French house

What it tastes like

French house — sometimes called French touch — emerged in mid-90s Paris when Daft Punk, Cassius, Bob Sinclar, and Étienne de Crécy started making house records that sampled obscure 70s and 80s disco, soul, and funk, then ran the whole thing through a filter envelope so the sample bloomed in and out under a four-on-the-floor kick. Music Sounds Better With You (1998) is basically a four-bar Chaka Khan loop with a filter on it, and that’s the whole song, and it’s perfect.

A bar in and you’ve got it: a chopped disco/funk vocal or guitar loop running on top of a steady kick, with a slow filter sweep opening through the verse and closing into the breakdown. The chord motion is ii–V or I–vi–ii–V from jazz harmony because the source material was jazz-trained 70s session players. Sidechain compression makes the loop breathe with the kick.

The chord moves

French house lives on jazz turnarounds — I–vi–ii–V is the canonical move because it cycles forever without ever feeling done. Add maj7 and m7 colors to every chord; plain triads sound wrong in this style. Sometimes you’ll use a vi–ii–V–I loop instead, or iim7–V7 in a one-bar repeat.

The trick is the voicing: french house chords are stacked tightly in the middle register — root in the bass, 3rd-7th-9th in close position around middle C. Use --voicing closed and let the filter movement do the work.

The groove

4-on-the-floor at 120–126 BPM. Snare/clap on 2 and 4 with a touch of plate reverb. Closed hat on 16ths, open hat on the offbeats. Standard French disco-house drum kit — usually a chopped vintage break filtered to taste.

The bassline walks. Often it’s part of the sampled loop; if not, it’s a synth bass that follows the chord roots on the offbeats. Sidechain pump is essential — set the chord pad and bass to duck hard on the kick; a 4-on-the-floor pump is the sound of the genre.

The sounds

• Sample loop: 70s/80s disco, soul, or funk. 1-2 bars, looped, run through a filter. Lean toward Chaka Khan, Earth Wind & Fire, Patrick Adams territory.
• Filter: a Moog-style ladder lowpass with envelope on cutoff. Sweep it slowly through the verse and crash it open at the drop.
• Kick: vintage 909 or a sampled disco kick. Tight, short tail.
• Pad/Chords: if not sampled, a warm Juno-style poly playing the chord stack. Layered low so the sample sits on top.
• FX: vinyl crackle for warmth. Phaser sweeps. Slight tape saturation on the master.

Production tells

Want it modern? Use cleaner samples (or original recordings), tighter sidechain, slightly wider stereo. Master loud at -8 LUFS.

Want it 1998-Daft-Punk-vintage? Saturate everything. Run the master through a tape emulation. Use heavily filtered samples that sound like they came off a dusty 12”. Mix at -14 LUFS so the dynamics breathe. Don’t EQ-clean the sample — let the muddy frequencies carry the warmth.

python jamburgr.py --key "C major" --style french_house --progression I,vi,ii,V --pattern pulse --output-mode pack --out ./jams/french-house