Deep House

Deep house is a slower subgenre of house with tempos typically between 100 to 125 bpm. Here, more focus is set on melodic elements, often featuring jazzy or vocal- packed arrangements. Further characteristics are gentle sounds like soft synthesizer pads, more complex chord structures and vocals with usually uplifting or bluesy- melancholic lyrics.

Originally a jazz fusion drummer, Larry Heard aka Mr. Fingers kicked it off when he bought a Roland Juno-60 synthesizer and a Roland TR-909 drum machine in 1984 and started to produce music. After just some days he had finished three tracks which would later be regarded as genre landmarks: »Washing Machine, »Mystery of Love« and »Can You Feel It«. Released in 1986 and although originally being an instrumental, »Can You Feel It« can be seen as a blueprint for deep house. Together with vocalists Robert Owens and Ron Wilson, Heard formed the group Fingers Inc. in 1985.

Larry Heard brought together the futurism of house with the lush sound of early disco and Philly soul. Thus, deep house can be seen as the follow-up to Chicago house which conjoined with New York City's garage house, forming a new »common« sound and bringing both local scenes closer together.

Deep house became very popular in Chicago in the late 1980s with most house producers like Marshall Jefferson making deep house tracks, too, and remained a very popular genre throughout the 2000s and 2010s.