If you're going to try making some Deep House, you'll first need to familiarise yourself with one main chord - the minor 9th.
Abbreviated to 'min9' in music theory, when played in a full voicing this chord is comprised of 5 notes, which when played in unison and transposed between different keys in sequence, creates that distinct, unmistakable Deep House 'vibe'.
This chord enjoys widespread use throughout the genre, and is a key part of that mellow feel inherent to the style - in today's tutorial we're going to learn how to quickly turn any soft synth sound into that irresistible min9 chord and start jamming some instant Deep House. Let's go!
First things first, let's take a look at the notes making up the min9 chord. If we take C as our root note, we add E 'flat' or Eb and G (the next 2 notes of the minor triad), then Bb (the minor 7th), and finally D (the 9th).
We don't strictly need the minor 7th note to create this chord but it adds flavour here, so let's keep it involved as this is often how the chord is used in Deep House tunes.
So the formula for the basic min9 chord is as follows:
Note 1: root
Note 2: root + 3 semitones
Note 3: root + 7 semitones
Note 4: root + 10 semitones
Note 5: root + 14 semitones
We can then choose any root note on the keyboard and apply this formula to give us a min9 chord. Let's have a listen:
This chord works perfectly well as it is, however our next step is to alter the inversion or 'voicing' of the chord - this means using the same notes of the chord, but at different places on the keyboard.
"Why should we do that?" I hear you ask. The main reason is that altering the inversion can actually colour the sound differently. The harmonic information stays the same, but the 'vibe' changes slightly. This gives us a more authentic Deep House sound.
Altering the inversion of the chord also has practical applications, making the chord easier to play with two hands - but more on this in a bit!
So let's modify our formula from the basic min9 chord above:
Note 1: root
Note 2: root + 3 semitones
Note 3: root + 10 semitones
Note 4: root + 14 semitones
Note 5: root + 19 semitones
All we've effectively done here, is move the 5th (our original note 3) up an octave. Let's take a listen, and notice how it differs slightly in vibe to our previous chord:
So now that we've got our chord ready, how do we quickly apply it to any soft synth we choose? Well, of course we can simply use the MIDI notes we've already created and copy and paste them across the keyboard, but we can be smarter than that - this is where Ableton Live specifically comes into its own and offers us a tool made for the job.
Let's load the Vital soft synth onto a MIDI track, and navigate the browser to add Live's 'Chord' device from the list of 'MIDI Effects' to the start of the chain:
Does the 'Chord' device look kind of familiar at this point? Let's first choose a synth sound on the Vital plugin - we'll take one called 'PL Ivory' from our recent preset pack Flow State - Vital Hip Hop Presets and record a simple melody:
Now let's adjust the dials on our Chord device to reflect our min9 formula from above. Now when we hit our chosen root note, the corresponding notes of our min9 chord will also be triggered into our synth, meaning we can simply play one note to trigger a chord. Magic!
Let's hear the same melody from above, this time with our Chord device triggering a min9 chord with each note we press:
Starting to sound pretty deep, isn't it?!
Let's take things a step further. We'll drop the 'Shift 1' dial to -12 semitones, effectively giving us a bass note to our min9 chords, and we'll also add in some drum loops from our pack Vital Classic House Presets to get a full groove going:
We can also use synth sounds from Ambient preset packs to give our sequence a different feel and atmosphere - here's a preset from our pack Desert Highway - Serum Downtempo Presets transformed into a Deep House pad:
And there we have it - a quick, and easy way to transform any synth sound into a Deep House min9 chord that can be triggered with just one key!
In this article, we've focussed on how to achieve this in Ableton Live, however the same principle applies across many other DAWs. In Logic Pro, for example, the 'Chord Trigger' device can be added to your channel chain, and this already has a 'Minor 7, 9' preset you can use straight out of the box:
So ,try it out for yourself! Load up your favourite soft synth and try transforming a variety of presets across different genres into min9 chords - you might be surprised at how well it translates over a Deep House groove!
