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Deep house BPM
What BPM is deep house? 120 to 125, slower 110 to 118 for warm-ups. Its history, artists, the drum pattern and bassline, and a groove at 122 to hum over.
Mika plays deep house quietly. The neighbours have opinions about 3 am.Play the groove at this tempo, or tap the pad along with a track to check its tempo against the range.
122 BPM
Deep house: 120–125 BPM
Hum over a groove at deep house tempo
The button opens Brumm at 122 BPM with the swing on, the lazy late 16ths deep house lives on. Tap Play, the app makes a beat, and you hum a slow, rounded line over it; it returns as an instrument. That is a groove at deep house tempo on the app's kit, not a deep house track: the warm chords, the electric piano and the soft mix are still yours to add.
How a deep house track is built
Native Instruments’ deep house walkthrough builds at 124 BPM in a minor key: a kick on every beat, claps on the even beats, shakers and quieter open hats between, and two shaker hits pushed "almost halfway through the 16th note" for the swung feel; its bass is a heavy legato line on the roots of a two-chord pad. EDMProd’s classic deep house guide works at 125 with a closed hat on the offbeat, an MPC 16 swing groove, seventh chords as stabs, and a simple low-passed bass between the kicks that is "both a harmonic and a rhythmic element".
Deep house drum pattern
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | ● | ● | ● | ● | ||||||||||||
| Clap | ● | ● | ||||||||||||||
| Open hat | • | • | • | • | ||||||||||||
| Hat | • | • | • | • | • | • | • | • | ||||||||
| Shaker | ● | ● | ● | ● | ||||||||||||
| Bass | ● | – | ● | ● | – | ● |
The grid above is this page's groove on the app's Soft kit: a quieter kick on every beat, a soft clap on two and four, the shaker and open hat on the offbeats and closed hats on the eighths, all swung at 60 %. The bass row moves like a chord line: a long note on the one, a pickup, then up to the minor third and the fourth.
Deep house bassline
A deep house bass is rounder and slower than a tech house one: longer notes that follow the chord roots, held under the kicks rather than dodging them. Hum it softly on "mm" or "doo", a few notes per bar, and let the app's swing do the shuffling. It lands in the loop as an instrument at 122.
How fast, and who says so
Where the two sources overlap: 120–125 BPM. Each in its own words:
- Wikipedia, Deep house: 110–125 BPM
- ModeAudio, Deep House: 5 Production Essentials (2014): 120–126 BPM
The groove on this page
Deep house is house with the drums turned down: a softer kick, the clap almost a rim, seventh and ninth chords and a rounded bass doing the moving. The feel lives in the percussion between the beats. Native Instruments' tutorial pushes its shakers about half a 16th late for that lazy swing, and the groove here swings at 60 % with the shaker on the offbeats. Above 125 BPM the same parts start to sound like tech house.
On this page: the app's Soft kit at 122 BPM, swing 60 %, with the Deep synth bass sound.
Delay and LFO values
A delay in time with the track repeats once per note value: a quarter note lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. Dotted is one and a half times that, triplet two thirds. An LFO synced to a note value cycles at 1,000 divided by those milliseconds, in Hz. The table follows the tempo above: − and + move it, and so does a tempo you tap.
| Note | Straight | Dotted | Triplet | LFO Hz |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1 (a bar) | 1,967.2 | 2,950.8 | 1,311.5 | 0.51 |
| 1/2 | 983.6 | 1,475.4 | 655.7 | 1.02 |
| 1/4 (a beat) | 491.8 | 737.7 | 327.9 | 2.03 |
| 1/8 | 245.9 | 368.9 | 163.9 | 4.07 |
| 1/16 | 123.0 | 184.4 | 82.0 | 8.13 |
| 1/32 | 61.5 | 92.2 | 41.0 | 16.27 |
Genres near this tempo
- House: 115–130 BPM
- Tech house: 125–128 BPM
- Techno: 125–135 BPM
- UK garage: about 130 BPM
All twenty genres on one axis, with 122 BPM marked: the BPM chart.
What BPM is deep house?
Most deep house runs at 120 to 125 BPM; the two walkthroughs cited above build at 124 and 125, the groove here sits at 122. The range has a real slow end. Wikipedia gives the genre 110 to 125, and DJs play deep house at 110 to 118 for warm-ups, bars, lounges and early hours: an r/deephouse thread asks for dancefloor tracks at 105 to 115 to open a four-hour silent disco. Loops sold as "deep house" at 70 to 105 BPM are the sound slowed for practice or background; the genre itself rarely goes under 110. Above 125 the music starts to push and is usually filed as house or tech house.
| BPM | Where deep house plays |
|---|---|
| 110 to 118 | warm-up, bar, lounge, the drive home |
| 120 to 123 | the classic floor tempo |
| 124 to 125 | the top of deep house, mixing into house |
The pad above measures a tap against 120 to 125, where Wikipedia and ModeAudio overlap, so a warm-up record at 115 reads as slower. That is the genre's slow end, not a different genre.
Deep house vs house, tech house and progressive house BPM
| Genre | BPM | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|
| Deep house | 120 to 125 | soft kick, jazz and soul chords, rounded bass, room between the parts |
| House | 115 to 130 | brighter drums, piano and disco samples, the vocal up front |
| Tech house | 125 to 128 | dry, punchy kick, a rolling bass, little harmony |
| Progressive house | 126 to 130 (Unison, 2023) | long builds, layered melodies, bigger rooms |
| Tropical house | mostly under 115 | the 2014 and 2015 sound of Kygo: marimba and pan flute leads, a light kick |
Where deep house comes from
Chicago, the mid-1980s. DJ Ron Trent has said the word was first used for the DJ sets of Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, who mixed disco, jazz and underground records. The sound itself is traced to Larry Heard, recording as Mr. Fingers: Mystery of Love (1985) and Can You Feel It (1986), whose bassline he played on a Roland Juno-60. Jazz-funk chords, soul vocals, muted bass and a TR-909 kept quiet were the template (Wikipedia, Deep house).
The 1990s belonged to New Jersey, New York and Chicago's second wave: Kerri Chandler, Blaze, Masters at Work (Louie Vega and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez), Ron Trent and Chez Damier; Detroit added Moodymann and Theo Parrish. In 2013 and 2014 the UK charts used the name for a poppier sound, and Duke Dumont's Need U (100%) and Route 94's My Love both went to number one. By the late 2010s "deep" was stuck on slap house and Brazilian bass too, which share little with it but the label. South Africa grew one of deep house's largest scenes outside Europe and the US: Black Coffee won the 2022 Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album with Subconsciously.
Deep house artists and songs to start with
One record each, oldest first:
- Mr. Fingers (Larry Heard): Can You Feel It (1986), the Chicago template
- Moodymann: I Can't Kick This Feelin When It Hits (1996, KDJ 6), Detroit, built on a Chic sample
- Kerri Chandler: Rain (1998, The Mood EP), the soulful New Jersey side
- Black Coffee: Superman, with Bucie (2009), South African deep house
- Duke Dumont: Need U (100%) (2013), the UK number one
- Route 94: My Love, with Jess Glynne (2014), the other one
Then Blaze and Masters at Work for New Jersey and New York, Ron Trent and Chez Damier for 1990s Chicago, Theo Parrish for Detroit at its roughest.
Subgenres of deep house
Wikipedia names Euro deep house as its subgenre and lists tech house, tropical house, jazz house, melodic house, future house, slap house and Brazilian bass among the styles that grew out of it. Record shops file soulful house, Afro house and organic house next to it; they share the tempo and the patience, and differ in the vocals and the percussion.
Is deep house EDM?
It is electronic dance music, but not EDM in the sense the word has had since the early 2010s: festival electro and big-room house at 128 and up, built on builds and drops. Deep house came out of Chicago's clubs, moves by small changes over long tracks, and rarely drops at all.
120, 128, 140: the numbers around it
Is 120 BPM fast or slow? In a club it is the gentle side of the middle: deep house and warm-up house, two beats a second, 500 ms a beat. Why is 128 so common? It was the tempo of electro, big-room and progressive house through the 2010s, and the dance-pop of those years followed it (the 128 hits are listed on pop BPM); tech house still sits at 125 to 128. Which genres are 140? Dubstep, grime, trap (felt at 70, like dubstep) and the faster end of trance. Is dubstep 140 or 70? Both: it is counted at 140, and the snare on beat three makes it feel like 70 (dubstep BPM).
Then make something of it
The door opens Brumm at the tempo on screen, with this genre's swing on or off, and the app names the tempo once on its start screen. Its range is 90 to 150 BPM, so a tempo outside goes in at half or double. No account, no upload: the tempo travels inside the link. Tap Play, hum a line over the beat, and it becomes an instrument.
Nothing is recorded: no microphone, only your taps, counted in the browser. The groove's sounds are the app's own samples, fetched when you tap Play. How the site counts visits.
Audio: tones your browser makes on this page; no microphone. Nothing about the audio reaches the visit count.
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