House music is a style of electronic dance music that was developed by dance club DJs in Chicago in the early to mid-1980s.[citation needed] House music is strongly influenced by elements of the late 1970s soul- and funk-infused dance music style of disco . House music takes disco's use of a prominent bass drum on every beat and developed a new style by mixing in a heavy electronic synthesizer bassline, electronic drums , electronic effects, funk and pop samples , and reverb (or delay)-enhanced vocals.

The common element of house music is a prominent 4/4 beat (a prominent kick drum on every beat, also known as four-to-the-floor ) generated by a drum machine or other electronic means (such as a sampler ). The kick drum sound is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts, also known as breakdowns. The drum sound is filled out with hihat cymbals on the eighth-note offbeats and a snare drum or clap sound on beats two and four of every bar.This pattern is derived from so-called "four-on-the-floor " dance drumbeats of the 1960s and especially the 1970s disco drummers. Producers commonly layer sampled drum sounds to achieve a larger-than-life sound, filling out the audio spectrum and tailoring the mix for large club sound systems. House music is uptempo music for dancing and has a comparatively narrow tempo range, generally falling between 118 beats per minute (bpm) and 135 bpm. House music usually uses a continuous, repeating electronically-generated synth bassline performed on a Roland 303. Electronically-generated sounds and samples of recordings from genres such as jazz , blues and synth pop are then added to the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House songs may also include soaring, reverb-drenched disco or soul -style and gospel vocals and additional percussion. Techno and trance , which developed alongside house music, share this basic beat infrastructure, but they usually eschew house's live-music-influenced feel and black or Latin music influences in favor of more synthetic sound sources and approach.

House music is the descendant of the 1970s dance style of Disco , which blended soul, R&B, funk, salsa, rock and pop with a progressive, pro-diversity message. In the late 1970s, disco songs began incorporating electronic sounds, such as Donna Summer 's performance of "I Feel Love " (1977)(by Giorgio Moroder ). In the same year, Kraftwerk 's album "Trans-Europe Express " began being played in New York discos; this album contains a number of the elements that would later appear in techno and Drum and Bass. By the early 1980s, UK bands began updating the disco sound of the 1970s with a more electronic, post-punk dance music style, such as in the UK band New Order 's song "Blue Monday " (1983) [1] In 1984, Lime released an album with a style dubbed "HiNRG ", which moulded the late 1970s sounds of Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk into a catchy club style with beatbox programming and "breakdown sections ". M and M 's club mixes and Jesse Saunders - "On and On" (1984/1985) had many elements of electronic dance music that developed into the "house music" sound, such as synths (including a 303 and minimal vocals). House music also incorporated other influences, such as New Wave , Reggae, Euro-Synth Pop, industrial and punk as well as the emerging rap and hip-hop styles. House music DJs experimented with new editing techniques and electronic instruments, such as "remixing," "sampling", synthesizers, and sequencers.

The origins of the term "house music" are disputed. The term may be derived from the name of a club called the The Warehouse , which was one of the nightclubs that became popular among the teenagers living in the Chicago area in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of these nightclubs, The Warehouse was patronized primarily by gay black & latino men [2], who came to dance to DJ Frankie Knuckles ' mix of classic disco , European synthpop , new wave , industrial , and punk recordings. Knuckles released his dance tracks and mixes on the Traxx record label, which became known as house music. Chip E. 's recording "It's House" may also have helped to define this new form of electronic music. Chip E. claims the name came from methods of labelling records at the Imports Etc record store, where he worked at in the early 1980s. Music that DJ Knuckles played at the Warehouse nightclub was labelled "As Heard At The Warehouse", which was shortened to simply "The House". Larry Heard , aka "Mr. Fingers", claims that the term "house" reflected the fact that many early DJ's created music in their own homes, using synthesizers and drum machines, including the Roland TR-808 , TR-909 , and the TB 303 "Bassline" synthesizer-sequencer. These synthesizers were used to create a house music subgenre called "Acid House ".

House music was developed in the houses, garages and clubs of Chicago and Detroit, and it was produced for local club-goers in the "underground" club scenes, rather than for widespread commercial release. As a result, the recordings were much more conceptual, longer than the music usually played on commercial radio. House, techno , electro and hip-hop musicians used analog synthesizers and sequencers to create and arrange the electronic elements and samples on their tracks . House music "humanized" of the new electronic instruments by combining live traditional instruments and percussion and soulful vocals with preprogrammed electronic synthesizers and "beat-boxes". The chief source of this kind of records in Chicago was the record-store Importes Etc, where the term “house” was introduced as a shortening of "Warehouse". Despite the new skills, the music was still essentially disco until the early 1980s when the first stand-alone drum machines were invented. House tracks could now be given an edge with the use of a mixer and drum machine. This was an added boost to the prestige of the individual DJs. In retrospect, English electronic music has been partly an influence, such as Sheffield based industrial band Cabaret Voltaire who pioneered a proto-"house sound" as early as 1981 with tracks like "Automotivation". In 1985, Mr Fingers 's song "Can You Feel It? "/"Washing Machine"/"Mystery of Love" showed a jazz -influenced, lush, sound that was created using a Roland TR-707 and Juno 6 synthesizer. This song helped to start the trend for the Deep house genre, which had a slower beat of 110-125 bpm. In the same year, Chip E. 's "It's House" is a good example of the Chicago House Music style, with its simplistic lyrics, driving bassline, and percussion . In 1986, Phuture 's "Acid Trax" (1986) showed the development of a house music subgenre called acid house which aros from experiments with a 303 machine by Chicago musicians such as DJ Pierre . Early house recordings were Jamie Principle and Frankie Knuckles' "Your Love" ; "On and On" by Jesse Saunders (1985); and Chip E.'s "The Jack Trax" featuring the songs “It’s House” and “Time to Jack”, which used complex rhythms, simple bassline, sampling technology, and minimalist vocals. By 1985, house music dominated the clubs of Chicago, in part due to the radio play the music received on 102.7 FM WBMX . Program director Lee Michaels and WBMX's resident DJ team, the Hot Mix 5.

The music and movement was also aided by the electronic music revolution - the arrival of newer, cheaper and more compact music sequencers, drum machines (the Roland TR-909, TR-808 and TR-707, and Latin percussion machine the TR-727) and bass modules (such as the Roland TB-303 in late 1985) gave House music creators even wider possibilities in creating their own sound. The acid house subgenre was developed from the experiments by DJ Pierre , Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers), and Marshall Jefferson with the new drum and rhythym machines. Many of the songs that defined the Chicago house music sound were released by DJ International Records and Trax Records. In 1985, Trax released "Jack the Bass" and "Funkin with the Drums Again" by Farley Jackmaster Funk. In 1986, Trax released "No Way Back" by Adonis , Larry Heard's (as Fingers Inc.) "Can You Feel It" and "Washing Machine", and an early house anthem in 1986, "Move Your Body" by Marshall Jefferson , which helped to boost the popularity of the style outside of Chicago. In 1987, Steve 'Silk' Hurley 's "Jack Your Body" was the first House track to reach No.1 in the UK Top 40 pop chart. In 1989 Hurley transform Roberta Flack 's soft ballad "Uh Oh Look Out" into a boisterous dance track. S'Express 's "Theme from S'Express" (1988)is an example of a disco -influenced, funky acid house tune. It uses samples from Rose Royce 's song "Is it Love You're After" over a Roland 303 bassline. In 1989, Technotronic 's song "Pump Up the Jam " (1989) was one of the early house records to break the top 10 on the US pop charts. A year later, Madonna 's "Vogue " went to number one on charts worldwide, becoming the highest selling single on WEA up to that tim. In 1992, Leftfield 's song "Release the Pressure " helped to introduce a new subgenre of house called progressive house .