Breakbeat is a broad type of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
that tends to use
drum breaks
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece. A break is usually interpolated between sections of a song, to p ...
sampled from early recordings of
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...
,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
, and
R&B. Breakbeats have been used in styles such as
hip hop,
jungle
A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...
,
drum and bass
Drum and bass (also written as drum & bass or drum'n'bass and commonly abbreviated as D&B, DnB, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by fast breakbeats (typically 165–185 beats per minute) with heavy bass and sub-ba ...
,
big beat,
breakbeat hardcore, and
UK garage
UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house, but also incorporates elements from dance-pop, R&B, and jungle. It ...
styles (including
2-step
Two-step or two step may refer to:
Dance
*Two-step (dance move), a dance move used in a wide range of dancing genres
*Country-western two-step, also known as the Texas Two-step
* Nightclub Two Step, also known as the California Two-step
*2-step ( ...
,
breakstep and
dubstep).
Etymology
The origin of the word "breakbeat" is the fact that the
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
loops that were sampled occurred during a "
break
Break or Breaks or The Break may refer to:
Time off from duties
* Recess (break), time in which a group of people is temporarily dismissed from its duties
* Break (work), time off during a shift/recess
** Coffee break, a short mid-morning rest ...
" in the music - for example the ''
Amen break
The Amen break is a drum break that has been widely sampled in popular music. It comes from the 1969 track "Amen, Brother" by the soul group the Winstons, released as the B-side of the 1969 single "Color Him Father". The drum break lasts about se ...
'' (a
drum solo from "
Amen, Brother" by
The Winstons) or the ''
Think Break
The Think break is a drum break that has been widely sampled in popular music. It comes from the 1972 song "Think (About It)" by the American soul singer Lyn Collins, written and produced by James Brown. The drum break was performed by John "Jabo ...
'' (from "
Think (About It)" by
Lyn Collins).
History
1970s—1980s: Classic breaks and hip hop production
Beginning in 1973 and continuing through the late 1970s and early 1980s,
hip hop turntablists, such as
DJ Kool Herc began using several
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...
breaks in a row, using
drum breaks from
jazz-funk tracks such as
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...
's "
Funky Drummer" and
The Winstons' "Amen Brother", to form the rhythmic base for hip hop songs. DJ Kool Herc's breaks style involved playing the same record on two turntables and playing the break repeatedly, alternating between the two records.
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958), popularly known by his stage name Grandmaster Flash, is an American DJ and rapper. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Hip Hop DJing, cutting, scratching and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Fur ...
perfected this idea with what he called the "quick-mix theory": he would mark the points on the record where the break began and ended with a crayon, so that he could easily replay the break by spinning the record and not touching the tone arm. This style was copied and improved upon by early hip hop DJs
Afrika Bambaataa
Lance Taylor (born on April 17, 1957), also known as Afrika Bambaataa (), is an American DJ, rapper, and producer from the South Bronx, New York. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenc ...
and
Grand Wizard Theodore
Theodore Livingston (born March 5, 1963), better known as Grand Wizzard Theodore, is an American hip hop DJ. He is widely credited as the inventor of the scratching technique. In addition to scratching, he gained credibility for his mastery of ...
.
[Modulations: A History of Electronic Music, Peter Shapiro, ed. New York: Caipirnha Productions Inc., 2000, p. 152] This style was extremely popular in clubs and dancehalls because the extended breaks compositions provided
breakers with more opportunities to showcase their skills.
In the late 1970s, hip hop was all about the break. In the 1980s, the evolution of technology began to make sampling breaks easier and more affordable for DJs and producers, which helped nurture the commercialization of hip hop. Through crude techniques such as pausing tapes and then recording the break, by the 1980s, technology allowed anybody with a tape recorder to find the breakbeat.
1990s: Evolution as electronic dance genre
In the late-1980s, breakbeat became an essential feature of many genres of breaks music which became popular within the global dance music scene, including
acid breaks,
electro-funk, and
Miami bass
Miami bass (booty music or booty bass) is a subgenre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit l ...
, and decade later
big beat and
nu skool breaks.
In the early 1990s,
acid house
Acid house (also simply known as just "acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesiz ...
artists and producers started using breakbeat
samples in their music to create
breakbeat hardcore. The hardcore scene then diverged into subgenres like
jungle
A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...
and
drum and bass
Drum and bass (also written as drum & bass or drum'n'bass and commonly abbreviated as D&B, DnB, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by fast breakbeats (typically 165–185 beats per minute) with heavy bass and sub-ba ...
, which generally was faster and focused more on complex sampled drum patterns. An example of this is
Goldie
Clifford Joseph Price MBE (born 19 September 1965), better known as Goldie, is a British music producer and DJ.
Initially gaining exposure for his work as a graffiti artist, Goldie became well known for his pioneering role as a musician in th ...
's album ''
Timeless
Timeless (or atemporal) or timelessness (or atemporality) may refer to:
* Agelessness, the condition of being unaffected by the passage of time
* Akal (Sikh term), timelessness in Sikhism
* Eternity, timeless existence or infinite duration
* Immo ...
''. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever-changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out, trance-like state that the standard, steady 4/4 beats of
house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
enabled.
Incorporating many components of those genres, the
Florida breaks subgenre followed during the early-to-mid 1990s and had a unique sound that was soon internationally popular among producers, DJs, and club-goers.
In 1994, the influential
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often ch ...
act
Autechre released the ''
Anti EP
''Anti EP'' is the second EP by British electronic music duo Autechre, released by Warp on 3 September 1994. It peaked at number 90 on the UK Singles Chart, as well as number 39 on the UK Dance Singles Chart. It is the only explicitly political r ...
'' in response to the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, deliberately using advanced
algorithmic programming to generate non-repetitive breakbeats for the full duration of the tracks, in order to subvert the legal definitions within that legislation which specified in the section creating police powers to remove ravers from raves that "'music' includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
In the late 1990s, another style of breakbeat emerged, ''funky breaks'', a style that was incorporating elements of
trance
Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...
,
hip hop and
jungle
A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...
. It was pioneered by
the Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers are an English electronic music duo formed by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons in Manchester in 1989. They were pioneers (along with the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, the Crystal Method, and other acts) in bringing the big beat genre t ...
and
James Lavelle's
Mo'Wax Records
Mo' Wax was a British record label founded by James Lavelle in 1992. The label was not co-founded by Tim Goldsworthy, as is often reported. Steve Finan became co-owner shortly after.
Mo' Wax came to recognition for being at the forefront of t ...
imprint. The genre had commercial peak in 1997, when such music was topping in pop charts and often featured in commercials. The most notable artists of the sound were
The Prodigy
The Prodigy are an English electronic dance music band formed in Braintree, Essex, in 1990 by producer, keyboard player and songwriter Liam Howlett. The original line-up also featured dancer and singer Keith Flint and dancer and occasional l ...
,
Death in Vegas
Death in Vegas are an English electronic music group, for which Richard Fearless serves as frontman. The band was formed in 1994 by Fearless and Steve Hellier and signed to Concrete Records under the name of Dead Elvis. Owing to an Irish record ...
,
The Crystal Method,
Propellerheads
Propellerheads were an English electronic music duo, formed in 1995 in Bath and consisting of Will White and Alex Gifford.
History
Their first release was an EP named ''Dive!'', released in 1996 through the independent label Wall of Sound. ...
.
Characteristics
The tempo of breaks tracks, ranging from 110 to 150 beats per minute, allows DJs to mix breaks with a wide range of different genres in their sets. This has led to breakbeats being used in many
hip hop,
jungle
A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...
/
drum & bass
Drum and bass (also written as drum & bass or drum'n'bass and commonly abbreviated as D&B, DnB, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by fast breakbeats (typically 165–185 beats per minute) with heavy bass and sub-ba ...
and
hardcore tracks. They can also be heard in other music, anywhere from popular music to background music in car and clothing commercials on radio or TV.
The "Amen break"
The Amen break, a drum break from
The Winstons' song "Amen, Brother" is widely regarded as one of the most widely used and sampled breaks among music using breakbeats.
This break was first used on "King of the Beats" by
Mantronix, and has since been used in thousands of songs.
Other popular breaks are from
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...
's ''
Funky Drummer'' (1970) and ''Give it Up or Turnit a Loose'',
The Incredible Bongo Band's 1973 cover of
The Shadows
The Shadows (originally known as the Drifters) were an English instrumental rock group, who dominated the British popular music charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the pre- Beatles era. They served as the backing band for Cliff Richard ...
' "
Apache
The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...
", and
Lyn Collins' 1972 song "
Think (About It)".
The Winstons have not received
royalties
A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...
for third-party use of samples of the break recorded on their original music release.
Sampled breakbeats
With the advent of digital sampling and music editing on the computer, breakbeats have become much easier to create and use. Now, instead of cutting and splicing tape sections or constantly backspinning two records at the same time, a computer program can be used to cut, paste, and loop breakbeats endlessly. Digital effects such as
filters
Filter, filtering or filters may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
* Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming
* Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream
* Filter (video), a software component tha ...
,
reverb
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...
, reversing,
time stretching
Time stretching may refer to:
* Audio time stretching and pitch scaling, in audio
* Time stretching, in video
* Time dilation, in physics (relativity theory)
* Time stretch analog-to-digital converter The time-stretch analog-to-digital converter (T ...
and
pitch shifting can be added to the beat, and even to individual sounds by themselves. Individual instruments from within a breakbeat can be sampled and combined with others, thereby creating wholly new breakbeat patterns.
Legal issues
With the rise in popularity of breakbeat music and the advent of digital audio samplers, companies started selling "breakbeat packages" for the express purpose of helping artists create breakbeats. A breakbeat kit CD would contain many breakbeat samples from different songs and artists, often without the artist's permission or even knowledge.
Subgenres
Acid breaks
In
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
, "acid breaks" is a fusion between breakbeat,
acid house
Acid house (also simply known as just "acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesiz ...
and other forms of dance music. Its drum line usually mimics most breakbeat music, lacking the distinctive
kick drum of other forms of dance music. One of the earliest synthesizers to be employed in acid music was the
Roland TB-303, which makes use of a resonant low-pass filter to emphasize the
harmonic
A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...
s of the sound.
Big beat
Big beat is a term employed since the mid-1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as
The Prodigy
The Prodigy are an English electronic dance music band formed in Braintree, Essex, in 1990 by producer, keyboard player and songwriter Liam Howlett. The original line-up also featured dancer and singer Keith Flint and dancer and occasional l ...
,
Cut La Roc,
Fatboy Slim
Norman Quentin Cook (born Quentin Leo Cook, 31 July 1963), also known by his stage name Fatboy Slim, is an English musician, DJ, and record producer who helped to popularise the big beat genre in the 1990s. In the 1980s, Cook was the bassist f ...
,
The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers are an English electronic music duo formed by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons in Manchester in 1989. They were pioneers (along with the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, the Crystal Method, and other acts) in bringing the big beat genre t ...
,
The Crystal Method and
Propellerheads
Propellerheads were an English electronic music duo, formed in 1995 in Bath and consisting of Will White and Alex Gifford.
History
Their first release was an EP named ''Dive!'', released in 1996 through the independent label Wall of Sound. ...
typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in common with established forms of
electronic dance music such as
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often ch ...
and
acid house
Acid house (also simply known as just "acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesiz ...
.
Progressive breaks
Progressive breaks or prog breaks, also known as atmospheric breaks, is a subgenre of breaks that is essentially a fusion of breakbeat and
progressive house. Much like progressive house, this subgenre is characterized by its "
trancey" sound. Its defining traits include extended synthesizer pads and washes, melodic synth leads, heavy
reverberation
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...
, and electronic breakbeats. However, unlike progressive house, very few progressive breaks tracks have vocals, with most tracks being entirely instrumental or using only electronically altered snippets of vocal samples for sonic effect. Typical progressive breaks tracks will often have a long build-up section that leads to a
breakdown
Breakdown may refer to:
Breaking down
*Breakdown (vehicle), failure of a motor vehicle in such a way that it cannot be operated
*Chemical decomposition, also called chemical breakdown, the breakdown of a substance into simpler components
*Decompo ...
and a climax, often having numerous sonic elements being added or subtracted from the track at various intervals in order to increase its intensity. Progressive breaks artists include
Hybrid
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
,
BT,
Way Out West,
Digital Witchcraft,
Momu
MoMu (Mode Museum) is the fashion museum of the City of Antwerp, Belgium. Founded on 21 September 2002, the museum collects, conserves, studies and exhibits Belgian fashion. The museum is specifically focusing on Belgian contemporary fashion d ...
, Wrecked Angle, Burufunk, Under This and Fretwell.
Psychedelic breakbeat
Psychedelic breakbeat or psybreaks is a form of breakbeat music developed in the late 1990s, built around
psychedelic music
Psychedelic music (sometimes called psychedelia) is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and cannabis to ...
. The genre later turned into a fusion of breakbeat and
psychedelic trance
Psychedelic Trance, Psytrance or Psy is a subgenre of trance music characterized by arrangements of rhythms and layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. The genre offers variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full ...
in the mid 2000s, splicing breakbeat basslines and rhythms into otherwise heavily psytrance-influenced tracks.
See also
*
Nu skool breaks
*
Big beat
*
Breakdance
Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in ...
*
Breakstep
*
Electro
*
Florida breaks
*
List of electronic music genres
*
Syncopation
In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...
References
External links
Electronic Music 101: What Are Breakbeats?Breakbeatfrom
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music is an interactive online guide to electronic music created by Kenneth John Taylor, aka Ishkur.
The website consists of 153 subgenres and 818 sound files. Genres include little-known ones like terrorcore and chemic ...
Dizzines Records Breakbeat
{{hip hop
British styles of music
Electronic dance music genres