Deep House Drum Patterns

Welcome to our guide to deep house drum patterns with free Ableton file to download. I love music by Larry Heard, Marcellus Pittman, Move D, labels like Workshop. Here’s 3 deep house drum patterns with full step by step instructions on how to make them with tips for your own music.

I like using classic drum machine samples and then adding in one or two samples from live drum breaks as they add a lot of texture and character to the beat.

Here’s one of the beats we’ll be making:

---

What Is Deep House?

Deep house is a stripped back, atmospheric take on house music, often taking in jazz or soul samples.

What BPM Is Deep House?

Deep house BPM is normally about 120-125bpm, but there are a lot of good tracks in the 110-120bpm range too. The lower the BPM, the more space you have for intricate hats and other percussion.

---

Ableton Drum Patterns Download

You can get the file used for all these drum patterns by entering your email here and it’ll be sent out automatically and immediately. It includes all the midi clips and Drum Rack and effects settings for Ableton 12:

---

Tips For Programming Deep House Drum Patterns

Here’s some tips for making deep house:

• Use classic Roland drum machine samples, tr606, tr707, tr909 and tr808s.
• Use swing and shuffle for groove.
• Add in some one shot samples sliced from live breakbeats for added organic feel.
• Deliberately move some notes slightly early or later, off the grid for more funk.
• Use drive distortion and bit crushing effects in moderation for that Akia sampler / analogue desk flavor. Low pass some slightly to get rid of the top end harshness.

A lot of deep house beats are written on classic drum machines and samplers. And often the samplers are sampling classic drum machines, so you want to use Roland 606, 707, 808, 909 samples and consider slight drive and down-sampling or bit crushing effects for that Akai sampler and analogue desk flavor. Low pass some slightly to get rid of the top end harshness you get when bit crushing or distorting. And then adding one or two samples from live loops or breaks to give the beat a more organic feel. Use shuffle for groove, and you can move some notes for grid to keep it loose.

---

Deep House Drum Patterns

Here’s our guide to making deep house drum patterns, with three beats that use break samples and drum machine samples, with processing in Ableton Live’s Drum Racks.

Deep House Drum Pattern 1

The key features of this loop are that it uses an 808 drum kit (this is my own free pack) but it also has a sample from a chopped break with some notes off the grid to make it loose, it is also distorted and bandpass-filtered for character. There is a small reverse clap sample in there too that make the second clap of the bar sound a bit looser. And the maracas have alternating velocities too.

It sounds like this:

I set the midi up like this:

The whole loop is swung as well, using the “Swing 16ths 66” setting at 29%. So everything has a little bit of a skippy feel to it.

I cut the clap quite short and drive it at the filter section, and roll the top harsh end off as you can see in the image below.

I also reverse this (called ‘808 kit 1-Clap R’ in the file) and added it in just before the claps hit on beat 4 of the bar, so you get a slightly earlier and ‘off’ hit, it is a subtle thing but helps to add to the organic feel of the track. I filter this clap down a bit more as you can see below.

The low tom: I filter it down really low so it does the work of a sub and I drive it too, as you can see in the settings below.

The break sample is one that comes with Ableton 12 in the core library called ‘Break Chopped 100 bpm’ and I took one slice from it and processed it with a bandpass filter and Drive and Shaper in Sampler’s filter section to bring out the rough texture in the live sample. This sample has some added delay (with a 2/16th note timing, and Ping Pong delay mode for stereo width.) And I add in Reverb on the Echo unit too.

The Maracas have alternating velocities which you can see in the midi drum clip, this is to give them a live feel like you would get if you were shaking a real maraca.

I added a Drum Buss unit after the Drum Rack to globally drive and crush the whole loop for a dustier sound. The clap, cymbal and break sample are sent to a reverb send.

You can get the file in the downloads section and see how it is put together.

---

The Studio Brootle Packs

Download our free and paid Ableton racks and sample packs here:

See also: Studio Brootle Dub Techno Chord Rack, Ableton Operator Sub Bass Rack, Techno Tom Sub Bass Ableton Rack.

---

Deep House Drum Pattern 2

This beat is made up of Roland 808 and 707 samples as well as 2 slices from a a sampled funk breaks pitched down and processed. It sounds like this:

The beat is swung with the same setting as before “Swing 16ths 66” setting at 29%. I set the Drum Rack up with reverb and delay sends – which are used for the break and rim shot samples. And the whole thing is run through a Drum Buss for some nice drive and crunch.

Here’s the reverb send, and you can see the Drum Buss which effects the whole rack:

And the Echo is set up with a 2/16th note rhythmic delay in the mid range as you can see in the image:

First of all I set up a fairly simple house beat with the 808 and 707 samples. Then I add in the break samples.

I use an 808 kick and filter it down so it thuds rather than punches too hard, and add drive it with the OSR setting in the Sampler filter session:

The Break sample is another one that comes with Ableton 12 in the Core Library called ‘Break Funk Chop 115bpm’. I’ve used 2 samples and pitched them both down by making the root note A3 instead of C3 in the Sampler ‘Root’ setting. These break samples are great for adding in to a group with the drum machine samplers to get some texture so you get the clean punch of the drum machines with an organic feel.

I take a hard hitting hi-hat that could almost be a snare and drive it with the Sampler Filter section and low pass it so it is not too aggressive. I gate it short, distort and filter down in Sampler:

Then I take a heavy snare sound from the break and band pass filter it it to make it less aggressive and change it’s character. I use the 12db slope so it doesn’t cut out too much and some resonance.

Here’s the midi drum pattern I used:

Buy our packs at our Shopify store, use this code for 60% off: SBCOM60STWD

---

Deep House Drum Pattern 3

This deep house beat is a mix of my own 909 sample pack which is already slightly driven. Plus I added some bongos and some jazz break samples too. It is shuffled with the same settings as the other 2 beats.

Here’s a preview of the beat:

I set the global effects up as in the two images below… There’s a Drum Buss at the end of the Rack and a Reverb send with the highs rolled off slightly:

And and Echo unit, which has a bit of reverb added there too:

Here’s the midi drum pattern for this beat:

I set the kick up first, which is a standard 909 kick.

I process the bongos with Overdrive and bandpass filtering and Drive and Shaper in the filter section:

I use ‘Jazz Break 125 bpm’ and ‘My MPC Rocks 100 bpm’ from the core kit for 3 different break samples (2 from the Jazz Break’.

I use jazz hit hat:

And a bandpass filtered snare which is driven too at the filter:

And another snare with the top rolled off for warmth:

These 3 samples add so much texture and grit to the loop. You want to experiment with getting a tight drum machine beat down and then add in break samples and filter them for character.

You can get the file for these in the downloads section.

---

Deep House In Ableton Live – Video:

Here’s a video tutorial and run down of the rack on our Youtube channel….

(video coming soon)

Please subscribe to the youtube if you haven’t yet: youtube.com/@studiobrootle 

---