how to write that classic house chord progression (and make it slap)

that warm, slightly sad, hands-in-the-air house progression you keep hearing isn't magic. most of the time it's four chords from one key, played in an order that never quite comes to rest, with the notes moving as little as possible from chord to chord and the stabs landing in the gaps between the kicks.

this post is about that moving part: which chords follow which, how to get from one to the next smoothly, and where to put them in the bar so the loop bounces. how each chord is built, the 7ths and 9ths that make it sound like house, has its own post: root + 3 + 7 + 10. if the chord names below look like a secret code, start there.

pick a key and give the chords numbers

a key is a family of notes that sound good together. A minor is the easiest one to start in, because it only uses the white keys: A, B, C, D, E, F and G. build a chord on each of those notes, using only notes from that same family, and you get seven chords that all belong together. Attack Magazine lists exactly these seven (A minor, B diminished, C major, D minor, E minor, F major and G major) in its guide to main room chord progressions, and says they "form the basis of the vast majority of main room house tracks".

musicians number those chords with roman numerals, counting up from the key's home note. uppercase means a major chord (brighter), lowercase means minor (darker), and the little circle marks the diminished chord, a tense one you'll rarely hear as a house stab. so in A minor, i is Am, III is C, VI is F and VII is G. the point of the numbers is that they work in every key. if your vocal is in F minor, the same i, VI, III, VII becomes Fm, Db, Ab and Eb, and the loop feels exactly the same.

the workhorse: i, VI, III, VII

in A minor that's Am → F → C → G, one chord per bar. here's what each step does:

• Am (i): home. the chord the key is named after. settled, and a little melancholy.
• F (VI): the lift. the first move away from home, warm and a bit bittersweet. Attack Magazine singles it out: "the sixth chord of the scale plays a huge part in generating that emotion and anticipation".
• C (III): brighter. the happiest chord in the loop, the moment it opens up.
• G (VII): hanging. it doesn't feel finished, so your ear leans towards the next chord and the loop falls straight back to Am. that pull keeps a four-bar loop interesting for six minutes.

that push and pull is what musicians call tension and release: restless chords (tension) followed by settled ones (release). Ableton's free Learning Music site has an interactive lesson on the famous 1-5-6-4 progression, which "forms the basis of hundreds of pop songs from the last few decades", and lets you hear "how the balance of tension and release changes" when you swap or reorder chords. here's the fun part: in C major, 1-5-6-4 is C, G, Am, F. those are our four chords. start the loop on the Am instead of the C and sunny pop turns into bittersweet house.

for something darker, try i → iv → VII → III: Am → Dm → G → C. same key, same white keys, a moodier, more underground feel.

move as few notes as possible

here's a big difference between a demo and a record. play every chord in its basic shape, root at the bottom, and every chord change becomes a jump: your whole hand leaps from A to F to C to G, and the loop sounds like four separate blocks glued together. the fix is voice leading. Wikipedia defines it as "the linear progression of individual melodic lines (voices or parts) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies". in plain words: treat each finger as its own little melody, and let each one move as little as possible. keep the common tones (notes two chords share) exactly where they are, and move the rest to the closest note of the next chord, "minimising leaps where possible".

look at the piano roll above. Am7 is A, C, E, G. Fmaj7 is F, A, C, E, so three of its four notes are already there. keep A, C and E where they are and only the G moves, one step down to F. from there, two notes step up to reach Cmaj7, and two more step up to reach G7. every change is a nudge instead of a leap, and suddenly it sounds like one person playing a part. some of those chords now have a note other than the root at the bottom. that's called an inversion, and it's completely fine, because your bassline plays the roots underneath anyway.

Attack Magazine's deep house chords article does the same thing, moving the 7th of its A minor 7 chords down an octave because it "keeps the notes closer together, helping the loop 'flow'". and its breakdown of Kerri Chandler's chords describes a progression with "almost every single note forming a bridge to the next".

where the stab lands

the chords are only half of it. the rhythm is what makes them house. picture one bar as a grid of 16 steps: four beats, each split into four 16th notes, counted "1 e and a, 2 e and a" and so on. in house the kick usually lands on every beat (steps 1, 5, 9 and 13), which is what four-on-the-floor means.

• stab on the "and". the "and" is the halfway point between two kicks (steps 3, 7, 11 and 15), also called the offbeat. a short chord there bounces against the kick, and that push and pull is the engine of the house groove. put an open hi-hat on the same steps and the two lock together.
• keep the stabs short. a 16th or an 8th note long, so each one punches and gets out of the way before the next kick.
• push the chord change. play the next chord a 16th before the bar line, so it arrives just before the kick instead of with it. MusicRadar's Chicago house piano tutorial uses the same trick, nudging chords "one 16th-note earlier" to syncopate them. your ear hears the new chord a split second early, and it pulls the groove forward.
• vary it now and then. Attack Magazine suggests "introducing changes to the stabs' rhythm at certain points throughout the progression", and even writing small melodies that "fit in the small gaps between the chords".

all of this is syncopation. Attack's definition is short and sweet: "A rhythm is said to be syncopated when off beats are emphasised." it lists several ways to create that emphasis, from velocity and volume to tone, the interplay between parts and leaving gaps. that last one matters most: a stab pattern with space in it grooves harder than one that fills every step.

stabs up front, a pad behind

for a fuller sound, play the progression twice: short stabs up front for the bounce, and the same chords held long and quiet on a soft pad in the background for warmth. then make the pad breathe with sidechain compression. a compressor is an automatic volume control that turns a sound down when it gets loud. a sidechain lets a different track do the triggering. put a compressor on the pad, feed it the kick, and every time the kick hits, the pad dips out of the way and swells back. Sound On Sound's guide to side-chaining uses exactly this setup, a kick triggering compression on a sustained pad, for the pumping sound of house and dance music, and recommends "a fast attack setting on the compressor".

• attack is how fast the compressor ducks once the kick hits. fast means the dip is instant.
• release is how quickly the pad comes back up. set it so the pad swells back just before the next kick, and it pumps in time.
• high-pass the chords. a high-pass filter removes everything below a frequency you choose. somewhere around 200 to 300 Hz on stabs and pads is a good start, so they stay out of the kick and bass's way.
• open a filter into the drop. a low-pass filter does the opposite and cuts the top. start it closed and muffled in the intro and sweep it open on the way to the drop.

common mistakes

• changing chord every beat. in house, one chord per bar (or even every two bars) gives the groove room to breathe.
• big leaps between chords. if your hand jumps around, revoice until most notes stay put.
• the root in the chord and in the bass. the Kerri Chandler guide shows him leaving roots out of his stabs because "the bass line has the roots covered".
• long, droning stabs. if the chord is still ringing when the next kick lands, shorten it.
• ending the loop at home. finish a four-bar loop on Am and it sounds like a full stop. end on the hanging chord and it rolls straight back round.

skip straight to chords that sound like a record

a great progression still falls flat if the chords themselves sound thin. that's why we made chordBox: 300 chords (150 major, 150 minor) with the 7ths and 9ths already in, recorded from six hardware synths, including a Roland D50, a Yamaha DX7II, an Oberheim OB-X and a Roland Jupiter X, through a Neve 1073 preamp and an API 2500 compressor.

• transpose shifts any chord into any key, so i, VI, III, VII lands wherever your vocal is.
• attack and release turn a long chord into a tight offbeat stab.
• glide slides smoothly into the next chord, and the filter handles the build.

VST3 / AU for any DAW, and 100% royalty-free. pick your four chords, chop them into offbeat stabs, and if you want to go deeper on the gaps between the kicks, read why rolling house rolls. press play. make a belter.

sources

• Main Room Chord Progressions (Attack Magazine)
• 1-5-6-4: the most common chord progression (Ableton Learning Music)
• Voice leading (Wikipedia)
• Deep House Chords (Attack Magazine)
• Kerri Chandler Chords: The Ultimate Guide (Attack Magazine)
• Syncopation (Attack Magazine)
• Levelling Up Your Chord Stabs (Attack Magazine)
• How to create classic Chicago house spread piano chords (MusicRadar)
• Side-chaining (Sound On Sound)