What's Is PROGRESSIVE HOUSE ? Fl Studio Tutorial

What's PROGRESSIVE HOUSE? 

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A question I buy asked daily is what's the progressive house? Well, it started like this… Its 1992 and journalist Dom Phillips is out together with his mates where he chances upon a DJ playing sort of music he's unacquainted. A month or two after he writes ‘Trance Mission‘ for Mixmag, waxing lyrical a few new sorts of house music coming from British shores. “Things are changing.” He says, “There’s a replacement breed of hard but tuneful, banging but thoughtful, uplifting and trancey British house that, while most reception with the trendier Balearic crowd, is simply as capable of entrancing up a rave crowd. once more, it’s possible to travel out and listen to mad but melodic music that creates you would like to bop. Progressive House we’ll call it. It’s simple, it’s funky, it’s driving, and it could only be British” then it had been born.

How to make Make PROGRESSIVE HOUSE Like MARTIN GARRIX, NICKY ROMERO

Seminal labels like William Orbits’ Guerrilla Records, Deconstruction, Soma and Hooj Choons paved the way for a more melodic antithesis to the acid house and techno of Detroit and post disco-inspired house coming from Chicago. DJs playing progressive house could adopt a more fluid sort of mixing from track to trace. Club nights like Renaissance in Mansfield and Shelley’s in Stoke saved Northern clubbing from the dwindling happy hardcore scene with the introduction of the very UK based sound.

the teenagers were installing CD players at an alarming rate in their Ford Escort XR3i’s….and the music soundtrack could only be described as “bangin’”!

 For me, happy hardcore created a barren of former clubbers left “hanging” (see what I did there) with no real outlet for the house crew to party without persecution of legalities. Putting on an occasion was scary; Police requirements, Council requirements, security levels, care etc…made it almost impossible. House music basically was dead up North…..No one took the prospect to get on an occasion supported house music because the youngsters were all trousered up with 140 bpm. The crews of clubbers who had experienced House music together within the late eighties and early nineties had to specialise in their careers and relationships.”

What changed the clubbing landscape in Scotland post-1994?

 2 words…. well, 4 words really…… “Northern Exposure” accompanied by “Sasha & Digweed”. Streetrave, reincarnated as Colours, had formed a strong relationship with the two whippersnapper DJs and if I recall correctly, had previously given them their first-ever gigs in Scotland too. When Ricky announced the Northern Exposure Tour was coming to the Arches, a massive sigh of relief swept over Scotland. In my book, it was the most anticipated gig for moons. The progressive house was the buzzword. The soundtrack in cars had changed; to be a cool kid you banged in a Global Underground CD. To chill out, you stuck during a Cafe Del Mar CD (basically Progressive House at 100bpm) House music was simply Progressive House, without the “progressive” in its moniker” he says and continues.

“The mid 20’s clubbers had something to call their own again, the sophisticated, evolving soundtrack had risen to the fore, and had kicked happy hardcore well and truly in the nut sack! Going out clubbing again at 25 was a joy; a community spirit appeared again. The producers & DJ’s were flavour of the month and progressive was the biggest genre in Mixmag & DJ Mags’ reviews section. All was tickety boo in clubland from 1995 onwards, no other genre had created such a buzz, but then it slowly shot itself in the foot, all on its own. The media (club cultures’ antichrist) started to feel the back lash on the floors, reported it as “uncool” even though, up to that point, they had embraced the music and so the media’s love affair with progressive came to a grinding halt circa 1998. Sasha & Digweed had taken the machine that was Northern Exposure global and the love affair, like with many past genres of club music, quickly and suddenly fell out of favour.“

Northern Exposure was pretty successful in the south too, but like many things, progressive house became popular, and with it the band wagoners started to circle keen to reap the rewards with little or no effort. As with many scenes since, saturation equalled a dumbing down of the music even when prog moved towards the even lengthier ‘Epic House’ sub-genre, the bandwagons followed. “I genuinely believe a group of artists decided to record some lengthier tracks or epic music because it felt right at the time, “ recalls Lee “ The results were good so everyone jumped on it and called it Epic House. Following that, you end up with others intentionally trying to record music under that banner….. like “we need to record a track at least 13 mins long”… “we need a big breakdown” etc. ..So you can end up with music being made for the wrong reasons…”

“I think Progressive house deserved the backlash it got at the start of the noughties,” remarks Dave Seaman, 90’s progressive house originator, former editor of Mixmag and label head of the incredible Stress Records. “It had gone an equivalent way as art-rock before it. Pompous, po-faced and filled with its own self-importance. But basically was really quite boring. It was then that the DJs who wont to play what was previously referred to as Euro-dance hi jacked the genre and it mutated into the commercial sound people tend to call Progressive House today. These days, true progressive house as i do know it's to be found masquerading as Techno, Tech House or maybe Deep House! The lines between genres now are so blurred they rarely make much sense anymore!”

Beatport, among other online retailers, has shouldered the blame for the demise of dance music generally, but in specific terms, the main portion of blame is centred around how the mountains of latest files are labelled by genre incorrectly such the progressive house section is now reminiscent to a main stage line up at Ultra or Electric Daisy Carnival. Terry Church, writing for Beatport news back in 2009 muses that to the casual observer dance music’s (read journalists) need to categorise itself by genre is ‘amusingly pedantic’. But where would we be without order? During a casual conversation I had with a famous DJ some years ago, he described online stores as ‘massive warehouses with every record ever made has been thrown in the air and just left where they fell.’ I think for the main part that is true. Its an art to scour the web stores looking for hidden treasures, much as digging in the crates was a right of passage for us, vinyl DJs, back in the day; one has to adopt certain techniques and tricks to uncover great music. The first rule here is to ignore genres because the progressive house we knew bears no resemblance to modern progressive house. You have far more luck finding true prog within the indie dance section and sometimes in techno.

So who were my progressive house heroes growing up?

Deadmau5

 The true stars of progressive didn’t just play ‘progressive house’, they embodied progressive with everything they did, progressive was a lifestyle choice, a way of being and not simply a musical genre. DJ’s like Fathers of Sound, Sasha and John Digweed, James Holden and James Zabiela were guys that played music across the spectrum of house, from the deepest deep house to crazy tribal techno and all held together by melody and vibe – their music was as Dom put it “hard but tuneful, banging but thoughtful, uplifting and trancey…” They incorporated the latest hardware into their setups and like the pioneers of Acid House in the 80s, they opened the world's eyes to the possibilities of CDJs and Digital DJing all to bring the crowds a fresh and exciting new perspective on dance music. In fact, Sasha used to say of progressive house, as its popularity waned, that he played trance with a small ’t’; many others reported they played house and breaks. Following the resurgence of the late nineties, prog found itself very quickly in a lull again, and, as the minimal techno sound started to take over the clubs of Ibiza and mainland Europe, the big crescendos and tribal drums were replaced with a darker, more subtle groove. Prog had once again blown all the wind from its sails.

Enter the Swedish sound of DJs like Steve Angello & Axwell et al. I’m not about to bash these guys, at all. To be honest, in the beginning, around 2004/5, it was refreshing to hear a new sound coming into light, minimal bored the pants off me personally, and I was glad to see vocals and synth lines making a return to clubland. Frankly, I had come to the conclusion minimal nights were usually frequented by a load of kids who’s only goal was to consume enough ketamine to floor a herd of elephants, and consequently had scant regard for the music or the scene. As with any music, 18-year-old kids aren’t that fussed with the history of a genre, its new and happening NOW. This music is theirs and they invented it… which I think is why prog has inevitably picked up its stigma.