The Breakbeat

As a side issue - whats your favourite breakbeat on a record?

Mine would have to be the DJ Shadow mix of "Meiso" by DJ Krush.

Wicked.

James Brown's "Think", on 'Live at the Apollo Vol. 2' - is that the first recorded example?

As you get more curious, you might started listening to the songs that the breakbeats are from...and that is TRUE love.

dave, is that 'think' the same as the one on the lyn collins album?

dave, is that 'think' the same as the one on the lyn collins album?

James Brown wrote both songs, I believe, but his solo version is different than the LC track. I prefer the latter, her vocal rules.

can you clairfy for me, what is referred to as a breakbeat is basically when the snare hit that would normally come on beat 4 comes on the upstroke (i.e. 4-and) instead, right?

or is it just anything where the bass drum is not on 1-2-3-4?

I'm actually terminally disinterested in the origins or history of a given breakbeat. The possibilities of the breakbeat have only really opened up since people have been able to digitally manipulate them, so fetishising the breakbeat as played in real time at some historic moment in 1968 etc. seems to me to miss the point slightly - just my personal take though.

then you havent heard the breakestra!

A break is simply the couple of bars of peak intensity on a record that a DJ (or producer) selects to repeat over and over again. So it can actually be any kind of beat. It just so happens that JB made the best beats of all time, so he gets sampled more than anyone else and is what most people think of when they hear the term breakbeat.

And the Breakastra suck.

As far as origins and history go... it often turns out that the obscure soul/funk tracks that people sample are really good in their own right. You hear some hip-hop DJ cut something up, it blows your mind, you have to hear the whole song... like "California Soul" of "Brainfreeze" for me. Recent examples of great breaks compilations would be Shaolin Soul Vol 1 and 2, which show what fantastic taste the RZA has. My favorite of this type of CD is something called something like "Soulman's Choice Joints," which has about 20 really fabulous tracks you've never heard, except for about two seconds of them... It really is remarkable how much great funk was made back then, it's just like a bottomless pit...

A good place to look for this stuff is here

I think breaks can be overrated. Soon amen drums are going to be kitsch. The 'original breaks' fetish club isn't going anywhere interesting for me either, there's not enough degradation and abuse, everybody treats their precious drum sounds like solid gold. I know it's supposed to be cultural to crate dig and whatnot but I want to see more bastards, more sonic perversions and betrayals etc. etc.

After hip hop became a sort of consensus new cool, the breakbeat became this holy production device, full of all sorts of nice connotations. All of a sudden, "organic" drum loops were in and 'paying dues' by tracing all the original sources, and crate digging, and underground hip hop templates, etc..came into play while dance scenes and trip hop and jungle and whatnot incorporated the aesthetic for its implications. All fine and valid and whatever, but it's almost a conservative convention now to toss a track over a plodding break. Inexplicably, some will still try to bandwagon into hipness with an 'Impeach the President' or something.

The inherent power of the breakbeat lies in the indisputable fact that everyone loves funky drums (which come in oh so many forms), of course.

The actual 'Funky Drummer' break might be hopelessly cliched by now, but I think it's still just as powerful on the original record. What's more, the SECOND four bar break (that is far less sampled) is even cooler. Definitely Clyde's finest moment.

Soon amen drums are going to be kitsch...

like they're not already? i agree with honda: i'm burnt out on breakbeats. one of the reasons i liked garage so much initially was the fact that the drum sounds were moving -away- from canned breaks into much more processed and manipulated territory. all those different textures: crinkly, warbly, squishy...i cringe slightly at the "return to breaks."

The 'Butthead Rule' that so many producers forget - "uhh Beavis - if the parts that sucked didn't suck so much, then the parts are cool wouldn't be as cool"

Soon amen drums are going to be kitsch

well, jess has already beaten me to saying that they already are kitsch. but it is true and has been for quite a few years now.

theoretically i would agree with Tim in saying, yeah i don't really care about where the breaks came from, is only source material. but, in practice i actually side with Ben, because many of the original tracks are great tracks in their own right. for every funky drummer (good loop, tedious record), theres a Seven Minutes of Funk (oft sampled bassline, brilliant spacejazz funk record. necessary)

Yeah, but the whole point is that the original track has to stand up on its own merits and not just the famousness of its break. Obviously I'm not opposed to listening to great music from any era, but it's when otherwise boring music is overly-venerated because of four seconds of funkiness - when that funkiness has only truly been realised in retrospect due to the work of other producers - that I start to get antsy.