HOUSE MUSIC - What is House Music

The First House Records - Part 2

As Disco music began to wane in New York during the late 1970's to early 1980's, there now was a drought of new records available for Frankie Knuckles especially to play within Chicago.In New York, this problem was solved by the invention of HipHop and Electro music for many of the Djs there! But in Chicago, Disco music was still loved.

Frankie Knuckles began looking at ways where he prolong the Disco vibe within the various nights where he played out to within Chicago. By doing this it made him look backwards and analyse his older music within his music collection.

As the 1980's,approached, Frankie experimented and began to play sounds that were more "dubbed up" in style rather then the straight forward Soulful styles of Disco that he was reknown for. He started introducing sounds from group such as The Peech Boys and D-Train, within his sets. He also started buying and including obscure imports, especially from the country of Italy - where the music of Disco was refusing to die!

Frankie also started on making re-edits of songs that were firm favourites with the crowds that were with him originally at the Warehouse. He was using techiques that he had seen New York Djs using years before to keep the party going at their venues. He started employing these ame new ideas and experiments in his sets in the Warehouse night club during the early 1980's.

Even Frankie states, "A lot of the stuff I was doing early on I didn't even bother playing in the Club, because I was busy trying to get my feet wet and just learn the craft. But by 1981, when they declared that Disco music was dead, all the record labels were getting rid of their dance departments, or their Disco departments, so there was no more uptempo dance records, everything was downtempo. Thats when I realised I had to start chaning certain things in orddr to keep feeding my dancefloor. Or else we would have had to end up closing the club" - Source taken from the Book called "Last Night a Dj saved my life" - Headline Press - London

Using a Reel to Real tape recorder, and assisted by his friend Erasmo Rivieria, who was studying Sound Engineering at the time. Frankie would take weird tunes like "Walk the Night" by the Skat Brothers, or Jazzy Disco tunes like " A little bit of Jazz" by the Nick Straker, and re-edit them, extending the intro's and breaks, adding new Beats and sounds to them, to make them work better for the dancer at the Warehouse.

Frankie adds, "Even stuff like I'm every Women and Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan, just things like that. completely re-edit them, to give my dance floor an extra boost. I'd rearrange them, extend them and rearrange them" - Source taken from the Book called "Last Night a Dj saved my life" - Headline Press - London

Djs were to go away and experiment themselves on the styles that heard at the Warehouse via hearing Dj Frankie Knuckles and at the Music Box via hearing Dj Ron Hardy and of course hearing the Dj's at the radio station called "WBMX"- or known to everyone within Chicago as theThe Hot mix 5, on much cheaper and more powerful electronic Music computers, sequencers and Drum machines!

House music was Disco music, made by Amateurs. House music was Disco. Its rhythms, its basslines, even its spirit - was recreated on machines that gave a near feeling to musical instruments - but never really got there! The kids that would eventually take up the "chalice" left behind by those Dj experiments as mentioned above were at clubbers first of all rather then musicians themselves.

The Dj's (mentioned above!), who had aimed to preserve a music which had been declared dead (Disco), had created another from its ashes. The Dj's aim was to drive the dancers into states of pure hypnotic fury, using endless rhythm tracks that work the dancefloor via the use of a great vocal within the song - Source taken from the Book called "Last Night a Dj saved my life"

This style of music (House music) demanded an endless supply of simple, repatitive drum rhythms. The peoples of Chicago soon began to notice how these sounds that Dj's of the calibre of Frankie Knuckles, Dj Ron Hardy and the Hot mix 5 Dj's were coming up with and starting to experiment themselves!!