Acid house : A Chicago
derivative built around the Roland TB-303 bassline machine.
Hard, uncompromising, tweaking samples produce a hypnotic
effect.
Ambient house : Mixing
the moody atmospheric sounds of New Age and ambient music
with pulsating house beats.
Chicago house : Simple
basslines, driving four-on-the-floor percussion and textured
keyboard lines are the elements of the original house sound.
Deep house : A slower
variant of house (around 120 BPM) with warm sometimes hypnotic
melodies that originated in San Francisco.
Epic house : A variant
of progressive house featuring lush synth-fills and dramatic
(some would say pretentious) beat breakdowns.
Freestyle house : A
Latin variant of NY house music, which began development
in the early 1980s by producers like John Jellybean Benitez.
Seen by some as an evolution of electro funk.
French house : A late
1990s house sound developed in France. Inspired by the '70s
and '80s funk and disco sounds. Mostly features a typical
sound "filter" effect. e.g. Daft Punk
Garage : This term
has changed meaning several times over the years. The UK
definition relates to New York's version of deep house, originally
named after a certain style of soulful disco played at legendary
club the Paradise Garage, although the original Garage sound
was much more of an eclectic mix of many different kinds
of records. The UK version is pronounced "ga-raaj".
May also be called the Jersey Sound due to the close connection
many of its artists and producers have with New Jersey such
as the legendary Shep Pettibone and Tony Humphries at Zanzibar
in Newark, NJ. Not to be confused with speed garage or the
British style nowadays called UKG pronounced "garridje".
Ghetto house : A variation
from Chicago that features minimal, 808 and 909 drum machine
driven tracks, and profane (sometimes sexually explicit)
lyrics.
Hip house : The simple
fusion of rap rhymes with house beats. Mainly popular for
a brief moment in the late 80s. Most famous record is Jungle
Brothers "Girl I'll House You."
Hard house : House
music on the harder side, leaning more towards aggressive
'hoover' type sounds. The style was generally fast tempo.
Hi-NRG : Called "high
energy". Popular in the gay scene, sometimes reminiscent
of freestyle house.
Italo house : Slick
production techniques, catchy melodies, rousing piano lines
and American vocal styling typifies the Italian ("Italo")
house sound. A modulating Giorgio Moroder style bassline
is also a trademark of this style.
Latin House : Borrows
heavily from Salsa and Brazilian beats, most notably in " Brazil
over Zurich." This style was perfected and proliferated
by DJ Reyna J in Chicago's underground scene in the late
1990s.
Minimal House : (or
Microhouse) Simple, 4/4 beats (usually around 125-130 beats-per-minute)
usually only barely accompanied by sparse, percussive effects,
synthesizer work, and simplistic vocals.
New York house : New
York's uptempo dance music, referred to simply as club music
by some.
Pop house : The use
of house production styles to make traditional pop artists
more acceptable on the dancefloor results in the pop house
phenomenon.
Progressive house : Progressive
house is typified by accelerating peaks and troughs throughout
a track's duration, and are, in general, less obvious than
in hard house. Layering different sound on top of each other
and slowly bringing them in and out of the mix is a key idea
behind the progressive movement. Some of this kind of music
sounds like a cousin of trance music.
Pumpin' House : Developed
in the late 90's and related to French house, Pumpin' House
also often samples disco, rock, jazz, and/or funk loops (sometimes
creating dense layered textures) and usually makes extensive
use of filters, but gains its appellation from its heavy
use of compression, which makes tracks surge and pulse. It
is characterized by intense, up-front drum programming, heavy
funk influence, and very emphasized basslines, often sampled
from live players. Famous producers include Olav Basoski
( Holland), Grant Nelson ( UK), and Monkey Bars ( US). Typical
BPM range is 127-133.
Sexy house : Sexy
house draws its sounds from soul and
funk with a 4/4 beat,
and is sometimes confused with an acid jazz sound. Sexy house
doesn't feature as much synthesizer sounds (but does occasionally
use cheesy 1980s synth samples) as other genres, but typically
features horn sections, electric pianos and congas, but it
is less jazzy or downtempo as trip-hop. Typical beats per
minute are 125~128. The melody of this style is inspired
from 1970s black soul and funk, and it features strong bass
drum sound, with a softer higher frequencies. It is found
played in bars and restaurants.
Tech house : Tech
substitutes typical booming house kickdrums with shorter,
often distorted kicks, smaller hi-hats, and noisier snares.
House's funky jazz loops are replaced with techno-sounding
synth lines. Closely related to microhouse.
Tribal house : Popularized
by remixer/DJ Junior Vasquez in New York, characterized by
lots of percussion and world music style rhythms.
Ultra house : Extremely
fast house beats typically 160 to 220 beats per minute, the
same speed as "jungle" music.
Electro house : Sometimes
resembles tech house, but often influenced by the "electro" sound
of the early 1980's, aka breakdancing music, via samples
or just synthesizer usage.
