Most house music sits on a handful of progressions, dressed up with 7ths and 9ths and pushed around by rhythm. Theory isn’t the entry ticket; the actual notes are. Below are five progressions that never let me down, written out in roman numerals and note names so you can punch them in tonight.
Every example lives in A minor or C major. Slide the whole thing up or down when you want a different key.
The chords, quick version
You almost never hear bare triads in house. Stack the 7th on top (and frequently the 9th) and suddenly a progression stops sounding like a pop demo and starts sounding like house:
- Am7 = A C E G
- Dm7 = D F A C
- Em7 = E G B D
- Fmaj7 = F A C E
- Cmaj7 = C E G B
- G7 = G B D F
Block them in as simple stacks to start. Worry about voicing afterwards.
If one maj7 comes out sounding too sweet for the track, strip the 7th off that single chord and leave the rest alone. Plenty of classic records mix plain triads and 7th chords in the same progression; it’s standard practice, not cheating.
Five progressions that always work
1. i7–VI–III–VII (Am7–Fmaj7–Cmaj7–G)
This one does the heavy lifting. It carries emotion without tipping into sadness and holds up at any tempo. A huge chunk of melodic house is built on exactly this.
2. i7–VII–VI–VII (Am7–G–Fmaj7–G)
It loops without ever landing hard, which is what makes it hypnotic. Perfect when you’re writing deep or minimal stuff where the loop is the whole idea.
3. ii7–V7–Imaj7 (Dm7–G7–Cmaj7)
Straight out of jazz, and it’s what classic and French house stand on. For a tidy 4-bar phrase, run it as Dm7–G7–Cmaj7–Cmaj7.
4. VI–v7–i7 (Fmaj7–Em7–Am7)
Falls downward, feels moody. Deep house producers lean on this one constantly. Stick a 9th on the Am7 (a B up top) and the whole thing goes lush.
5. I–V–vi–IV (C–G–Am–F)
The pop progression, and yes, house can use it too. Voiced with 7ths it sheds the radio gloss and picks up warmth instead. It’s all over piano house.
Rhythm is half the progression
Give the same four chords a different rhythmic placement and they’ll read as a different genre entirely:
- Offbeat stabs: short chords landing on the “and” of each beat, between kicks. That bounce basically is the genre.
- Anticipation: pull a chord an eighth note ahead of the bar line. You’ll hear this trick all through garage and deep house.
- Long pads: let each chord ring for a bar or two while a filter creeps open. Identical notes, totally different record.
When you go for stabs, make them properly short: trim the note lengths until there’s real silence between hits, then tighten the amp release so each one snaps shut.
Here’s the classic piano-house take on that rhythm, played out.
Piano vs pad voicing
One progression, two instruments, and each has its own job:
- Piano: open the voicing up. Put root and 7th down low near C3, then the 3rd, 5th and 9th above C4. Let velocities swing by 20 or so from hit to hit, otherwise you’ve programmed a doorbell.
- Pads: keep everything tight inside a single octave and leave the root out of the chord completely; that note belongs to the bassline. Sustained, filtered, and quieter than feels right.
Dropping the root like that is the quickest low-mid cleanup I’ve found: the chord moves up, the bass gets space, and you never touched an EQ.
Have a listen to how those voicings sit inside a full deep house arrangement.
Making them yours
Before you start hunting for progression number six, try three cheap tweaks: move it to a new key, keep the chords and borrow the rhythm from some other reference track, or rotate the loop so it opens on a different chord. Start Am7–Fmaj7–Cmaj7–G from the Fmaj7 and it feels brand new for free. There’s a fourth free option too: run the same chords through a different instrument. Trading a pad for an organ or a Rhodes from our Serum 2 presets by genre shifts the vibe further than swapping a chord ever would.
Harmonic rhythm is worth playing with as well: one chord per bar against two per bar. Slow the changes down and the same progression sounds deep; speed them up and it sounds peak-time.
To actually program these you’ll want sounds built for chords — grab the free Serum 2 deep house presets and drop progression one into a pad patch this evening. After that, build the bass off the chord roots; I walk through the whole method in how to write basslines, and if you want progressions past house, there’s the top 10 chord progressions every producer should know.
And if house is where you live, the Serum 2 preset bundles make more sense than buying packs one by one: several genres’ worth of keys, pads and basses for less money.
FAQ
What key is most house music in?
Minor keys, overwhelmingly. You’ll run into A minor, F minor and G minor constantly. That said, no key is wrong. Choose one and get to know it properly.
Do I need theory to write house chords?
Nope. The five progressions here plus 7th chords account for a massive slice of released house. Theory becomes useful when you want to bend them later; today, copying the notes gets the job done.
Why do my chords sound cheesy?
Usually it’s bare triads with the root left in and every hit square on the beat. Put 7ths on, pull the root out, shift the hits onto offbeats — same progression, cheese gone.
Should chords be wide or mono?
Width on the body of the chord is fine, but keep anything under roughly 150 Hz in mono. Wide lows on chords collapse the moment they hit a club system.
Five progressions, 7ths on the chords, hits on the offbeats. That’s an actual foundation rather than a hack; a lot of classic house is nothing more than these changes played like you mean them.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
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