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A typical house arrangement, complete with builds, drops and a breakdown.

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4. Divide and conquer

When multiple similar elements hit at exactly the same time (claps and snares, for example) – particularly if one of those elements is a kick – try nudging one of them slightly forward using channel delay to give a more exciting and natural sound. This is one of the reasons it pays to keep your different percussive parts on separate channels.

5. Variation upon a theme

It's tempting to keep your beats looping over just one bar, but you should aim to generate variations over longer periods – be that two, four or eight bars. The variations can be short fills, removed notes, reversed effects or just about anything else that reinforces the sense of pushing the groove back to the start of a perceived loop.

6. Sample the delights

While your DAW makes it very easy to place audio samples directly into your arrangement, audio tracks offer much less customisation and sound-shaping functionality than samplers. Even functions like envelopes, timing and tuning, which can now often be accessed with audio clips, are still much more quickly adjusted in a sampler.

7. Hang gliding

Unlike the synth basslines common to 80s pop tracks, house basslines need a lot more slide and groove, so one of the most important and useful controls in this respect on any synth or sampler is the glide function. You'll usually set this to generate a slight slide from note to note, but a lot of fun can be had modulating it in real time, too.

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