breakbeats?

[usr]

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[Farq]

I like breaks. They add to the quality of the beat. Especially in beat-driven material, they provide punctuation beyond that of the time signature.

That said, I won't use sampled loops except in rare circumstances (I made a track composed of many different incongruous loops... as an experiment, for example.) If your song really has something to say, something to evoke, how can you get away with a loop? If it truly has something to say, and needs breaks to do it, shouldn't they be so obvious to the author that no deference is necessary?
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[Inductive]

i hate old jungle that just loops the amen or apachi loop over and over... i dont use either of those loops ever because they are so played out in my mind. They are truly dope loops too. Anyway, I use loops sometimes, and they are just as hard to use as single hit samples. If you dont think dealing with loops is hard your not doing anything neat with them. The trick is to cut (or if you lazy like my play with offsets) basicly to each individual drum. Then its just a set of one hit samples that fit together like they were all sampled from the same drummer on the same kit in the same studio. I dunno, I think loops are great fun, as long as you dont get burned for copywrite stuffs... but for the record, you can get burned for single hits too. I cringe every time someone says that if its under a certian length its legal, thats totaly bs. If you use a sample of someone else's and make money off it you pretty much stole something. Now... I cant say I'm 100% legit here, but I can promise you that I've made 0$ from music or anything sound related (besides yelling at the god damn highschool kids that work under me at work). So I voted for option 2, but I would like to rephrase it as 'As long as it sounds cool in the song and your not going to get sued out the bum for using it'

yeah...
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[mute]

i hate breaks. usually the only time i can deal with them are when they're simple downtempo tracks, sometimes its ok in techno (early chemical brothers comes to mind).. other than that there's few exceptions. i've pretty much grown an explicit intolerance to the amen.

when you make your own breaks though, its an entirely different ballgame. i've got nothing against that.
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[nool]

how can u say you hate or dislike or whatever

a properly programmed drumloop from one shots ... can resemble a 'break'

and a shitty break sounds like shit ...

i don't use breaks so i have big balls + mad skills ...sure
i use only breaks so i don't have skills ...sure
i use breaks sometimes, and i don't use them most of the time ...sure

i could care less, i enjoy what the music sounds like, not whether its a break or not, besides you can't always tell, if the programming is proper and the break is hidden over other drum layers, if its not, then yea its obvious and gets boring
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[Hamst3r]

I like using drumloops but moving the offsets around so there aren't any kick or snare hits in the sequence, just weird noise, choppy reverb and hihats...sometimes vocal snippets. Then program a beat over that.

I also like breaks cause all the drums have the same tone and quality, they fit together nicely.

I believe...

...There's nothing wrong with old breakbeat loops.

...Not everything needs a breakbeat.

...Overused Breaks still have their charm when used in good humor.
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[mute]

no seriously. i can say i hate breaks. i do. at least 90% of the time. opinions are developed and stating a middle ground exists doesnt take them away.

[usr]

[wayfinder]

[Xenobioz]

Ive only used a loop once in a buzz songs.
It was the the Tramen
I like to program my own breaks, its fun.
I dont care if others use loops for their breaks.
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[z_tetha]

heard ltj buckem ' atlantis ' ? . amen and that's an amazing track.

[RDEskid]

Well, I'm having a little trouble following this thread, because it there seems to be some confusion between breakbeats and loops... Seems to me that:

Sampled loops are mostly used as breakbeats.
Sampled breakbeats are sometimes used as the whole rhythm track.
Breakbeats are not always sampled loops.
I've heard the term "breakbeats" and "breaks" used to describe both a certain rhythm structure (ie beats on 1,4, 10 (and sometimes , 12, ), drum fills, and drastically different rhythm track used as or during the bridge in a track.

So...if you say you don't like breakbeats, to my mind, it's like saying you don't like anything that doesn't have a fairly monotonous beat (which is fair if all you like is straight up trance, hardcore, house, and polka). Could somebody clarify this for me?

But to address what I'm getting from the discussion, I LOVE breaks...if they're well used. That's all that should matter in my mind. The idea of automatically not liking the Amen breaks just because they've been used so damn much is a bit extreme IMO (i've only used it on one or two tracks that i've never released and yet I've had a couple people say that they were tired of it in comments on tracks that don't even contain it), but it can get annoying if the whole rhythm track consists of it, or when it's used in otherwise non-electronic music (there's this really fucking obnoxious punk track on Tony Hawk 3 that begins with it, and it always pisses me off). I think it can be used to great effect in moderation (ie as an actual break), or as a joke. The reason it got so overused, after all, is that 30-40 years later, it's still one of the tightest funkiest breaks ever.

I don't like using sampled breaks myself, because they're a bitch to modify, IMO, and you often end up having to shape the song around them instead of vice versa. Besides, it's easy enough to make your own sample-like breaks if you use the right single hits (I've recently discovered that 7900 Pearl Drum is good for this), a degrader/distortion (Izotope Vinyl comes to mind), and some compression.

As for non-sampled breaks, they're great to dance to, sound much livelier than repetitive beats, and can really keep a four to the floor beat based song alive after the 3 minute mark. Whatever floats your boat tho.

Incidentally, anyone know where I can get the original track that the Amen breaks came from? I've heard it called "The Amenist" and "Amen Brother" and i think it was by the Turtles, but I've never been able to find the whole thing.
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[KoDream]

Well in the hand drumming circles both brazillian and african, the term "BREAK" has a well defined meaning. The master drummer drops a break and everyone starts, he drops another break and everyone switches to the next part of the song, the soloist ends one's solo with a break and the next soloist starts. Maestador(master drummer) will also choreograph the breaks with the dacers.

Yes in fact in some groups one break is followed by another by another so that there isn't even a beat left, and every note has a meaning.

http://www.djembe.net/nprxnot.php <- in the african drum group I played the bottom rhythm, which the site calls the signal, was used as a break.

The different rhythms almost always had different breaks.

http://www.djembe.net/nprx.shtml <- this is an excellent site if you are interested in handrumming rhythms and arrangements.

In samba the tradition is to have a "bateria", a group of drummers, and many bateria's will attend a "carnival", which is a competition. There is a comon break for starting the samba, so of course the finale is to have all of the maestadors, drop a break for their baterias at the same time.

Hmm, I quess it doesn't work quite the same way with tracker music though, but the DJ at the local dance club always uses the same breaks for his favourite songs to mix.