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A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

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Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#31

Another song that's been sampled a lot is La Di Da Di, by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, which came out when I was in primary school: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-la-di-da-di-a-b-side-from-1... Other frequently sampled songs typically have a single element, like a drumbeat or a vocal shout, that is used again and again. Part of what makes “La Di Da Di” unusual is how many different lines from the five-minute track…

See also https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_ronson_how_sampling_transform..., a good ted talk on this (that the WSJ article is probably inspired by)

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#32
What about this one, is this the amen break but super slow? (it's from 1968 and it's close no?)

https://youtu.be/6L5wJfQrK2E

(and one of the rare comments on that vid says: "The original drum and bass", so I'm not the only one confused)

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#34
post #19
post #10

The different examples really make the steady liquification of drum and bass over time clear. Yeah there's still a subgenre of really hard stuff but in the 90s it was all like that, just amen break over really dark metal/industrial kind of sounds. The melodic gap between Vic Acid and the Sub Focus remix is indicative, as dnb artists got older they got more classical training and started to focus on less harsh, more e…

> in the 90s it was all like that, just amen break over really dark metal/industrial kind of sounds There was actually a whole scene from the start of the 90s that focussed on melodic and atmospheric jungle and dnb. Check out Good Looking Records. In fact even Metalheadz pushed some this sound a lot. I personally see that as a fundamental part of jungle and dnb from the get go.

LTJ Bukem! Lookin' good.. good lookin'..! Love his Logical Progression stuff. And classics like Atlantis, Music, etc.

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#35

What about this one, is this the amen break but super slow? (it's from 1968 and it's close no?) https://youtu.be/6L5wJfQrK2E (and one of the rare comments on that vid says: "The original drum and bass" , so I'm not the only one confused)

YouTube has speed controls, if you speed it up, you can tell it's not in the same rhythm as either amen break nor other common DNB drum patterns.

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#36
post #16
post #9

Late 60s, early 70s had the best combination of technology & limitations to create some of the most memorable music. Go much earlier than that & everything sounds hollow. Too much later ( I'm looking at you, 1980s) and everything is polished & synthetic to phoniness.

Every generation seems to think the technical limitations of their era produced superior art; the previous generation was always too limited, and the following always have it too easy. They might be right for themselves, but it's clear the situation is much more subjective than the absolutes that get thrown around. The 1980s gave us samplers that could only do a few seconds of audio, and entire genres were built on i…

I came up in the late 80s/early 90s sampling era. Guess what era of music most samples we used came from?

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#37
My favorite (jungle era) earworm sample, still ever-persistent today and which cannot be unheard is the Loon II "bird" sound from the fairlight loon garden disk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grisBvgeY18

WARNING - once you hear and this you'll forever have pulled-out-of-the-moment experiences.

Edit: here's an article on that very sample - https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/474-anaconda-pacific-state-su...

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#38

Sadly “The Winstons” received no money for the sample. Tragic that the genius behind this revolution got absolutely nothing.

Interestingly ta very rare that someone would say the same about some open source project where nobody gets anything. Why are you guys so biased when it’s about music?

Re: A History of the Amen Break: From the Winstons to Futurama and Om Unit

#39
post #19
post #10

The different examples really make the steady liquification of drum and bass over time clear. Yeah there's still a subgenre of really hard stuff but in the 90s it was all like that, just amen break over really dark metal/industrial kind of sounds. The melodic gap between Vic Acid and the Sub Focus remix is indicative, as dnb artists got older they got more classical training and started to focus on less harsh, more e…

> in the 90s it was all like that, just amen break over really dark metal/industrial kind of sounds There was actually a whole scene from the start of the 90s that focussed on melodic and atmospheric jungle and dnb. Check out Good Looking Records. In fact even Metalheadz pushed some this sound a lot. I personally see that as a fundamental part of jungle and dnb from the get go.

> in the 90s it was all like that, just amen break over really dark metal/industrial kind of sounds

not to mention whole ragga jungle which quite often was mellow, happy stuff on top of fabulously cut-up amen:)

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