Funky house music as a genre would at first seem fairly simple to define - any house music that displayed a preponderance of funk samples, a funk-inspired bassline or a strong soul influence, combined with drum breaks that draw inspiration from 70's and 80's funk records. However, upon closer examination it appears as though funky house has broadened to the point where it is no longer possible to paint all artists operating within this genre with the same brush. Let's take a look at four funky house producers who represent a few of the different directions that this musical style has taken in the past 15 years.

1. Olav Basoski. This Dutch producer has been churning out funky house hits since 1997. He has also become a sought-after remixer, known for adding a touch of funk to almost any production. He broke through to a huge audience after releasing a remix of Moby's 'Bodyrock' in 1999, which used sampled disco strings, filter sweeps and a hot vocal and bassline to propel the track up the dance charts. The song is also notable for its electro-inspired breakdown mid-way through.

2. Les Rythmes Digitales. Also known as Jacques Lu Cont, this alias for Stuart Price has served him well on the funky house music scene. LRD productions often adopt a funky slap bass style, and make use of the same type of vocal sampling used in French house without resorting to the same level of filtering that is often a marker of that genre. In addition to his work with a number of pop artists, Price is celebrated for his LRD track entitled 'Jacques Your Body', which came out in 1999.

3. Armand van Helden. An artist who has dabbled in many different areas of the house music sound, Armand van Helden got his start producing some of the funkiest tracks around. His remix of 'Spin Spin Sugar' by the Sneaker Pimps was the first in a line of funky house music releases that would light clubs on fire in both the United States and Europe. He followed it up with 'The Funk Phenomena', the disco-tinged 'U Don't Know Me' and the dual attack of 'Flowerz' and 'The Boogie Monster' in 1999.

4. Cassius. Veterans of the French hip hop scene Le Funk Mob found an outlet for their house music energies with Cassius. Combining elements of filter, French and funky house, Cassius was all over the place sonically, although most tracks were anchored by solid funk basslines and soulful vocals. Some of their most representative work can be heard on the singles '1999', 'The Sounds Of Violence' and 'Feeling For You'.

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Learn The Secrets of House Music Production. This book is the essential guide to producing cutting-edge house music.

House music has always been about the crowd and for the crowd. House music producers, since the very first embryonic sounds spilled out of the Warehouse club in Chicago, have done their best to build a solid, organic connection with dancers and listeners. As times and trends have changed, so have the tunes, but one genre of house that has remained fairly prominent is soulful house. This style combines elements from vocal, funky and disco house, but also adds some distinguishing characteristics of its own. Like funky house, soulful house music has ties to the early masters of R&B, but instead of following the funkier sounds that emerged in the 1970's, soulful house went in a more emotional direction. Let's examine some of the ingredients that can help define a soulful house track.

1. A powerful, resonant vocal. In soulful house music, the vocal is often the key building block around which the rest of the track is arranged. A singer's performance in this genre is often more textured and subtle than in vocal house, where power usually rules the day. This calls for production that can reveal the texture of a singer's voice, highlighting the many payers of a performance. The goal is to capture the same aesthetic as is found in down-tempo, popular soul music and combine it with a house groove.

2. Mellower disco samples. While disco house as a genre is usually open to a wide variety of different disco sounds, soulful house usually restricts itself to mellower grooves, preferring to let the vocal take center stage and have the bassline and strings act as supporting players rather than in-your-face leads. Muted guitars and electric pianos are much more common than blaring horns and big drums.

3. Deeper lyrics. Soulful house music tends to take a more in-depth look at the stories that are told through its lyrics. These tales are usually quite emotional or personal, giving listeners the feeling that they are hearing the singer's deepest confessions. Some soulful house, particularly if it samples from or is modeled after the 1960's might even contain a social message beyond the more common peace and unity feel of standard house. Soulful house often leaves listeners feeling as though they have replenished their inner being.

4. A chill vibe. Out of all the house genres, soulful house might come closest to resembling pop music, thanks to its combination of non-aggressive sounds and more complete lyrical content. An overriding 'chill' feeling permeates most examples of this genre of house, which has lead to its great popularity in lounges and other relaxed bar environments.

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This house music production article is written for the same reason you are reading it, and that is to take my skills to another level and get even better at what I do best, producing house music. With this guide I want to help you learn how to get your producing skills sound really bona fide. It may sound very simple in theory but it can be a pain to make a dope house track, and as always, in order to understand it you need to listen to it.

The favorite kick drum for house music production is the Roland TR-909. The main reason would be that, it has got a great low end power. The pattern for the kick is mostly a 4/4 beat, but you don't have to leave them straight because they will sound robotic. Propellerhead Reason 4 has got a new feature called the Re-Groove to steer clear of that.

You can even do this manually by shifting individual notes (in your software midi editor) and changing the level of certain notes. Another way is to apply a 16th note swing quantization. If you are producing your tracks digitally, you must make sure that you give them a human feel and soul to you track, make it sound as if it was performed by a live band.

House music uses a lot of synthetic sounds such as the Omnisphere by Spectrasonics, Jupiter-8V by Arturia, Massive by Native Instruments, Sylenth1 and many more. The Arturia MiniMoog is my favorite VST instrument for bass sounds.

The Hi-Hats patterns are mostly on the eighth-note and open hats on the offbeat pattern. For percussion, most producers use loops, but you are more than welcome to program your own. Playing the riffs and chords with a midi controller is better than programming them using a mouse. You can double your chords with another instrument to have enough body, if needed.

If you have a vocal feel free to play around with it, chop it or even create great effects from it. Try not to make the track repetitive, your song needs to have dynamics (loud and soft parts). Always keep in mind that house music is all about making people dance. You can also use automation to keep the song moving, automate the vst instrument knobs (especially the filter) to create a sweep sound.

This can also work well with effects such as delay and reverb to make the chorus part sound bigger than the verse. The snare and claps must be punchy with a short reverb (preferably room reverb) and mostly on an offbeat pattern.

I hope you learnt something from these house music production tips. You can visit my blog for more producing tips and grab yourself a free music production mini course http://cubase5tutorial.blogspot.com.

When you hit the clubs at the weekend, there's a high chance you'll be dancing to a genre of house music. Originating from Chicago in the eighties, it has taken over clubland in the last few decades.

House music has numerous subcategories, for example from electro house to drum and base or soulful house, but it is essentially the art of combining beats in to a more up tempo tune that features a base of drum and percussion sounds. House music is frequently known as dance which covers a whole range of styles too diverse to go into here. The bpm rate of house music tend be between 120 to 140. Some other sub genres are faster.

Learning how to produce your very own house music requires an understanding of basic beat structure and a flair for combining electronic tunes as well as having some equipment that will help you translate your ingenuity into a floor-filling track. If you wish to create your own house track, take a look at the tips below:

When it comes to selecting software applications for producing your track, you need to bear in mind the learning curve involved and select something that is easy to grasp. There is the hardware route and the software route. The former is probably out of most people's financial resources as building a studio is not for the faint hearted. However with current technologies available it's now possible to have a near professional quality sequencer and drum machine on your laptop. Numerous beat maker programs are now viable and I suggest this is the best route to take. These programs lets you build tracks visually hence much easier for the novice user. Some come with detailed how to videos so you can build a track right away and experiment with different samples and breaks.

Here are some of the features of a typical house composition. You'll need to have an understanding of the basics before constructing your first track.

• Four on the floor, Basic 4/4 beats in bar
• Snares
• Bass line
• Percussion 
• Vocals (depending on style of music)

The baseline is the most important part of the tune as this is where the rest of the elements will hang off. Listen to your favourite tracks and try to pick this out for yourself. Next up is the loops. This need to complement rather than drown out the baseline. House tracks commonly have high hats and snares that follow the 4/4 beat. Your track will be coming together but it may sound monotonous so you need to add some chorus or builds to add some variety and get the crowds going.

Just follow these basic guidelines as a starting point and the next track the DJ puts on can well be yours.

Sean S. Cole reviews the leading beat maker software here

Click here to learn more about the secrets of house music production

When it comes to music producers, Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles - known as the godfathers of House music - brought about a near-revolution into the world of Dance music. Over the years, the music they evolved has grown and newer themes have formed and spawned new genres in music. It brought hope for many enthusiasts who always wanted to create a little Dance music for fun and more so for those professionally inclined.

Are you among the enthusiasts that who would like to be a music producer? These days, it's incredibly easy to get into producing Dance music in your own home and it isn't all that expensive.

It's pretty simple!

These days, the entire Dance music evolution is packed into one incredible piece of software. All you have to do to learn how to make music like a pro is install a good piece of music production software, or DAW (digital audio workstation), on your home computer or laptop.

With the help of a good music program, getting started with making Dance music is definitely a great deal easier than jumping in at the deep end - probably a lot easier than you may have ever imagined it. You do not need to know much about music theory and you do not have to be a technical expert. All you need is a home computer and a passion for dance music to create a good dance track.

To become a professional Dance music producer you need to identify what type of music you would like to specialise in. This should be the style you are most passionate about and want to get to grips with. You could choose from drum-n-bass, synth-pop, electropop, electronica, house, trance, electro... the list goes on. With a little research, you will find a host of options you could experiment with and you can take inspiration from other artists, both new and old, as well as growing trends to hone in on your style and work out what makes a good Dance production, in terms of arrangement, mood and instrumentation.

The opportunities

As a dance music producer, you can either write your own music and market it or collaborate with other artists in remixing. You could also work as freelance music producer. Another option is to write music for media and jingles for advertising agencies.

One can expect a decent salary as a dance music producer though it is difficult to find such jobs. There are, however, many an opportunity for freelancers and there are limitless returns if you are willing to put in a bit of hard work to establish yourself as a music producer.

What it takes?

With some dedicated work and good music sense, it is possible to create some excellent sounding tracks sitting right in your house and with the help of minimal instruments. To be able to reach a stature whereby you can deliver a decent track and quality sounding mix of a professional level, you need to invest some time and some concentrated effort. As the quality of work improves, you need to start looking into the marketing aspects of your career. This can be done through researching promotional websites, playing at parties and other gatherings, press releases, etc. and may even entail hiring a marketing company to get your name out there.

First Step - Take a crash course!

There are a number of dance music tutorials are available, which will help you initially to get going. Listening to music of popular artists that interests you will also help. The top favorites include the likes of Deep Dish, Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren etc.

Be inspired!

DJ Jack Smooth is an example of a successful dance music producer. He was working as a DJ of a pirate station when he got addicted to house music. He got himself a set of decks and started to work. After getting into music production, by the time he was 23 years old he had put out over 250 records.

Jack Smooth's music stands out because he makes his own music rather than remixing other peoples music. This should be an inspiration for anyone who dreams of making it big in the field of dance music production.

Ashley Mason.

As an established Dance music producer I know how hard it can be to get started and even harder to get your foot in the door. That is why I've created a lens on becoming a Dance music producer which tells you everything you need to know about making Dance music, from what you need to get started, the software you can use to create music down to recommended tutorials and, of course, the wages.

The Secrets of House Music Production

After four years of producing award-winning sample collections, Sample Magic shares the secrets of house music production in this 144-page full-color book packed with hundreds of walkthroughs, hints, tips, and insights from some of the biggest names in the industry.

"This book has the destiny of becoming a classic. It's as essential as KLF's The Manual . . . I would be surprised if anything can top this. . . Don't waste a moment. Buy it. This is the electronic musician's bible." ~plughugger.com

Every element of the production process is covered in this book, including: making beats, drum sounds, basslines, structure, instrumentals, FX, mixing, vocals, mastering, remixes, programming ideas, and more. Every style of house is represented, from minimal to tribal, electro to progressive, soulful to jackin'. Find what you’ve been missing and hone your skills with The Secrets of House Music Production.

In-depth tutorials reveal the tricks of the pros with step-by-step tutorials using Logic, Cubase, and Ableton Live. A bonus CD includes 500+MB of exclusive samples to get you started. Written by Marc Adamo (DJ Magazine, Future Music) with contributions from Wolfgang Gartner, Way Out West, Sharooz, and a foreword by Mark Knight, this is the first time the secrets of house music have ever been fully revealed.

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