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How to make a house beat in Ableton Live 12
House is four on the floor: a kick on every beat, and everything else dancing around it. Here it is step by step in Live 12, then the one-line version.
1. Set the tempo
Most house sits between about 120 and 128 BPM. Click the tempo field in Live's Control Bar, type 124 and press Enter.
2. Add a MIDI track with a drum kit
Insert a MIDI track (⌘ Shift T). In the browser, open Drums, pick a kit and drag it onto the track. A kit with a round, punchy kick, a clap and crisp hi-hats suits the style.
3. Make a clip
In Session View, double-click an empty clip slot on the drum track. Live makes an empty MIDI clip and opens it; the pattern below is one bar. Set the grid to 1/16 with the grid chooser at the right of the Clip View header (⌘ 1 and ⌘ 2 narrow and widen it), so each beat has four steps and the bar has 16.
4. Program four on the floor
Switch to Draw Mode (B) and click the notes in. Most Live kits follow the General MIDI layout (kick C1, snare D1, clap D#1, closed hat F#1, open hat A#1); check the pad names in yours.
- Kick on every beat: steps 1, 5, 9 and 13.
- Clap on beats 2 and 4: steps 5 and 13, on top of the kick.
- Open hi-hat on the off-beats: steps 3, 7, 11 and 15. That off-beat "tss" is the house bounce.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | ||||||||||||||||
| Clap | ||||||||||||||||
| Open hat |
Dimmer cells are notes played softer.
5. Fill it out
Add closed hats on the sixteenths between, much softer than the open hats, so the groove ticks along without crowding it. A little swing helps: drag a groove from the browser's Grooves onto the clip, and it applies at once. Then turn its Timing up or down in the Groove Pool (⌘ ⌥ 6) to set how much it swings.
6. An off-beat bassline
A classic house bass plays between the kicks, on the off-beats, so the two never fight. Put a bass on its own MIDI track, play short notes on steps 3, 7, 11 and 15 on the root of your chord, and add chords or a stab on top once the groove locks.
Or ask Amable
Amable does these steps in your set when you ask in plain words:
set the tempo to 124, load a drum kit and make a house beat
add an off-beat bassline on a new track, in A minor
It writes the pattern into a clip and fires it. Want to learn it instead? Ask it to walk you through it, and it guides you one step at a time, checking your set before the next.
Free trial, no card needed. Needs Ableton Live 12.