What is house music?

House is the four-on-the-floor foundation of dance music — a steady 120-ish BPM kick, warm basslines and looping grooves born in 1980s Chicago.

House grew out of Chicago clubs in the early 1980s, when DJs stretched disco records over a drum machine's steady four-on-the-floor pulse. The result — a hypnotic 118–128 BPM groove with warm chords, soulful samples and a rolling bassline — became the template for most electronic dance music that followed.

For focus and flow, the 'lo-fi house' and 'deep house' ends of the spectrum work best: the repetition that fills a dancefloor also makes excellent deep-work fuel, a steady pulse that carries long working sessions without any jarring changes. Producers like to say house is less a genre than a feeling, and that feeling is forward motion.

Because it's built from loops, house sits comfortably in the background: nothing spikes, nothing drops out of nowhere, just a warm, continuous groove that keeps time with whatever you're doing.

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