Microhouse
Minimal · 1998 · 120 to 128 BPM · also known as Minimal House, Glitch House, Click House
House music examined under a microscope, around the year 2000: clicks, fragments of voice and tiny grains of sound assembled into silky grooves. The style was born in Germany in the late 1990s, on labels like Perlon, Kompakt, Playhouse and Force Inc, and its name comes from the critic Philip Sherburne, writing in The Wire in 2001. Montreal quickly became its second capital: the MUTEK festival was founded there in 2000, and Akufen invented microsampling there, thousands of slivers of FM radio stitched into grooves on My Way (2002). It is a jeweler's music, sensual despite its miniature vocabulary, and the direct ancestor of the following decade's minimal techno.
16 reference tracks
- Farben: Discfunction (1998)
- Pantytec: Into The Duster (1998)
- Isolée: Beau Mot Plage (1999)
- Luomo: Tessio (2000)
- Farben: Farben Says Love Oh Love (2002)
- Sakin Bozkurt: Black Lotus White Rose (2021)
- Sakin Bozkurt: Artificial Gravity (2021)
- DJ Koze: Buschtaxi (2024)
- DJ Koze: Umaoi (2025)
- Rico Puestel: Minimanimalistics (2025)
- Akufen: Skidoos (2002)
- Akufen: My Way (2002)
- Akufen: Wet Floors (2002)
- Akufen: Severed Finger Samba (2002)
- Deadbeat: Pocket Dwellers (2002)
- Jeff Milligan: Resolution (2002)
At a glance
- Tempo: 120 to 128 BPM
- First appeared: around 1998
- Machines: Ableton Live, Max/MSP
- The sound: Granulation et micro-samples, Clics et pops, Basses sub douces, Ableton Live et Max/MSP
- Labels: Playhouse, Perlon, Kompakt, Giegling, Spectral Sound, Force Inc
- Key artists: Luomo, Ricardo Villalobos, Isolée, Akufen, Matthew Herbert, Deadbeat
Producing Microhouse
Set the tempo between 120 and 126 BPM with a marked shuffle, around 58 to 62 percent on the sixteenth grid, applying the same groove to every track so everything sways together. Use a short, dry kick around 150ms, from a filtered 909 sample or a sine with a fast pitch envelope. Replace the snare with clicks and noise fragments of 30 to 80ms on 2 and 4, and swap the hi-hat for sliced noise: cut a loop into thirty-two slices and keep only the first 20ms of each. Program a dozen or more micro-sound tracks, each playing two or three notes per bar, never all at once, since the placement of these tiny hits is the groove itself. Keep the sub round and soft, often on the off-beat, almost singing.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Microhouse?
House music examined under a microscope, around the year 2000: clicks, fragments of voice and tiny grains of sound assembled into silky grooves. The style was born in Germany in the late 1990s, on labels like Perlon, Kompakt, Playhouse and Force Inc, and its name comes from the critic Philip…
What tempo is Microhouse played at?
Between 120 and 128 BPM.
Who are the key Microhouse artists?
Luomo, Ricardo Villalobos, Isolée, Akufen, Matthew Herbert, Deadbeat.
