How RIORDAN Makes UK House: Complete Production Breakdown
RIORDAN is one of the fastest rising names in house music, headlining shows across the US, UK, and Australia, racking up 1.3 million monthly listeners, and landing a Beatport number one with Needle on the Record. What makes his rise interesting is that it was not built on a single sound. He pulls from house, UK garage, breakbeat, and minimal, but every track still has a signature stamp on it. In this breakdown, Niek from The Producer School walks you through how to make that signature sound yourself, using the same garage-tinted bass, leads, and groove tricks that show up across his catalogue. Many of the elements pair perfectly with the Pressure Deep Tech and Minimal House Sample Pack, which is built around exactly the kind of filthy reese basses, breakbeat fills, and garagey top loops you hear in tracks like these.
What BPM Is RIORDAN's UK House Sound?
The project Niek builds in this video sits at 132 BPM, which is the fast end of minimal and tech house and the slow end of UK garage territory. That tempo is a big part of why the style hits the way it does. It is fast enough to carry the kind of energy you expect from speed garage and bass-driven house, but slow enough that the kick still has room to breathe and the groove can swing. If you are coming from straight 124 BPM tech house, bumping up to 132 changes how every layer feels under your fingers, especially the bass pattern and the offbeat hats.
How Do You Build the Signature Reese Bass?
The bass is where most of the UK garage influence comes through. Niek builds a filthy reese style bass and keeps the actual MIDI pattern deliberately simple. You do not need a funky groovy bassline here. A minimal, repeating pattern actually lets the texture of the sound do the work. Here is how the patch is constructed:
- Reese wavetable with two voices of unison gives the core detune and movement.
- A sine wave pitched up seven semitones adds a perfect fifth interval that fattens the harmonic content without sounding too musical.
- A touch of noise on envelope one with default settings to roughen the top end.
- Processing chain inside the patch: soft saturation, then multiband compressor, then bit crush, then overdrive. Each stage adds a specific kind of grit. The overdrive in particular has a bandpass on it controlled by a macro at around 30%.
- Utility to force the bass into mono. This is a non-negotiable step for this style. Stereo bass loses translation on club systems.
- Final EQ to roll off some of the highs and boost the lows. Outside the patch, Niek adds a light sidechain and another small high-end cut.
The result is squashed, fat, and unmistakably garagey. Layer it with a thumpy kick and you already have the core engine of the track.
How Do You Make the Moog Fifth Top Bass?
Sitting above the main reese is a second bass, called Bass Roads in the project, that does most of the melodic work. It is a Moog-inspired fifth bass that uses all three oscillators to get an analog-style width. Unison voices are kept at one, and any detune comes from an LFO routed to the fine tune. Oscillator A and B are both pitched down one octave, with B offset by plus seven semitones to lock in the perfect fifth. Oscillator C is pitched down two octaves, giving the patch a huge range that makes it feel full without needing extra layers.
Envelope one is shaped short and snappy. A second, even shorter envelope drives the Moog filter, with a small amount of resonance to add funk. Inside the patch there is chorus controlled by a macro at around 38%, a 1/16 ping pong delay for width, bit crush for old-school character, light reverb, and a high-pass filter. On the channel itself Niek adds an EQ that boosts mids and treble while subtly cutting the lows, a 1.5 second reverb at 40% wet, and a hard low cut to keep it out of the sub.
How Do You Add a Top Lead Without Cluttering the Track?
For the top lead, Niek uses Lead Spacer, which is one of the most basic saw presets you can build with a bit of filtering, bit crush, delay, tube saturation, and a touch of reverb. The lesson here is that for this style, simplicity is the point. He even keeps the melody on a single note and just plays with note length to create variation. When he tries a more complex melody, the track gets too busy. Holding back is what makes the groove translate.
A second accent layer uses the Aqua Pad samples from the pack, with one sample layered as a perfect fifth at a lower volume. That is paired with a saw at four voices of unison, bit crush, reverb, and a phaser. The accent only plays in one specific spot in the loop, which keeps it special.
How Do You Get That Plucky Offbeat Energy?
The final synth element is a pluck called Freak, where velocity modulates both the FM amount and the filter amount. It is built from a sine wave being FM modulated by a saw, layered with a digital FM wavetable pitched up one octave, plus a small amount of white noise. Envelope one is shaped extremely plucky and crucially does not modulate the filter at all. That job is left to velocity, so the harder you play, the brighter and more aggressive each note becomes.
For effects, the patch uses chorus, an 1/8 note delay in normal mode (no ping pong here), bit crush, reverb, compression, a small high-end EQ cut, and a phaser. Bit crush is on basically every sound in the project, and that is no accident. It is the glue that pulls all of these layers into the same old-school sonic world.
What Drums Do You Use for This Style?
The drum bus is intentionally minimalistic but layered. Niek pulls these from the pack:
- A top loop with offbeat rims already baked in, which defines the groove instantly.
- An extra clap layered on top to make the backbeat hit harder.
- A filler loop, mostly sampled breakbeat material that has been heavily processed for grit.
- A shaker percussion loop for forward motion.
- A second open hat that is shorter than the first for variation.
- One more raw filler loop and a crash for transitions.
The point of layering breakbeat fillers under cleaner drums is that you get the rawness of garage without losing the punch of modern house. The Pressure pack is full of these kinds of breakbeat-derived fillers and offbeat rim loops.
How Do You Arrange a Track Like This?
The arrangement follows a fairly typical house structure but with some key tricks. The intro slowly introduces drums while a vinyl noise ambience layer adds grit in the background. Transitions lean heavily on crashes, snares, and in one case a backspin. Niek uses one particularly useful trick on the open hat in the intro: he fades it out, which makes the sample shorter without ever touching an envelope. The same trick works on kicks. Fading a kick down at the tail effectively reduces the low end without putting an EQ on it. Subtle moves like this are how you create variation without overcomplicating the mix.
The break is layered with a vocal loop, a spacey bubbly sequence, and a high string that builds tension. More vocals come in with delay automation. The pre-drop hook uses a snare fill plus a kick fill, with the kick automated through a low cut so that the low end only fully arrives right at the drop.
How Do You Keep the Drop Interesting?
The biggest arrangement lesson in the video is to hold elements back. If you introduce everything at once, the only way to add energy later is to pile on more layers, which clutters the mix. Instead, drop out elements during the second half of a section and bring them back. Leave the pluck out for a few bars. Mute the top lead for half the drop. That sense of give and take is what makes a minimalistic track feel dynamic rather than flat.
Start Producing UK House Yourself
RIORDAN's signature sound comes down to a handful of repeatable moves. A 132 BPM project, a filthy reese bass kept in mono with a heavy in-patch processing chain, a Moog fifth top bass for melodic body, a single-note pluck lead, layered breakbeat drum fillers, and arrangement discipline that treats subtraction as a tool. The fact that he draws from garage, breakbeat, and house all at once is exactly why his tracks feel fresh. Once you know the building blocks, you can mix and match them across genres.
The Pressure Deep Tech and Minimal House Sample Pack contains the kind of garagey top loops, breakbeat fillers, reese bass material, and offbeat percussion that fit naturally into this style. If you want to take the same building blocks and apply them to your own productions, it is the fastest way to get the foundation in place.
Tutorial by Niek, co-founder of The Producer School. For more production breakdowns, subscribe to The Producer School on YouTube.