House Bassline

A house bassline plays in the gaps of a four-on-the-floor kick: short notes on the offbeats, roots and octaves, one passing note to turn each corner. Below are five, from deep to acid, written out in G minor. Veena, a free AI DAW with a personal music producer built in, writes them too: CoProducer reads your kick, then puts the bass where the kick isn't.

The kick hits every beat in all five: steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 of the 16-step grid. Every note name below is what you draw in the piano roll. Veena's synth basses sound an octave below the drawn note, the way bass guitar is written, so the G2 in these grids is the 49 Hz G you feel on a club system.

Deep house: the offbeat pump

16ths   1   e   &   a   2   e   &   a   3   e   &   a   4   e   &   a
Bar 1   .   .   G2  —   .   .   G2  —   .   .   G2  —   .   .   G2  —
Bar 2   .   .   C3  —   .   .   C3  —   .   .   C3  —   .   .   F2  —

Over Gm9 and Cm9, the bass takes every "and" and nothing else. Kick, bass, kick, bass: the two never share a 16th, so the low end stays clean and the groove seesaws on its own. The F2 at the end steps up into the next G2. Deep House Bass has a short filter pluck on every note under a Juno-style chorus, so each 8th has a soft click at the front and a round body behind it.

Classic house: the organ riff

16ths   1   e   &   a   2   e   &   a   3   e   &   a   4   e   &   a
Bar 1   G2  —   .   G2  —   .   G3  .   .   G2  —   .   F2  .   G2  —
Bar 2   C3  —   .   C3  —   .   C4  .   .   C3  —   .   Bb2 .   A2  —

The hits fall 3-3-3-3-2-2 across the bar, the syncopation behind a generation of house records. It touches the kick on 1 and on 4, dances around it everywhere else, and pops up an octave on the "and" of 2. Bar 2 walks Bb, A, back to G. House Organ Bass stacks a fifth on top of a hollow tone, the drawbar-organ colour, so the riff cuts through without crowding the chords above it.

Acid house: the 303 line

Step    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  15  16
Note    G2  G2  G3  G2  Bb2 G2  D3  .   G2  F3  G3  G2  C3  G2  Bb2 C3
Accent  X   .   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   X   .   .
Slide   .   S   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   S   .   .   .   .   S   .

Sixteen steps, one bar, loop it for sixteen. The notes barely matter; the accents and slides are the line. On Veena's Acid Bass, an accent is velocity, because the preset opens its filter wider the harder a note is played. A slide is an overlap: stretch the note on a slide step until it crosses the start of the next one, and the pitch glides 60 ms into it. Step 2 slides up an octave into step 3; step 15 slides up a tone into step 16.

Tech house: the gallop

16ths   1   e   &   a   2   e   &   a   3   e   &   a   4   e   &   a
Kick    X   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   X   .   .   .   X   .   .   .
Bass    .   .   G2  G2  .   .   G2  G2  .   .   G2  Bb2 .   .   G2  D3

Kick, rest, bass, bass on every beat: the rolling gallop tech house is built on. One chord, one note for three beats, then Bb2 and D3 tease the next bar. Pluck Bass dies in about 160 ms with no sustain, so the double hits stay tight enough to leave the kick alone.

French house: the disco octave

8ths    1    &    2    &    3    &    4    &
Bar 1   G2   G3   G2   G3   G2   G3   G2   G3
Bar 2   C3   C4   C3   C4   C3   C4   E2   F2

Low on the beat, high on the "and", over Gm7 and C7. The E2 is the E natural of G Dorian, the major third of C7, and E2, F2, G2 walks back home. Disco Octave Bass keeps its filter opening with pitch, so the top octave snaps as brightly as the bottom one thumps.

Get a house bassline from CoProducer

Open daw.veena.studio, sign in with Google and paste:

Make a 124 BPM classic house groove in G minor over Gm and Cm, one bar each: TR909 kit with a four-on-the-floor kick, a clap on 2 and 4 and open hats on every offbeat; a House Organ Bass riff that syncopates around the kick in a 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythm, jumps an octave on the 'and' of 2 and walks Bb, A back into G at the end of every second bar; piano chord stabs on the offbeats. 8 bars of drums alone, then 16 with the bass, then 8 with the bass out.

CoProducer writes the drums first, then reads the kick notes actually on the timeline, so the bass lands in the gaps rather than on a guess. It offers 3 takes of the bass; hover to hear each against the kit and press Enter on the keeper. Want another groove from this page? Swap the preset from the Bass + 808s shelf and every note stays where it is. House is one of the genres people ask Veena for most, and in Veena's own data 81.7% of new users who ask for house get a finished first result on day one.

Shape it in the piano roll

• Slides: overlap two notes. Acid Bass glides 60 ms on its own; on the others, raise Glide on the synth panel's LFO card first. Without an overlap, every note re-strikes.
• Accents: raise a note in the velocity editor. On Acid Bass it opens the filter, on the others it hits harder.
• The acid ride: the knobs live on the clip, so copy the one-bar acid clip across 16 bars and turn BRIGHTNESS up a notch every four. The filter opens as the section builds.
• Swing: set snap to None and nudge every second 16th late by a hair.
• Octaves: select notes, then Ctrl or Cmd with the up or down arrow.

Or tell CoProducer: "move the bass off the kick", "add a pickup into every fourth bar", "make the organ bass hold for a full beat in the drop". One undo reverses any change.

Where house basslines go wrong

1. Bass on the kick. Two lows on one 16th blur into one. Move the bass to the offbeat, or ask CoProducer to duck it under the kick.
2. Notes too long. A bass note that rings into the next kick kills the pump. An 8th is plenty.
3. Too low. A root under about 40 Hz is felt, not heard. Draw it in octave 2 so it sounds in octave 1.
4. A walking line. House is repetition. One passing note per turnaround, not four.

The chords above these lines are written out in house chord progressions, and the chord progression generator writes new ones for the bass to follow. The bassline generator locks any line to the kick you have, the full track is on the page for how to make house music, and the harder side lives in techno bassline patterns.