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Despite being pronounced dead by the music press countless times over the years, house music is still a dominant force in pop music today.

Once-unknown names like David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia are leading a new wave of house productions, with household names like Rihanna and Beyoncé all getting in on the act.

Here we bring you 26 tips to help you produce club-ready house tunes that stand out from the crowd.

For more production tips, and to learn how to produce a house track from sound selection right through to mastering, check out Computer Music issue 168.

Save me!

It's often the case when synth preset-surfing that you encounter several sounds you love but that are unsuitable for the current project. Store such presets for each synth, naming them by sound type, within a top-level folder called Use Me!.

This will provide you with some interesting starting points whenever you begin a new project.

Always customise…

Don't get into the habit of blindly copying compressors, limiters and other plug-ins from one channel to the next without tweaking their settings.

Also, don't fall into the trap of always using the same plug-ins in the same order. A setup that sounds awesome on one bass might ruin another.

It's fine to copy a compressor, limiter or other plug-in from one track to another, but resist the urge to be lazy and make sure you tweak the effect's settings to suit the new material.

…Unless it's not required

Our last tip is a very important one, but don't forget that simpler, functional plug-ins like saturators, filters, etc, can often be adequately applied much faster by copying. So, don't feel the need to tweak these for the sake of tweaking.

If you find yourself regularly using the same channel strip of plug-ins, be sure to save the whole thing out as a channel preset to save you time in future.

To opposite effect

A good way to generate some movement in the mix is to use autopanners on different but similar channels, such as two pads playing the same notes.

Try opposing the starting points (left/right) on two otherwise identically set-up panners. Keep the Wet/Dry balance quite dry-biased, though, otherwise the mix might become unbalanced.

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