OGOGO

breakbeat

 

Always try to grasp time-travel' Breakbeat

 

Breakbeat inoculation & how it came to a vibrating life..

At the beginning, the term Breakbeat meant a drum solo of the song. Then, when the first samplers appeared on the market, those drum solos from rock and funk albums provided plenty of material for early hip-hop and dance music producers. Those drum solos  then were processed, rearranged, sampled, repitched and/or chopped up.

Breakbeat is a type of music driven from electronic music. Breakbeat does not follow a regular flow of rhythm and frequently utilizes syncopation, like many other contemporary popular music styles. Polyrhythm is commonly used as well.

The birth of breakbeat is mostly known to be in the dance clubs in the early 1980’s where hip hop DJs  used the “breaks” from a song (unaccompanied rhythm section), to give the dancers more chances to show off their moves, (most commonly used for break dancing).

Kool DJ Herc is famous for starting this movement. He was later followed by others such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grand Wizard Theodore who also helped to improve this genre of music.

UK has it's own stamp of breakbeat, just listen to the extreme funk of MC Duke in his I'm Riffin', the Black Dog's pre-Drum'n'Bass Parallel, jungle oriented Krome & Time's Ganja Man.

The most famous Break gene..

One of the most famous break that has been used over the years is 5.20 seconds long. It consists of four bars of the drum-solo performed by Gregory Sylvester "G. C." Coleman in 1969 from the 1960s funk and soul music group, The Winstons, from a song named “Amen, Brother”. This break has become to be known as “The Amen Break”. The sample, (pre-recorded sound re-used in other songs/music) drum loops of this break have been used in thousands of songs and genres including hip hop, jungle, and breakcore. First use of this break sample is known to be used by Mantronix in "King of the Beats" (1988's legendary B-side). This simple and short break sample alone has given birth to new musical genres such as jungle and drum-and-bass music.

The Amen Break
thanks to mobius32 and tetsor

 

Here are some other examples of sampled and oversampled breaks:

Old-skool beats chopped into funk rhythms in the numerous new genres..

big beat, breakbeat hardcore, drum and bass, hip hop, house , jungle, nu skool breaks , progressive breaks, rave, techno, dubstep

Urban Shakedown's Some Justice - early breakbeat classic. Commodore Amiga in action.

Deep Blue: The Helicopter Tune - jungle made of breaks and programmed percussions. Breakbeat University.

Way Out West - The Gift that brought breakbeats to the pop charts.

Doctor P - Sweet Shop mixes breakbeats with piano to move your speakers out of place.

For a good example of the slow dubstep & jungle breaks mix, spin a Skream's remix of LaRoux's In For The Kill.

Breakbeat after Y2K compliance..

Technology has become an aid for spreading the breakbeat samples because no longer is there a problem of splicing tape sections or constantly backspinning two records at the same time. Sampling breakbeats has become very simple thanks to computer programs and digital effects like time stretching, reverb, pitch shifting, reversing, and filters.

Another reason for preferred usage of sampled breakbeats over a drum machine is that the sampled breakbeats create the illusion of a real live drummer playing, (which was done originally before technological advances.)

The disadvantage of the rise of technology is that illegal usage of copyrighted material has become much easier. It might be fair to say that the Fathers of the most famous breakbeat sample, The Winstons, for their Amen break, received the least fair treatment out of any other sampled breakbeat artist. Even though their work was copyrighted, they have not received any royalties or mentions from the thousands and thousands of times that their Amen break sample was used by others, or rather abused! This is a huge legal case that can be easily won by The Winstons however they have never to this day attempted to sue.

Perhaps the most important factor to remember about copyrighted material is to notice the growth of music because of the influence artists have had on each other. If the copyrighting laws become too strict, some influences can become silenced and/or shut out, and so the growth and improvement of music also will suffer. Therefore, there needs to be a balance between sharing and restricting of the material.

Breakbeat toolbox:

Then

Akai S200 hardware sampler --> Commodore Amiga --> Propellerhead's ReCycle software --> Cubase 3 VST --> Propellerhead's Reason

Now

Native Instruments KONTAKT Sampling Software

Ableton Live

If you're breakbeat producer, I'll feel you..

Aquqsky - aka Blak Noise. Bournemouth.

ILC (aka Illian Walker) - UK producer who won the Best Single in 2002 and the Best Album in 2008 at Breakspoll. ILC is best known for his astonishing single Next Level.

Nick Thayer - Australian breaks hero.

To plug your questions and
input into OGOGO,
address all correspondence to:
OGOGO - get in touch

I'd love to sidestep dubstep with break..

© OGOGO   Contact    Privacy Policy