House Drum Pattern — Free MIDI & Breakdown

House was built in early-1980s Chicago on a Roland TR-909 and a four-to-the-floor kick, with the open hat lifted onto the off-beat to pull the groove forward. The open hat between beats is the genre’s signature. The pattern on this page is 5 voices on a 16-step grid at 124 BPM — straight 16ths, no swing — and the tempo, length and humanisation are yours to change before you download it as General MIDI.

The house pattern, step by step

What each drum is doing

Tempo and feel

House is normally played between 118 and 128 BPM. This pattern defaults to 124 BPM and the tool will write it anywhere from 60 to 200. The feel is straight 16ths, no swing.

How it works

Each genre comes with a curated groove — kick, snare or clap, hats, and percussion — programmed on a 16-step grid at the genre's natural tempo. The pattern is written using the General MIDI drum map on channel 10, so it triggers the right sounds in any GM-compatible drum plugin, sampler, or hardware module. Swung genres like hip-hop and lo-fi include their characteristic shuffle, and the humanize option adds subtle velocity variation so the groove breathes. Press play preview to hear two bars of the pattern before downloading. This page arrives preset to House, whose groove defaults to 124 BPM — inside the 118–128 BPM pocket the genre lives in — though the slider lets you drag it anywhere from 60 to 200.

Using the MIDI in your DAW

• Drag the file onto a drum instrument track — the GM mapping places kick at C1 and snare at D1.
• Swap individual hits or double the pattern to build fills and variations.
• Layer two genres (say house kicks under funk hats) for hybrid grooves.

Set your project tempo to 124 BPM before dragging the file in and the house pattern will land at its intended feel — then nudge the tempo to taste once the rest of the track is sketched.

These are starting points — for evolving, arrangement-aware house drum programming across a whole track, open the MIDI Maker studio and generate a full song.

Drum MIDI patterns for other genres

• Techno drum MIDI
• Boom Bap Hip-Hop drum MIDI
• Trap drum MIDI
• Drum & Bass drum MIDI
• Pop / Rock drum MIDI
• Funk drum MIDI
• Reggaeton drum MIDI
• Lo-fi drum MIDI
• Afrobeat drum MIDI

Or head back to the drum MIDI generator to tweak the length, tempo, and feel yourself.

Keep building: scales, chords and more

• Scale to MIDI tool
• Chord progression to MIDI tool
• Audio to MIDI converter

Frequently asked questions

What tempo is a house drum pattern?

House is normally played between 118 and 128 BPM; this pattern defaults to 124 BPM and the tool lets you set anywhere from 60 to 200 before downloading. The feel is straight 16ths, no swing.

Where do the kick and snare fall in a house beat?

Kick on all four beats — four-to-the-floor; Clap on the backbeat, beats 2 and 4; Open hi-hat on the off-beats, between each beat; Closed hi-hat 8 hits a bar, filling the grid around the other voices; Shaker straight 8th notes, two to a beat. That is 26 hits across the bar.

What drum sounds does the MIDI file trigger?

The pattern is written on MIDI channel 10 using the General MIDI drum map (kick at 36, clap at 39, open hi-hat at 46, closed hi-hat at 42, shaker at 70), so it triggers the right sounds in any GM-compatible drum plugin, sampler, or hardware module.

Is this house drum MIDI free to use?

Yes — the download is free, requires no sign-up, and the generated groove is royalty-free for personal and commercial tracks.