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Organic House Music

The Ultimate Guide to Producing Organic House Music

music production Oct 19, 2020

What is Organic House Music?

Organic House Music is a style of Electronic Music that became prevalent at festivals such as Burning Man, Lightning In A Bottle and Desert Hearts in the last 5 years or so.

This style of dance music has been known by many names over the years, including ‘Playa Tech’.

Beatport recently created the ‘Organic House’ genre, to better reflect the musicality and feel of the music, which is noted for its use of real acoustic instruments, often played by live musicians, with influences from many musical traditions from around the world.

These global musical influences include a strong emphasis on Middle Eastern, and Asian music cultures, and many of the traditional instruments from these parts of the world play a significant role in the genre overall.

Organic House Music is also renowned for being the main soundtrack for popular ‘Day Parties’ such as All Day I Dream, Woo Moon and The Gardens of Babylon.

These events contrast from the dark, all night affairs of the regular Dance Music scene, by often being held in locations of natural beauty, and tend to run earlier in the day.

Organic House Music is also noted for its slower tempo, and a more emotional. melodic musicality, with a style often compared to downtempo music, and cinematic film scores.


Top Organic House Music Producers on Beatport

Here are some of our favourite Producers in the Beatport Organic House Music Genre:

1. Tim Green

Tim has been a stalwart of the electronic music scene for over a decade, having previously released on Sven Vath's iconic Coccoon. In 2020, Tim has released a number of tracks on Organic House labels including Lost Miracle and All Day I Dream, and back in April 2020 he gave us a full breakdown of the Logic Pro Session of one of those tracks on All Day I Dream, called 'Vacation to Life'.

You can watch the full 2 hour Masterclass here:

 

2. Sebastien Leger

A legend in deep, tech, progressive and melodic genres in his own right, with a stellar career behind him, it's been a joy to witness Sebastien take a refreshing turn into the Organic House genre in the last couple of years.

Sebastien took what was great about his groovy, bouncy yet emotional sound and successfully managed to add more Organic House elements to it, such as sweeping cinematic strings, which can be heard here on 'Rocket to Lee's Little Cloud' from 2018:

3. Enamour

Enamour has enjoyed a meteoric rise within the Organic House and Melodic Techno genres in recent times, with his releases on Anjunadeep and Lane 8's This Never Happened turning heads and fuelling dancefloors before 2020's inevitable break. 

Enamour also joined us for a wonderful Masterclass breaking down his production process, which you can watch here:


How to Produce Organic House Music

Producing Organic House Music needs some tweaks and adjustments to creating other styles of musically driven dance music, such as Melodic Techno & Progressive House.

Organic House tends to be softer in nature, with more of a focus on the dynamic range and texture of the acoustic instruments, contrasting with some key elements that are clearly more electronic sounding.

Let’s beak down each section of instruments in more detail so you can see what we mean…


1. Kick & Bass

Whilst we are used to making Kicks the absolute centrepiece of our tracks in other styles of dance music production, with Organic House, it's a little different. The kicks tend to be softer in nature, and mixed more quietly.

This gives the rest of the instruments in the track more space to breathe. Whilst the kick is important in Organic House, it's not THE most important thing. The emphasis is on having a good, clean kick, that has good weight and bottom end, whilst also having a shorter envelope than the more aggressive kicks found in Melodic House & Techno.

A really simple, clean 909 Kick with no distortion is a good starting point. Level it around 4-6db lower than you would normally if you make a more aggressive style. This will feel a little odd at first but it works when the other instrumentation is added.

For bass, either electronic, electric or acoustic sounds can work well. Again, as with the kick, these bass sounds will be less aggressive, and will need to be mixed appropriately in order to not overwhelm the kick.

Try a High Pass Filter on the bass channel, and then some gentle sidechaining. We’d recommend a ‘volume shaper’ rather than a compressor here, which can give a more aggressive ‘pumping’ sound, so go for something like LFO Tool, or even our very own ‘Motherducker’ Free Ableton Sidechainer if you’re an Ableton Live 10 user.


2. Percussion

This is where things get really interesting. The percussion is a big part of what gives Organic House its signature sound.

Almost every percussion instrument, from claps to hi hats and shakers, will be acoustic in nature. A lot of Organic House producers play their own percussion instruments, and either record them over their arrangements, or sample them to be further manipulated later.

This isn’t as hard as it sounds - any local music shop will stock basic percussion instruments, such as egg shakers and tambourines, and will cost much less than a sample pack that every other producer out there is likely using.

All you need is a basic microphone and the ability to record into your DAW. This way, you can ‘jam’ over your own tracks, and it’s an incredibly simple yet satisfying way to get not only a unique sound, but a unique performance on your tracks. You’ll come up with ideas you wouldn’t do if you were just using a sample and programming it with the mouse, or triggering it via a MIDI keyboard.

There are excellent percussion sample instruments out there, such as Shimmer, Shake, Strike, but we recommend playing your own percussion instruments, as it costs a fraction of of a Kontakt library, and get’s just as good a result, and it's way more fun!


3. Melodies & Leads

This is where the term ‘Organic’ really comes into its own. The melodic and lead parts of an Organic House track are really where unusual and beautiful instruments from around the world shine.

From Greek bouzouki, or Middle Eastern Oud, from African Kalimbas and Mbiras to Balinese Gamelan, there’s a huge, wide range of instrumentation on offer, and it can often be hard to know where to start.

There are two ways to approach this:

1. The Samples & Plugins Way

this is the more obvious, yet trickier route. Finding samples can be difficult to fit a specific mood or feeling, especially when you consider that a lot of the instruments we’ve mentioned here can adhere to different tuning systems depending on where they originate from.

As ever, Splice can be your friend here, and there are many Packs and producers servicing this style. In terms of plugins, there is a huge array of choice, but often at the higher end of the price bracket. We’ve loved Heavyocity’s Damage for years, as well as Spectrasonics iconic Omnisphere 2, which is pretty much the only Organic House synth / sampler hybrid you’d ever need.

We offer a full and complete Online Course with 8 hours of training for Omnisphere 2 - click the image for more info:

2. The Live Musicians Way

No matter how good your samples are, or how well you’ve programmed your favourite patch in Omnisphere, there’s really no substitute for a real, live, human musician playing their instrument on your tracks. This is why film score composers such as JunkieXL and Hans Zimmer still have their electronic scores recorded live by real orchestras.

You just can’t beat that human element, the emotion and feeling that it brings. If you want this type of feeling in our Organic House tracks, then the best way to do it is to build a network of talented musicians who play some of these weird, wonderful and beautifully emotive instruments, who would be happy to play over your tracks, either in your studio, or (more likely in these days of social distancing) remotely. This will add a whole new skillset to your abilities as a producer, as well as getting a sound on your tracks that isn’t possible any other way.


4. Pads, Strings, Atmospherics

The more atmospheric elements of an Organic House track tend to be more esoteric, floaty and dreamlike in nature. Emotionally speaking, they lead a wistful feeling of yearning when done well.

Orchestral strings tend to be used a lot in Organic House, whether they be programmed using sampler instruments, including Tim Green’s well known love of Spitfire’s incredibly high quality chamber and ensemble instruments, or even sampled from orchestral recordings and soundtrack albums of movies (of course, you have to be careful regarding sample clearance).

There are other ways to approach lending your Organic House Tracks without the expense of high end Kontakt instruments, or the potential frustrations of sample clearance.

Good use of reverb in your track can really lend depth and atmosphere (indeed we have a free ableton rack here that has been really popular):

Granular synthesis is another popular choice, and can be done for free with some excellent Max4Live instruments such as The Granulator.

Try putting a yearning, middle eastern or asian style solo female vocal through a gradual plugin, and experiment with grain size, density and pitching - we guarantee you’ll be surprised at the results.


Want to Learn More?

If you produce Organic House music, or would like to learn how, we have you covered!

We host Live Organic House Music Masterclasses in our MYT AAA Members Only Facebook Group, and we also have an Organic House Online Course!

You can sign-up to MYT AAA including 20+ Online Courses today without any risk thanks to our 30-Day Satisfaction Money Back Guarantee!

Click here for more information and to Sign Up

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