop the 16th shaker from flatlining: accent the offbeats around 0.5 and drop the in-between 16ths to 0.25-0.3. Uniform velocities are what make a house loop sound programmed rather than played.
Other styles
- Boom Bap drum machine88-94 BPM
- Trap drum machine130-150 BPM (half-time feel)
- Lo-Fi Hip Hop drum machine70-85 BPM
- Techno drum machine130-140 BPM
- Drum and Bass drum machine172-176 BPM
- Afro House drum machine120-124 BPM
- UK Garage drum machine130-135 BPM
- Funk drum machine100-110 BPM
- 808 drum machine100-130 BPM
Rhythm breakdowns
- The Jungle Break: Syncopated Snares at 172172 BPM
- Boom Bap at 90 BPM: the dusty backbeat90 BPM
- Dilla-style drunk swing87 BPM
- Four on the Floor124 BPM
- The hip hop skeleton: kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4, ghosts in the gaps90 BPM
- The Full House Groove: Four on the Floor, Offbeat Hats and a Rolling Shaker124 BPM
- The Dembow Riddim96 BPM
- Trap Hi-Hats: 8ths, 32nd Bursts and a Triplet Turnaround140 BPM
DRUMMY is inspired by classic 16-pad sampler and drum-machine workflows. It is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Akai Professional, Roland, or any other manufacturer.