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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

#51
Nice to wake up to a breakbeat thread on HN!

I grew up making/listening to funk, hiphop and drum and bass. Crate digging for breaks in old record stores was fun - that was a thing that got started by hip hop DJs/producers state side and was such a buzz to find a few bars of naked drums on a record. I have hundreds of breaks from crate digging back in the day, there’s a lot you can learn about production by dissecting them - figuring out how they sounded so fat - drum miking, compression, tape saturation, great playing.

These days there’s a lot of multitracks floating around and also ML stem separators make it pretty easy to extract drums from anywhere (although with a bit of phasing artifacts).

It’s interesting that to my knowledge there haven’t been any copyright lawsuits for drum breaks - although the record industry has been vicious about suing for sampling anything else - maybe one day in the future there will be and all aging DnB producers will be bankrupted :D

Back to the amen - it’s a special break. It has so much energy, especially sped up - to the best of my knowledge started by a couple of UK DJs mixing in hiphop records with house/acid with these breaks on them, playing at 44rpm instead of 33rpm to try to beat match them - and seeing the crowd reaction. There was an origin story on one of the Fabio & Grooverider shows of which London club this first happened and how it took off from there - people deliberately recreating that sound with sampling and chopped up/sped up breaks.

Amen still reigns supreme although there’s a lot of other great breaks too!

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

#52
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…

You're right, because that's how I feel about the 90s and MODtracker music. Best era, best limitations.

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

#53
post #25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're making an assumption that the parent's age and ignoring the possibility that they actually just think that the 60s/70s had the best combination of technical ability to limitation. I came up in the 90s (that's actually when sampler based music really took off vs using turntables or tape to loop things). I still think the 60s/70s had better trade off between limitation to technical capabilities. Studio time used…

> Studio time used to be unbelievably expensive, so people didn't mess around.

Except some of the best music from that era is from rich people who COULD mess around (Dark Side of the Moon, for example). The 80s/90s opened that up to poor scumbags like myself.

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The so called 'jungle music' is defined by the amen - it is not jungle unless it has it. Period. This is definitely NOT TRUE! Plenty of jungle has no amens in it: DJ Hype - Roll Da Beats ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNo9NR3F7KA ) DJ Dextrous (Da Kings Of The Jungle) - Time To Move ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXUEetPY6E ) Tom & Jerry - Maximum Style ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVukhJ1acSc ) Dillinj…

wait, that break is from Blowfly?! I was a DJ for years and I love Blowfly and never knew that, how embarassing, TIL.

Yeah, it's one of the Classic DnB/Jungle breaks. Like on this one:

Deep Blue - The Helicopter Tune (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vbnxrccBQQ)

classic Jungle and Drum & Bass Breaks are

Lyn Collins - Think

Bobby Byrd - Hot Pants (I'm Coming)

Incredible Bongo Band - Apache

Blowfly - Sesame Street

James Brown - Soul Pride

James Brown - Funky Drummer

I recommend Tim Cant's "A Beginner's Guide To Jungle Breakbeats" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuaKtIjSY_A]

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

#55

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)

Not an amen. I noticed a lot of people refer to breakbeats in general as "amen". The "correct" term for drum breaks and solos of old funk and soul records is "Breakbeat" as defined by a lot of Hip Hop Artists. A dead and flagged comment in this thread mentioned the "Ultimate Beats & Breaks" records, which are the basis for HipHop from 1988 onwards and of course UK Hardcore/Jungle/DnB.

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

#56
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GLR was the only label for a very long time that did that stuff though. I remember listening to DNB stations in the 90s and they were all very dark compared to today, I don't think there was any easy way to find out about liquid in those days for someone not deeply into the scene. I think that didn't change much until Fabio and Grooverider got their late night show on Radio 1 and wanted to make dnb more acces…

I think GLR was the only label for a very long time that did that stuff though. Partisan. 720 Degrees. Metalheadz, as mentioned in the comment you’re responding to. Moving Shadow. Renegade. Nu-Directions. Nexus. I don't think there was any easy way to find out about liquid in those days for someone not deeply into the scene. Goldie literally got into the Top 40 in the UK in 1995 with “Inner City Life,” a track we wou…

Never heard of those (except I think Nu Directions), so I hereby bow to your superior knowledge of 90s dnb!

> The term wasn’t in use at the time

It seems fair to say that if the terminology wasn't stable at that time then it was really the very start of that trend and I can be forgiving for missing a track that charted when I was 10 years old :)

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

#58
post #34
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Along with Air's Moon Safari, one of the Progression Sessions opened my ears to electronic music.

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

#59
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.

More Rockers was my favorite in this genre, especially their Dub Plate Selection Volume One. Gorgeous record. Also check out the first Spring Heel Jack album, There Are Strings.

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

#60
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're right, because that's how I feel about the 90s and MODtracker music. Best era, best limitations.

I got my start with OpenMPT. The tools I have now usually feel like an upgrade, but not always.
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