Wondering how to get that smooth Melodic House in the style of Lane 8 and Ben Ben Böhmer? In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make your first Melodic House track, from drums to bass to nostalgic chord progressions.
If you want to follow along, make sure to grab the full FREE project file for Ableton Live, which also includes every single sample and preset used in this tutorial.
And without further ado, let’s jump straight in.
You can also follow this guide in video format if you prefer 👇
First Things First: What is Melodic House
So… What is Melodic House?
Melodic House is a subgenre of house music that prioritizes melody and emotion. It combines the typical beat of a House track but with richer, more melodic elements.
The focus is on creating an emotional atmosphere, and not on creating the biggest drop possible.
Melodic House emphasizes harmonic chord progressions and intricate arpeggios. Melodies and harmonies often feature multiple layers, creating a sound that danceable but also introspective.
Note that Melodic House has a lot of crossover with Progressive House. Artists like Lane 8 for example could be categorized as Melodic or Progressive House depending on the track.
Step #1: Setting Up our Melodic House Project
Before dragging in any sample, let’s map out the structure of our track. By doing this early on, it’s going to make our life a lot easier later on. This is because we’ll have a structure to work to, rather than just guessing where each section is going to be.
To do this, we are going to bring in a classic Melodic House track called Beyond Beliefs by Ben Böhmer. This will serve as our reference track.
The reference track is at 124 PBM, so let’s set our project to the same tempo.
Next up, on a MIDI track, let’s map out every 8 bars of structure in our reference track.
Basically, we are just going to create a series of dummy MIDI clips (which will be empty). Their sole purpose is to inform us of the structure of our track. Each clip should be named so that you roughly know what’s going on in that section (for example: “Intro – no bass – drums”).
This is the structure I ended up with:
- melodic Intro (16 bars);
- drums + bass + lead (16 bars);
- counter-melody + percs + pad (16 bars);
- clap + high ambiance (16 bars);
- swells + delay (16 bars);
- breakdown (delay) + new melody (32 bars);
- breakdown with bass (16 bars);
- and then it’s back to our initial drop.
Your structure will of course look different based on the reference track you use. In any case, we are not bound to this structure and can deviate from it at any point we want.
Once that is done, we can mute our reference track, and keep it for later for mixing purposes.
Step #2: Creating our Own Melodic House Kick Drum
The kick and bass are the foundation of most House genres. But it’s even truer in Melodic House. So it’s important to get it right.
Let’s kick things off with the kick drum.
This part is really not that complicated – just a standard four-on-the-floor kick drum. Pretty much standard across all House music.
Let’s create a new audio channel and pick a good kick sample. These are all downloaded from good quality Melodic House packs. In Melodic House, kicks tend to have this good solid click at the beginning but also a very fast pitch envelope so that the tail of the kick is a bit tonal.
Here’s the first kick I selected:
What I like to do next is layer in a click. This is basically when we just keep the transient of another kick to add a bit of attack.
At this stage, make sure you’ve got a decent alignment with the waveforms, i.e. the highs and lows are roughly aligned. This ensures you won’t have any phase cancellation.
Feel free to also play with the pitch of both your main layer and your click. Sometimes a sample just sounds better when it’s pitched up or down a few semitones. You can also add a limiter to control the peak of your kick.
Once you’re happy with the sound of your kick:
- create a new audio track and set it to “Resample”;
- arm the track and select 1 beat length;
- hit record.
Boom! We now have our very own kick! You can delete the 2 initial layers now as we don’t need them anymore.
Now that our kick is in place, let’s move on to the bass.
Step #3: Getting our Bass to Hit Just Right
Let’s load up a new MIDI track and call it Bass. In terms of the actual sound, there’s a few different sounds I’ve pre-created that I’m going to try out. But for now, I’m just going to load up a preset to get the writing down. Then, we’ll ask ourselves whether the actual preset is the right one for the job.
Next up, before even writing our bassline, let’s set up our sidechain compression.
This will just help us get in the groove directly and write a proper bassline. For this, I’m going to duplicate our kick track and shorten the kick so we just have a small click:
This will enable us to create a really tight sidechain. Next, load up a compressor on your bass channel, and select the sidechain trigger as the input. Check out this video on our YouTube channel if you want a more detailed tutorial on sidechain compression.
By the way, make sure to disconnect your sidechain trigger so it doesn’t come through your master!
Finally, once our sidechain compression is dialed in, we can start writing! This is really just a trial-and-error process. I usually work directly in the Piano Roll, but you can also jam on your MIDI keyboard if you prefer.
After messing around for a bit, this is the pattern I settled on:
As you can see from the screenshot, I ended up layering 2 different bass sounds. In terms of melody, here are a few tips:
- keep it simple;
- prioritize long notes;
- don’t be scared to have a full 16-bar pattern instead of the traditional 8;
- try to change notes when the kick hits, not in between.
That’s our bass sorted! Now let’s move on to some melodic elements.
Step #4: Building a Nostalgic Chord Progression
I want to create a main melodic motif, something we can layer on top of.
Let’s draw in a new MIDI clip and insert an instance of Serum. At this point, the best is to search Splice or Loopcloud for good Melodic House presets. We can always tweak them later on.
Here’s a cool pad sound we can start with:
I’m simply going to draw in an Am7 chord during the whole 16 bars. Next, I’m going to apply some processing, including:
- arpeggiator to create some variation;
- auto filter to remove some of the highs and with LFO applied to create movement;
- auto pan to add some width;
- EQ to remove some lows that we don’t need.
What I like to do next is to resample this while moving around some knobs. We can select and loop just a section that we like:
We can now sample and loop a section that we like:
Nice! Now we’ve truly created our own pad 😎. Here’s what it sounds like in context with our kick and bass:
Next up, let’s add a cool keyboard chord progression.
Here are a few tips you can use to build your chords:
- start by writing a basic chord, then move certain notes up or down an octave. This is what we call inversions;
- move every note off the grid. This will give the impression they were recorded live;
- use Ableton’s “Highlight scale” to help you pick notes that are always in key.
By the way, check this guide if you need a refresher on how to write awesome chord progressions.
When going for a nostalgic vibe, it helps to use plugins that will degrade your sound. Vinyl by Izotope is a great free option, but there are plenty of others like RetroColor.
Step #4: Adding an Arp and a Melodic Lead
Now one element that almost all Melodic House tracks have is an arp.
If you don’t know, arp is short for arpeggio. And an arpeggio is simply a chord where the notes are played in a rising or descending order. Full guide on arpeggios right here.
Let’s first write a simple arp on Serum:
Next, let’s find a cool sound on Serum. Finally, let’s add some processing:
- delay set to 3/16;
- high-passing to remove unnecessary lows;
- some chorus to add that retro effect.
And this is our result:
Sounding nice 😍. Let’s keep moving and design our main lead now.
With Melodic House, you really have the choice when it comes to your lead: synthetic or organic.
By synthetic, I mean something that is really sound design-oriented. Or you can go down the organic route, and pick a sound that is more reminiscent of a real instrument like a piano. I’m going to choose the latter for this track.
Here’s a melody I came up with jamming over our existing arrangement:
Here’s what everything sounds like in context:
Step #5: Vocal FX and Percs
To get that real organic Melodic House vibe, we need to add some sort of vocal. Now I don’t think that a full vocal performance is needed here. What I’m thinking of is more of a pad-like vocal chop.
Here’s a little vocal sample I found in my library:
Let’s pitch it in key with the track and reverse it:
Add a ton of reverb (Valhalla Shimmer is one of my favorite delays at the moment) – and boom! You’ve got yourself a nice little vocal chop.
Pro-tip: hold CTRL + SHIFT to move the selection of audio while keeping the clip in place. This allows you to duplicate the clip across the track, but then easily scan through the sample to pick different moments.
Beefing up our beat
We started off our drums with a simple kick drum and left it at that. With Melodic House, stripping back your drop to just a simple kick is super effective. You’ve surely heard it in many tracks before: a slow build-up with many elements, then a drop with just kick, bass, and maybe 1 melodic element. Works a charm 😍
However, after a few bars, you need to switch things up to keep the track moving.
So let’s do that here with some hi-hats, shakers, and more. Firstly, let’s bring in some shaker layers. One trick I love to do is to bring several loops and pan them to create some real depth and texture:
Next, let’s add a tambourine:
Finally, let’s add:
- a closed hi-hat on every offbeat;
- a clap on every second beat.
And that’s a wrap! 👇
That’s It for This Guide on How to Make Melodic House!
And that’s a wrap for this guide on how to make Melodic House! Hopefully, you found it useful and will be able to implement some of these techniques into your future tracks. If you want to check out the full Masterclass with every single step, make sure to head over to our YouTube channel (link down below).
And don’t forget to grab the FREE project file and sample pack right here:
