Organic house music: exploring the genre and how to make it

Organic house music has been gaining traction in the electronic music scene. The blend of natural elements and electronic soundscapes feels singular to this subgenre of house music. It is this particular blend of acoustic textures and groove-based energy that has made this genre popular in the festival scene today. In this article, we’ll explore what organic house music is, how it differs from other house genres, and give you a guide on creating your own organic house tracks.

Jump to these sections:

• What is organic house music?
  • What is the difference between deep house and organic house?
• How to make organic house music
  1. Set your tempo
  2. Make a beat and add percussion
  3. Add a warm bass
  4. Insert instrumental layers and melodic elements
  5. Make an arrangement
  6. Final touches and mastering

Follow along with this tutorial using Komplete Start, a free bundle of premium sounds, samples, instruments, and effects to get you started.

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What is organic house music?

Organic house is a subgenre of house music that integrates acoustic instruments, natural sounds, and ambient textures. It merges electronic and organic instrumentation. The combination is earthy, groovy, and can be quite emotive.

This specific fusion with instrumental sounds from around the world produces a meditative and euphoric listening experience. While the genre draws from influences like deep house, melodic house, and Afro house, it stands out as something quite different from the sum of its parts.

You can hear organic house tracks throughout “Anjunadeep presents Earth Day 2024”, with tracks by Kahwe, HVMP, and more:

Listening to the set can help us pick out some characteristics of organic house music. The instrumentation combines synthesizers and drum machines with acoustic instrumentation like djembe drums, bongos and congas, marimbas, and other acoustic instruments.

In terms of tempo, organic house typically sits around the 120 bpm mark, with some leeway to either side. Lower than 120 can bring out some smooth downtempo vibes, while pushing up to 125 bpm can add some extra energy.

What is the difference between deep house and organic house?

Deep house and organic house both feature mellow vibes and soulful instrumentation, so how exactly can we tell the difference between these two genres?

Their aesthetics are a key distinction here. Deep house leans into a fully electronic sound with synthesized instruments, while organic house includes acoustic elements and natural soundscapes.

The atmospheres each genre creates are, therefore, quite different. Deep house often leans sonically towards urban and nocturnal sonics and features a club-ready feel. Organic house, on the other hand, tends to feel more “earthy.” It’s a perfect sound for daytime sets and outdoor festivals.

Rhythmically, both genres maintain steady, hypnotic grooves, but organic house stands apart in its use of live percussion. It also often incorporates non-Western influences. These elements bring a distinctly natural quality to its electronic foundation.

The foundations of these genres are quite similar, and they share a core of their DNA. Indeed they live in the same “family” but are, ultimately, sonically distinct.

How to make organic house music

Now that we understand what organic house music is, let’s look at some creative principles so that you understand how to make organic house music yourself. We’ll be using Ableton, but any DAW will work just fine. Let’s walk through the basics of making a track that will sound like this:

1. Set your tempo

As we mentioned before, organic house sits comfortably around 120 bpm. We’re going to make our track slightly more upbeat and set the tempo to 122 bpm.

2. Make a beat and add percussion

As a form of house music, organic house needs a solid rhythmic base. Start by adding a drum machine from Battery into your session (you can try out a demo for free).

We’re going to make a classic, simple four-to-the-floor beat that can tie all of our elements together with a groove.

Our simple beat sounds like this:

Now, we’ll add in some percussion that will bring our beat into the world of organic house. With a combination of shakers and hand-drums from the Afrobeat Leap Expansion, we can hear our beat start to come to life:

Look for shakers and percussions that ground your beat with a natural sound.

3. Add a warm bass

We’re going to keep our bassline simple and mainly use it to add some low-end warmth to the track.

We’ll load up the “Bass – Monster” Kontakt Factory preset and tweak it slightly to make the sound more “round” and focused on the lower end of the frequency spectrum.

Finally, let’s add Supercharger for extra saturated warmth and compression.

This is how the bass sounds with the drums and percussion:

To avoid phasing issues that could ruin your mix, we recommend using a plugin like Ableton’s “Utility” to set your track to mono.

4. Insert instrumental layers and melodic elements

It’s time to add some acoustic-sounding instruments into the mix to bring the track fully into the organic house genre.

We’ll start with a repetitive melodic line using the “Hollow Trees” preset from Ethereal Earth. This preset includes a layered sampled kalimba, which is a beautifully evocative Southern African thumb piano. We’ll send it to an instance of Replika for some added depth.

For extra melodic and textural interest, we’re going to add a counter-melody line created with Subterranean Fauna preset on Hypha.

We’ll also add an instance of Raum directly onto the track to make it feel more washed-out and spacey.

Contextualized with the rest of the instruments, we can hear our organic house starting to take shape:

5. Make an arrangement

Arranging a track is a very subjective part of the songwriting process. Here, you’ll put everything together in a way that makes you stand out as an artist. A few basic principles to follow for organic house music are:

1. Use the intro and outro as stripped-back parts of your track for mixing in a DJ set
2. Gradually add in the elements that you’ve made, one at a time
3. Try to bring instruments in subtly with volume swells and effect automation
4. Once all of your elements are in, pull them back to create a build-up and drop
5. Check out these organic house production tricks for more ideas

Get creative with your arrangement. You can stick to well-established song structures or veer out on your own. It’s totally up to you and your creativity.

6. Final touches and mastering

Mastering your track will make it sound sleek and polished and make it ready for streaming services and DJ sets alike. It is the final essential step to take your track to a professional-sounding level.

Use AI-powered mastering on Ozone 11’s Assistant mode to give you a great starting point for your master. Then tweak it to get the exact sound you’re looking for.

Our mastered organic house track sounds like this.

Start making your own organic house music

Making organic house music gives us the chance to combine electronic music production and natural instrumentation. With these aesthetics in mind, we can create tracks that are both danceable and deeply emotive.

With everything you’ve learned in this article, as well as the free resources available in Komplete Start, you should have a good idea of how to make organic house music. Open up your DAW and get creating.

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