Afro House is tribal drive that rolls. Rounded log-drum basses, leads that chant, pads like a sunrise, percussion in constant motion. And the bass does more here than hold down a foundation; it works as a melodic instrument, playing a line you could genuinely hum back.
For reference, think Black Coffee, Keinemusik, Themba. Tempo lives at 118–124 BPM. The groove gets built as much from the gaps as from the hits, and most tracks stand on just three or four elements.
Here’s how I put together the core sounds in Serum 2 (log drum bass, chant lead, plucks, pads), along with the groove and mix choices that give it movement.
Start with the free pack
Grab the Free Serum 2 Afro House Presets: 5 basses, 3 plucks, 2 drum patches, 2 pads, 1 synth, 1 lead and 1 extra, all royalty-free, each with its own audio demo. Unzip into the Serum 2 user preset folder and rescan.
The basses alone justify the download. Log drum patches are awkward to build from scratch: the sound sits halfway between bass and percussion, and dialing in the pitch envelope eats more time than anyone expects. Here it’s already done for you.
The sound, part by part
Log drum bass
The genre’s signature sound, no contest. Underneath it all, it’s tuned percussion made from a sine.
Begin with one sine oscillator, unison at 1, mono. Now the pitch envelope: route an envelope into oscillator pitch spanning roughly an octave: attack 0, decay 30 to 60 ms, sustain 0. That falling pitch is the wooden knock at the front of every note.
For the amp envelope: attack 0, decay 300–500 ms, sustain 0. Follow with a touch of drive, then a lowpass near 800 Hz to strip the fizz the drive introduced.
Treat it as a melody, never a root-note drone. Four to six notes over two bars with genuine silence between them. There’s overlap with 808 technique here: the 808 bass guide uses the same pitch-envelope trick for a different genre, and everything transfers directly.
Chant leads
What makes a lead read as a voice is formant-style vowel color. Run a saw through two bandpass filters in series at different frequencies (around 700 Hz and 1.2 kHz) and you’re most of the way to an “ah”.
Next, put a slow LFO on one of those bandpass cutoffs so the vowel moves. A quiet noise layer adds breath; a short slap delay finishes it.
Stay sparse with the lead. Two or three phrases across eight bars is plenty. The filter guide goes into which Serum 2 filter types can actually pull off formant-style duty.
Plucks and marimba
Short decay, zero sustain, and a wavetable with that hollow, wooden quality. Set decay near 200 ms and route the amp envelope to filter cutoff as well.
Write these as counter-rhythms against the bass. The pluck speaks where the bass goes quiet. That call and response is the beating heart of the groove.
A 3/16 delay spread wide, with its return highpassed at 500 Hz, keeps them clear of the bass entirely.
Sunrise pads
Slow and warm. Unison 5, detune at 15 percent, a 1.5 second attack, long release. An LFO on wavetable position at 1/1 gives you gentle drift; highpass at 300 Hz and feed a 5-second reverb.
They belong underneath everything, quiet. If you can point to the pad in the mix, turn it down. The modulation guide shows how to route several slow LFOs without making a mess.
Tempo, groove and arrangement
118–124 BPM, with 120 to 122 being home for most of the genre. It feels slower than the number says, purely because the bass leaves so much air.
Put 12 to 18 percent swing on the percussion. Kick stays straight, bass mostly straight, everything else swings. Stack at least four percussion parts (shaker, conga, rim, something metallic) and spread them across the stereo field.
One arrangement habit outweighs the rest: build the bass in call and response with the percussion. Percussion groove first, then the bass written into its gaps. Afro house grooves live in the spaces, and any bassline written on its own will plug every one of them.
Expect tracks of 6–8 minutes, frequently with a vocal chop or chant showing up around minute two and the biggest section landing after minute four.
Mixing notes for afro house
Everything below 120 Hz goes mono. The log drum has to be dead centre and fully mono or it won’t land on a big rig.
Sidechain the log drum against the kick with a quick release near 80 ms — but only when they actually clash rhythmically. Often the bassline already steps around the kick, and then you leave it untouched.
Cut 400–700 Hz out of the pads and chant lead. The body of the percussion lives in that range, and the percussion needs to win there.
On the percussion bus: 3 to 4 dB of compression, slow attack, release timed to an eighth note. That’s the setting that makes the whole groove breathe.
Loudness comes out of the drums plus the log drum, not out of the master chain. These records tend to be mastered moderately and let the groove carry the energy.
Common mistakes
Log drum with no pitch envelope. Skip the pitch drop and you’ve got a plain sine bass. The envelope IS the sound.
Filling every gap. Beginners put a bass note on every beat. Delete half and the groove suddenly exists.
Over-quantised percussion. A shaker on rigid sixteenths sounds like a machine. Nudge timings and vary velocities by hand.
Making the pad too loud. The pad is glue, not a featured part. Drop it 6 dB under where your instinct puts it.
When you outgrow the freebies
These 15 patches were pulled from the same sessions as my Serum 2 preset bundles: whole genres covered for less than the individual packs would total.
Or browse the complete Serum 2 preset catalog and choose by style.
FAQ
Do these presets work in Serum 1?
No — they’re built on the Serum 2 engine. If you own Serum 1, though, Serum 2 is a free update.
Are they royalty-free?
Yes. Use them in releases, client projects, tracks you sell, no credit needed. The single restriction is redistributing the preset files themselves.
How do I make a log drum in Serum 2?
Sine oscillator, envelope routed to pitch: roughly an octave of range, instant attack, 30–60 ms decay, zero sustain. Set amp decay around 400 ms, add a bit of drive, then lowpass it into shape.
What BPM is Afro House?
118–124 BPM, and most often 120 to 122.
My log drum sounds thin on small speakers — what can I do?
Layer a quiet copy an octave higher with the identical envelope, filtered into the 200–400 Hz zone. Small speakers can’t produce the fundamental, so that upper layer becomes what they actually play.
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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