The Most Sampled Song Ever
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2023
- How one simple drum break changed the entire world.
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In 1969, GC Coleman played some drums on a song not many people would listen to. You'd be excused for assuming that was the end of the story, but over a decade later, his solo would be dug up by an enterprising hip-hop producer. That producer republished the song, sharing Coleman's drum break with the world, and the world went nuts for it, sampling, remixing, and transforming that humble, formerly obscure break into one of the most iconic sounds in music history. Let's talk about it.
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) I'm not enough on an expert on the history of UK dance music to speak with authority on the difference between DnB and Jungle, but to the best of my understanding they are, at minimum, very closely overlapping scenes.
2) I think, in the Take A Deep Breath clip, the added snares are all the one from beat 2, rather than alternating beats 2 and 4 like my pointing may have implied. That was more to minimize the visual chaos caused by whipping my hand back and forth around the bar.
3) To be clear, when I say I found the golden ratio theory in a bunch of articles, I don't mean, like, academic scholarship. I mean the sorts of things that come up near the tops of google searches. Music academics, for the most part, know better than that.
4) On that, one important thing to note is that, to the extent that the golden ratio actually lines up with the waveform at all, it's entirely because the waveform they used was 13 beats long. 13 is a Fibonacci number, so if you do your golden rectangle thing, you'll wind up finding either the 5th or 8th beat, depending on which side you look from. But importantly, the same thing would happen with any waveform of any clip containing 13 beats played at a consistent meter. Again, it's nonsense.
5) I'm pretty sure the reason most songs sample the second bar of the break is that the first bar has a little bit of bleed-over from the horns. Bar 2 is almost identical but it's easy to get a clean cut with no other instruments getting in the way.
6) One thing to note about this reduction methodology is that it's extremely subjective, and the steps you take to get from a basic beat to a final one are up to you. For example, I could have chosen to push back the kicks on beat 3 first, and then doubled up all my kicks later. The particular order I used was a simplified version of the one Dr. Hein presented, and I think it's a solid one, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to do this.
7) I used 8-bit's terminology for this video, but in the future I think I might start calling the beat layer the "anchor layer" instead, to avoid confusion between it and references to specific beat numbers. Dunno, still mulling it over.
8) For what it's worth, in the slowed-down double-kick that I played to demonstrate timing fluctuations, the durations of the two kicks have about a 3:2 ratio, mostly a result of the second one being pretty far behind the quantized 16th it's "supposed" to be hitting on. If you're having trouble hearing it, don't worry, even at that speed it's not _that_ noticeable.
9) I want to stress that I understand that not only is copyright legally and ethically complicated in general, it becomes even _more_ complicated in the realm of sampling, for a bunch of reasons. I'm not necessarily convinced that any particular artist who sampled the break necessarily owed Coleman money for it, but collectively, the end result seems transparently unjust. I don't know for sure what system I would want in place that would have prevented it, I just know that something should have. (All this is to say that maybe it was a bit harsh to use a drawing of an elephant thief to represent people not paying licensing fees, but also I would argue that, taken in total, a wrong was certainly committed against Coleman, and I don't really have a better drawing to represent that.)
I thought you were going to mention how similar it sounds to a Risset rhythm, but apparently I was wrong.
While I've no quarrel with your analysis, isn't the main reason for the popularity of the sample is that is naked in the mix, therefore easy for pre-AI systems to capture? I'd argue the beat on say, Can's Halleluwah has been equally influential from a compositional standpoint, but it hasn't been sampled as much because there isn't a moment in the 20minute+ track where it isn't shadowed by another instrument.
I've heard that the Creative Commons License is a great alternative to Copyright, as it allows the license holder to customize the restrictions on which people can use their art. They can have it be like public domain but credit must be given, no commercial use of their work allowed, or basically as restrictive as copyright. I think most artists either just want credit or want compensation for commercial uses of their work
Regarding item #1: Jungle and drum & bass are indeed very closely related. Jungle emerged from a prior genre based on sped-up breakbeats, called breakbeat hardcore (which was popular in the UK in the early 90s), combined with elements of dub and ragga (courtesy of the UK's large Jamaican population, which has had an enormous influence on the UK's punk, hip-hop, and dance scenes). Jungle often featured reggae-style basslines and toasting.
Within a few years, jungle evolved into drum & bass - which dropped the Jamaican aesthetics, and splintered into a hundred different subgenres (ranging from the jazzy atmospherics of LTJ Bukem, to the dystopian industrial sound of neurofunk, and everything in between).
With each step of evolution, the treatment of the breaks became more musically complex - starting with simple looping and layering (in breakbeat hardcore), and eventually developing into intricate digital editing.
tl;dr: Jungle is sped-up breakbeats accompanied by deep, dub-style basslines and (often) other elements of reggae and dancehall. Drum & bass is a derivative form - which has since diversified in many different directions, to become an entire branch of electronic music's family tree. Jungle is sometimes counted as a subgenre of drum & bass.
Yeah the first bar has some overlap with the bass too on the very first kick drum, also idk why but I find the kicks and snares in the rest of it just have a bit more heft to them so I usually use those more.
Imagine basically playing the most important 6 seconds of drumming in human history, and then dying penniless not even knowing what really happened when you were drumming that day. Mad respect to Coleman.
😂😂😂 life’s a bitch
It needs to be said... "Amen brother." 😥
Kind of like the Edgar Allen Poe of Music. Probably made little from the actual recording, but became a sensation afterwards.
Van Gogh of drummers
your kids are gonna love it
I feel like you could probably do an entire video on the opening theme from Futurama
I want to see that video.
Maybe tomorrow.
YES!
It's scientifically catchy.
Anything Danny Elfman does, really
You didn't touch on one of the huge reasons why the break has been sampled so much. The way the break is isolated on amen, brother. If you listen to the song when the break happens _every other instrument disappears_ leaving only the drums. Not only that but there is little to no reverb on the drum track. It is, for a recording of that time, extremely crisp. I claim that if the break would have heavy reverb or if there would be bassline or other instruments behind it it wouldn't have become such an ubiqituous sample. The fact that it is so isolated, so crisp makes it a break which can be thrown into almost any and every track and you can make it work. The crispness allows _you_ to add effects or other necessary elements to make the original recording fit the song you are working on. The break is basically a blank canvas onto which _you_ can paint your own stuff.
I said it once and Ill say it again. If the break would have had any other instrumentation on the background or if it would have had heavy reverb it would not have become such an ubiqitious sample. It is the clarity and crispness of the recording which is a major part of its success, not discounting the groove of it of course.
This is mainly true but as someone who has chopped a lot of Amens, there's not actually a perfect silence behind it. The first kick has a full "band stab" where all instruments play one note, and the release on that note lasts until about the first snare. So mostly when you hear it, the first kick has already been replaced with the 1 beat kick from the second bar, which is very easy to chop out and replace to get rid of that tonality and make it easier to fit into your track.
But yes there are many more musically interesting breaks out there but this one is practically the easiest to work with while also having a lot of feeling.
Take the Think break by Linn Collins, it's a wonderful break and super usable but it has these vocal shouts in the background that give a certain color to your track that you may not want, so it doesn't fit into as many songs.
Its why Alex Van Halen is used from Jamies Crying in Funky Cold Medina and many other tracks.
Perfect Groove but clean drums with awesome eq volume and compression.
While I agree that the lack of other instruments is a coveted characteristic, I disagree on the lack of reverb. In support of my belief I'd like to point to the opening drums from Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks. The drums drenched in reverb but that hasn't stopped it being sampled time and time again. It may not be at the level of Amen Brother or Funky Drummer, but it's enough to make the AV Club's top ten list in the article "These are the breaks: 10 of the most sampled drum beats in music history"
*edited for typos
There are a lot of easy breaks that don't get sampled a bajillion times and there are a lot of more "crowded" ones that do.
Just because something is easy doesn't necessarily lead to its ubiquity.
There are lots of semi isolated drum breaks from that era because it's a drum break, it was a thing back then. Futhermore the drums are definitely recorded in a lively room with lots of ambience and early reflections thickening up the sound of the kit. Although the point you raise about how it sounds in terms of transients is imho also mostly true, I really have to break a lance for Coleman here and say I think it's all in how those syncopated ghost notes are played and the visceral sense of pulse and forward momentum it creates. Anywhoooooo XD
Even the rhythmically stripped down versions of the break are pretty neat in of themselves.
the powerpuff girls theme is basically the amen break set in early nightcore
Yeah, I really enjoyed the first version here. Hearing these famous breakbeat samples in a simple straight beat kind of baffled me. I'm quite sure somebody had done it before (they did everything with those samples, I guess), but I've never heard it that way and it really has a special minimalist groove that way, like a Sleaford Mods tune or some UK grime music or so.
I'm waiting for someone to sample a pure MIDI version of the break just to subvert expectations.
The last couple before it all came together felt so wonky it was awesome.
@@russellzauner actually, the PPG theme uses funky drummer, but yeah those two beats are pretty simmilar and both are amazing
The echoing snares are commonly called "ghost snares" in dnb production. They're the glue that holds the breakbeat together and make a beat go from seeming like a collection of separate hits to a galloping groove. Whenever you wanna sample a drum recording to chop up, looking for a ghost snare is always good, it's pretty hard to get replicate the same kind of effect by putting effects/filters/changing the volume of the main snare.
You mean ghost notes which actual drummers play between the 2 & 4 beat main snare hits.
A prominent feature in Funk drumming and Jazz.
The reason people struggle to replicate them with a DAW is because they are a much lighter hit on the skin so the attack is less prominent. Adjusting volume down alone will not sound accurate. You still have the strong attack.
Using one snare sample chopped from the loudest punchiest snare will not work. Attack is too prominent in the mix for a ghost note.
Some sample packs of just snares help here if you want to chop manually.
Most people cheat these days and just use a drum sampler plug in which has 20-30 varying dynamic hits of one drum and you just adjust the midi note volume to choose which sample dynamic it plays.
Ludwig Snares is a manual pack though.
Drum companies produce these demo sample packs to sell new snare drums to actual drummers.
A try before you buy thing.
In the early 90's that and crate digging was all we had before VST plug ins.
Photek made good use of these packs as well as crate digging for old jazz records with a juicy snare hit.
I still use real drum packs from Ziljan, Premier, Ludwig, Yamaha occasionally though.
Been sample collecting for 30 years now.
Recording quality is excellent on these packs nowadays often using very expensive studio mics.
Same snare drum recorded 20 times with different intensity, dynamics + rimshots, chains off or on etc.
Placing the softer hit notes in a synchopated pattern will achieve ghost notes between the 2 & 4 beat.
No effects needed and it sounds real.
Drummers will also play ghost notes on the hi hat too.
You need a few different hi hat hits, one at the rim, one centre plate, varying dynamics for each.
My only criticism of D&B is a lot of producers still only use one hi hat sample often from an 808. That loses a lot of tonal quality from the hi hat line.
Drum scores have notation marks on written scores for ghost notes telling the player to rimshot the stroke etc.
Its always the attack that is the feature. With that varied attack comes tonal variation on the drum head.
Softer hits on the real kit are often achieved by loose handing the stick then clasping it again for the loud 2 & 4.
Thinking like a drummer, in how they strike the skin gets you way better breaks in a DAW.
American grip right hand versus French grip (side stick) left hand.
French gives you less attack but more free bounce. Jazz drummers use this combo alot.
Gives excellent ghost notes and tight rolls as accents between the fills.
Clive Stubblefield, James Brown's drummer was a master at ghost notes.
Thats why he also got sampled to death in hip hop and D&B.
Listen to his recordings for a while and you get locked into how he varied the dynamics on the snare.
Its called playing in the pocket.
Shifting the timing slightly only on the ghost notes.
Easily done in a DAW.
The best D&B drum riffs do exactly that to produce groove that never sounds boring.
Art Blakey also a ghost note master. Excellent jazz drummer.
Tony Williams, miles Davis's drummer during the fusion era had amazing syncopation & dynamics.
Footage of him on YT developing synchopated rolls in different timings often on just one drum constantly shifting the groove timing slightly so it never gets tiring.
Richard Spaven is a modern master at ghost notes and Odd meter and pocket playing.
Check out his drum demo videos demonstrating Signature drum kits if you haven't already or the live set up with Cleveland Watkiss on vocals.
His dynamic range control on the kit is astounding.
Like a machine accuracy with human groove.
A recent Metalheadz release by John Rolodex & Jungle drummer has some serious detail to it.
Rolodex is known to use over 100 channels to create just a drum line from samples before bouncing down to one track. Thats great for creating space and differing compression levels on each hit.
Photek would spend weeks on just a 16 bar drum loop to get realism.
He also had a large vinyl jazz collection to get not just samples but ideas from.
One easy way to create the effect of a ghost note is to offset the sample start just behind the transient and it can often mimic a ghost note by varying pitch and volume as well. We used that trick on mod trackers often, especially with the Amen Break.
@@ljt3084 Or you could hire an actual drummer. Weeks on a 16 bar break? If you practiced drums that much, you could do it yourself and then be able to do it over and over in minutes. Spend time on sound design, not notes.
Same. That's what I used to do.
@@ljt3084do you have any links to zildjian/other major companies sample packs? The ones you mention having 20 different hits etc. I've been wanting to add more articulations in my drums but most sample packs only have 2 similar sounding snares/hats in them- they want a really wide appeal rather than depth.
The Amen Break should have been included on this gold disc, which was shot into space with the Voyager probe.
YES!
The aliens would invade just to go to drum and bass raves
Lol truth!
Well, humanity, we screwed up the first time. We'll have to send another gold disc now.
It could have been a perfect fit if the sampling of amen break began earlier. The Voyager probes were launched in 1977
That bit at the end was a nice touch. As a drummer myself I've had to cope with the realities of my instrument to which my passion has been poured into being seen as replaceable, the imperfections of play being taken out of many songs via quantisation or even just having a machine do my part for me, something liable to get even worse once more AI applications to music come into being. Despite the fact that most guitarists and singers will tell you finding one of us to join for the band is typically the hardest spot to fill! Drums don't have the same sort of timbre and tonality of other instruments, if you don't want a drummer you can find a way around it for a lot of styles of music. But there was only one GC Coleman. And there only ever will be, just as there only ever had been one of any musician you listen to.
the dynamics that a drummer or human musician in general can create can't just be replicated by a machine
@@salty_3k506not without just as much skill in the machine, as needed on drums.
As a classic rock fan, I idolize Neil Peart and Keith Moon just as much as I idolize the singers and guitarists of those same favorite bands of mine. The drum set has the power to be a million times more than just “the thing that keeps the beat/rhythm”. It can even reach the point of feeling like the lead instrument, and I don’t just mean during solos.
Your work IS incredibly valuable, my friend, and you should be proud.
Yeah they can be replicated by a machine, and even more advanced, you shouldn't be upset to the fact that if we want to, we can easily create a song that uses say 2000 different drum samples with various effects if we wanted to (not that youd probably ever write a song/album that way) Its a beautiful thing and severely cuts down on the cost of creating music.
@@undercoverspy123 Sampling and drum machines have their place, just as the likes of synthesizers and DAWs have. I'm not disputing that. I don't think there's shame in using technology that makes things simpler, and a lot of great music has been made because those were an option. But they also don't truly replace what the likes of a good drummer does in providing a feel for the music, especially in genres that are less built on digital sounds, and the continuing devaluation of that is still lamentable. And a percussion sample is still built off the groove of a human playing.
Also if I may digress a little...at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I can't stand a lot of modern synthetic percussion. Have you listened to R'n'B or rap these days? A lot of them use this synthetic hi-hat sound that sounds like a grasshopper clicking its leg. Just not pleasant to listen to sonically. At least when the likes of NWA or Daft Punk were sampling artists, they were predominately sampling the work of musicians playing on instruments with a good sound, that was the point. If you're gonna use prefabricated or prerecorded sound at least use the stuff that sounds good!
As soon as I saw the title in the notification i knew this video was going to be about the amen break
I mean it is also in the thumbnail hahahaha- I thought you were being sarcastic for a minute
As soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew the video was gonna be about the amen break.
@@pinkajou656Sorry, I meant in the notification
@@babungo6090 np!
When you played the Amen Break my mind was launched backward into my childhood. I'm pretty sure Power Puff Girls used to play the break by itself over every fight scene
the powerpuff girls actually used a drum break from a James brown song Funky Drummer which is very similar
@@humblenoob7631 cool. Thanks
as a breakcore producer who knows several other breakcore producers, i can literally confirm that powerpuff girls got a lot of us to fall in love with the amen breakbeat
@@adventa2358me too
@@adventa2358 word
When I think of the Amen Break my mind goes to the 2005-ish era when Sega's sound team used it for what felt like EVERY Sonic song. It's like "yeah that's a cool sample but you all do realize there are other drum beats too, right?"
I scrolled down so far because my first thought was "oh, hey, sonic adventure DX"
I think another really important aspect is that it sounds good at pretty much any tempo. Most drum beats are going to have a range of BPM they play well at, but I've made stuff with the amen break all the way between 80 and 200 bpm and it still sounds amazing. I think using rides instead of hihats means that at low speeds, there isn't any dead air, but at high speeds the hits aren't coming too fast to process.
It's already a pretty great beat but it's amazing how the sound of that specific recording makes it just magical.
Dude created entire music cultures with just one singular drum solo like it cannot be put into words how much of an amazingly impossible thing is to even happen at all. Really sad for how he didn't even get any recognition for it in life, Coleman really desrved better.
Drums seem like one instrument in particular where the recording environment and processing alone can it make sound iconic.
I may not remember all the exact specific beats of the drum parts to, say, White Room or When the Levee Breaks or The National Anthem, but god will I never forget exactly how the the drum hits sound in each of them.
The music culture was created by the people not the drum breaks. The beats were merely part of the tool box of musical expression.
@@AdamTheAd-vanc3d Usually that might be the case but if you look at DnB it's entire identity is based around the amen break, like yeah it still needed people to play around with the sounds but in the case of DnB specifically, the amen break pretty much IS the genre itself.
@@StaticR The music culture was a way of life . Pirate radio . Clothing , greetings , phrases, record shops , flyers, studios and producers, dubplates, merchandise, raves, community, meeting people you never would dream of talking normally and much , much more .
Not an Amen break .
Even if you look at classics like Valley of the Shadow, Helicopter Tune, The Burial, The lighter, Roll the beats, Champion DJ and Everyman.... no Amens in sight , having said that not saying there were no Amens classics
@@AdamTheAd-vanc3dI love you. I'm sorry if you're american. But its only americans that say these stupid things about this music anyways (refering to guy you replied to). General Malice and
Dev/Null are Americans. So is Mat Zo (ish). But in general Goreshit (not american) and Machine Girl (American and a gay couple I think) ruined everything. SewerTrans was the final nail in the coffin. Now everyone wants to exploit drum and bass using the name breakcore (a microgenre) as an umbrella term for anything involving drum loops and 170bpm ranges. Always using some anime aesthetic and that aesthetic always being loli based. You'll never get anyone sampling shonen. It's a rat race to be special snowflakes. Kremlings to my bananas.
3:24 Man, I felt that groan, all the way down in my core.
ayo?
Your breakcore
vibrating at golden frequencies
I sighed in perfect unison, then I had to pause the video until I stopped laughing. 🤣
I wish you went into the tambre a bit more. Because I think that's exactly what makes it work so well. The snare getting the perfect rimshot crack and the great tone of the ping it has cuts through everything. The ride is classic and cuts. The kick is dry and hits nice around 100hz. Everything just makes it sound choice at any pitch or speed. I have a patch of it on my jacket.
At least with the Funky Drummer break, that drummer got respect while he was still alive (and Garbage decided that while they could've very well sampled him, it wasn't much more to actually _hire_ him, since he was local to them, and he did some session work for them).
I'm no Coleman... but I'm a drummer and I play this kind of syncopated stuff just... out of my head...for intuitive fun. And now I feel like someone just dissected my brain. This is a fascinating story in drum lore about a beat that changed the world. Thanks for telling it! I am also a video editor... and I totally noticed how well you synchronized the high speed drawing with your narration... and when the sped up video matched the notes of the audio as you wrote them...landing perfectly on the kick drum notes... omg... chef kiss to the editor!
My personal conclusion for the Amen Break being so popular is due to the fact the whole break is just an entire continuous flow state. Everything is just incredibly smooth, and I'd argue that most drummers aspire to be that flawlessly smooth almost all the time. Its potential for infinite recombination and looping make the drum break so consistently useful for decades after its initial recording. And yes, I'm glad you mentioned the three Ts of the sample, because I think the distinct sound of the break from performance to recording made it exceptionally unique because the distinct early record sound added a level of detail that most other samples inspired by the Amen Break try to replicate, and that would be the sound of the record itself.
I'll touch on the idea of a "lo-fi" aesthetic takes hold here, but I'm actually more interested in how the drums, for lack of better description, are kinda distorted, helped in part by the record noise and the mixing/recording process that put the song on the record in the first place. Those early microphone recording setups could only do so much, I'd imagine, so that's why we ended up with this sorta tubby but tight drum sound that is ripe with enough pleasing saturation and noise that allows producers of today to twist and distort it further.
It's nigh impossible to break the Amen Break.
What's really sad is that G.C Coleman never received any royalties for the sample, and he was homeless when he died. He got ripped off badly.
THANK YOU for the golden-ratio bit. I visitied a seminar and wrote an entire paper about this topic (golden ratio in ancient architecture in my case) in school and I can tell you that it's overrated af
What a terribly sad outcome for the person responsible for such an iconic break... RIP G S Coleman.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I'd love to see all of the illustrations organized into a book or some sort of art exhibit. It's really fascinating. Great video
can't deal with the fact he drew my spirit animal to the words "lazy and unhelpful". It's trying it's best.
Breakcore lore: the video
FRRRR 😮😂😮😂
It's very flattering to see one of my ideas referenced in a video like this! For what it's worth I think calling it the "Anchor Layer" is a lot better than reusing the word 'beat'. Wish I'd thought of that!
Also I think it's worth pointing out that the laid-back-ness of the 16th notes aren't due to human imprecision, but a deliberate choice. You'll find that not-quite-straight, not-quite-swung rhythmic feel in almost all music stemming from rock 'n' roll, and I personally think that's a huge contributor to why we feel music 'grooves'. Most drummers through the last 100 years probably weren't thinking "I need to play my subdivisions with 59% swing" or whatever but chasing that "groove" feeling produces that result, at least within the rock/soul/rnb sphere of music.
Anyways great break down of a great drum break, thanks for the shout out!
Yeah. This analysis is definitely from the perspective of "DAW user" and not "drummer". Anchor layer, engine, etc. are completely foreign terms to me (I've been playing drums for ~25 years); all I thought was .... it's just syncopation. It' kick/snare syncopation and the crash in bar 4 IS ONLY THERE to accent the syncopated kick drum.
Where you're talking about how Coleman's offbeat strikes are slightly out of time, my band director called that type of playing a "relaxed beat." Where it's not _quite_ a swing but not perfectly in time either We used it a few times in some jazz pieces in highschool, as well as a few other pieces in regular concerts.
What I love about the amen break is just how versatile it is. At slower tempos, it grooves like nothing else (which is probably why you hear it so much in hip-hop at slower-mid tempos). However, at higher tempos the amen break becomes a lot more energetic and lively (which is obviously how you hear it typically used in Hardcore, DnB and Jungle). I also love that you brought up the use of the amen break in ‘Pulse of the Maggots’ by Slipknot. I believe they also sample it at the start of ‘eyeless’ as well. There are actually quite a few metal bands that have used the amen break within their catalogues (another example that comes to mind is ‘Freedom or Fire’ by Fear Factory).
I thought the drum rhythm in "Freedom Or Fire" sounded familiar somehow
You just described how tempos work lmao
I feel like in EDM specifically, the Amen Break’s gotta be present in like ten thousand tracks. We LOVE the Amen Break lmao
a bit disappointed you didn't mention Breakcore, as the whole genre is based on this very sample. Great analysis though, and as someone pointed out already, everything you mentioned plus it being pretty much isolated drums are the reason it got so huge
It's not a genre. It's not even a subgenre. It's not all based on "that very sample" neither. Listen to Hybrid Minds or Flava D or Macky Gee and come back to me.
mad props for lining up the drawing of the transcription to the beat
I love the "heavy lifting" Strong Mad at 8:55 was not expecting that reference 😂
I just want to add that the golden ratio is an irrational number, so there is no way you can replicate that with any rhythmic subdivision. The fibonacci series gives a series of better approximations (1:1, 1:2, 2:3, 3:5, 5:8, 8:13, 13:21, ...), but the simpler ratios are so ubiquitous in that you can make the golden ratio argument about everything. Swung eights sound nicer then straight eights because they are closer to the GOLDEN RATIO. The 2-against-3 polyrhythm sounds nice because of the GOLDEN RATIO. Octave, fith, major sixth, minor sixth ... GOLDEN RATIO!
... i should stop giving them ideas.
Then again, a true golden ratio interval φ:1 doesn’t sound that good, because it’s basically a minor 6th that's out of tune by around 1/5 of a semitone from its just intonated ratio. Also due to inculturation, Western(ized) audiences are used to 5-limit tunings, meaning the interval ratios don’t have a multiple of prime bigger than 5 in their numerator or denominator. So approximations of the golden ratio better than 8:5 will sound out of tune anyway.
So ironically, the intervals that sound good are the 1st 5 approximations of the golden ratio:
Unison - 1:1
Octave - 2:1
Perfect 5th - 3:2
Major 6th - 5:3
Minor 6th - 8:5
@@adiaphoros6842 Not only that, but the golden ratio has the special property of being one of the irrational numbers which is hardest to approximate by rational numbers, in the sense that in order to get within a certain distance of it, the denominator of your fraction needs to grow at least as fast as with any other value. So in that sense, it's as far from being a consonance as possible (regardless of limit).
Hang on let me note these down for my pretentious magazine articles...
The fourth the fifth, the minor fall the major lift, it's all the golden ratio...
@@perytonpred2356 I suppose if you consider octave equivalency, you could include the perfect 4th and both 3rds. That being said, the lyrics actually refer to the IV-V-vi-I cadence that plays as they are sung.
unpopular opinion, ultrakill has the best amen breaks i've ever heard
Great topic and breakdown! 🙂
For various reasons, this beat has been living rent free in my very being since the mid 90's... and i never knew the story behind it until now!!! Thank you 👍👍
Love the “DB” cooper missing double entendres! Thank you for doing these.
I never knew in Slipknot's Pulse of the Maggots it was used. Slipknot used it's original sample sped up at the beginning of Eyeless off their break out album (sic)
I'm glad someone mentioned this. It's so iconic on Eyeless....
this is really interesting! we'd say level 4 is where the beat really starts to sound recognizably "drum and bass" to us, since even in songs that don't directly sample the amen break, having no kick on beat 3 but including one an eighth note after to set up the snare is super common! it's kind of THE iconic d&b rhythm feature, and i guess the amen break is where that started
You might also like the, “The Purdie Shuffle.” by Bernard Purdie And the great drum break on Rock Steady by Johnny Hammond
Just got a drum kit, this was the first thing I learned. Will never get tired of it
Pornhub intro next.
Jokes aside, good luck and have fun!
that's sick. How did you practice leading up to that? i can do basic rock rhythms, but i don't ever practice 😅 or have a drum kit 😢
@@G8tr1522 get a practice pad and some sticks if you haven't already. You can get one that's got a similar enough feel to a real drum fairly cheaply and it's a godsend for practicing. Great for practicing rudiments and such when you haven't got a kit available or need to be quiet.
Huge fan of EDM and Rave music, it just feels like where I live most people don't even know it exists outside of the occasional standout like Deadmau5, Marshmello or Skrillex. So it is always good when a video acknowledges it, even if it is about the Amen Break which was already taking over TH-cam in the form of DnB and Breakcore playlists.
I'm about to go to a rave. Thank you for this lovely trip down memory lane.
As a die-hard fan of drum n bass, this was a really fascinating topic to cover
Your best video yet! Thanks to this clip I think I'm finally able to "hear" the last two bars correctly. The crash cymbal on beat 4 always threw me off. The revelation that GC Coleman takes the snare rhythm and moves it forward an eighth note was mind blowing, one of those "a-ha!" moments. Keep up the good work.
I agree, this insight is going to help me write dance music breakbeat turnarounds *so* much.
Hell yes - left handed lessons are rare in this world. Great dissection and history! I like your style. So action packed I could re-watch a few times. I can't begin to imagine how much editing work went into this.
It’s is ALL about the 3 T’s. Nicely pointed out. The reason it’s so good is simply it’s sound. I’ve danced to and used this beat so much I know it’s every peak intimately like many others but even after all this time I’m still not even close to being bored of hearing it. It really is the greatest drum break ever. And you’re right. Coleman is the reason.
Thank you for this--especially the end....."he deserved a lot more than he got". There are few truer words in the world of drumming.
It is so tragic to me that Coleman didn't know anything about the wide spread use of the break. He is a literal hero to me
This whole analysis was great, but the most impressive part in my opinion was the nearly perfect recreation of the DB Cooper sketch
Oh I missed that! Do you have a rough time code?
There are a lot of good sketches here. Discord's "how the fuck did I end up on sheet music for a TH-cam video" face is pretty funny.
I have only a fleeting memory of the golden ratio from my arts in the Renaissance class in college (don't remember it being used to describe music, btw), but your exasperated sigh made me actually chuckle - thank you! (Also, thanks for tieing this break - which I had no idea of its name or ubiquity, but now I recognize from Futurama - to the Wilhelm scream - another channel on YT makes great use of this trope. You really can learn interesting things from the 'net!)
Excellent breakdown as ever but I've got to pull out my favourite 3 doodles. "Chaos" as Discord from My Little Pony.,"different" as a big foot from Monty Python ("And now for something completely different") and "changed everything" as the Fire Nation symbol from Avatar the Last Airbender. Epic stuff!
Magikarp as "Lazy and unhelpful"
Wow. What a great video. This needs more views.
Firstly, what an interesting story explaining the music. I was expecting a video with the sample played and then lots of popular music that includes it. Instead I learnt so much about the music theory, while watching an extremely talented artist draw doodles relating to random words in the commentary, such as Jenga for the word "remove".
On top of that the editing is top class, synchronising the drum beats perfectly as the notes are tapped on the page. I only have one complaint; I now need to watch all of your other videos!
When I saw David Bennett's video that touched on this, I really felt like I wanted to know more. Thank you for giving us more!
I'd love to hear your take on acid - the distinctive sound of the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, which is a key element of many electronic genres (such as acid techno, acid house, Goa trance, etc.) It was originally marketed as a practice tool for guitarists, meant to emulate a bass guitar - but it failed miserably at that purpose, and was instead put to off-label use by Chicago house musicians in the mid-80s (often alongside other now-iconic Roland instruments, such as the TR-606, TR-808, and TR-909 drum machines).
Acid generally employs simple one-bar loops (known as "acid lines"). Much of the musical interest comes from the way the timbre changes over time (particularly the modulation of overtones via its low-pass filter - like electronic throat singing or didgeridoo), and how it interacts rhythmically with other elements of the track. (Polymeters are common, especially in acid techno - with two 303s simultaneously playing different acid lines in different time signatures.) The 303 is commonly paired with some amount of fuzz or distortion, to make it sound meatier and dirtier - it's kind of the Stratocaster of electronic music.
There's also an element of aleatoric music: the 303 is notoriously difficult to program, and if you remove the batteries and put them back in, the 303's memory will be filled with completely random sequences. Find one that sounds good, and build a track around it. (Repetition legitimizes.)
It might be too theoretically mundane for the kind of analysis that you do - but (of course) theory is meant to be descriptive. The sound of acid is featured on thousands of records, and has millions of fans around the world. There's surely *something* theoretically interesting there, even if conventional music theory doesn't have the concepts or vocabulary to talk about it.
Would love a video on this! There so much to dissect with acid dance music and the TB-303 that I feel hasn't been discussed enough. We generally need more analyses on dance music and electronic music as well, and it would definitely involve inventing new theoretical concepts.
@@garvtune Agreed that we need more analysis of electronic music. There's basically no one doing it, as far as I've seen.
It seems like music theory, and music academia in general, is verrry slow to catch up to new developments in the art form. I mean, they still use classical and jazz as the framework to understand everything.
And there's nothing wrong with classical and jazz - but they are thoroughly historical at this point. (People still play and enjoy them, of course - but mostly as "heritage" traditions. And they certainly aren't the music that *most* people are playing and enjoying.)
Heck, musical academia is just beginning to take rock music seriously - and even *that* is getting pretty long in the tooth.
Even putting the "slow to catch up" issue aside: conventional theory seems to be very poorly equipped to talk about hip-hop and electronic music. Most theory is concerned with melody and harmony - and if you're confining yourself to that kind of analysis, there simply isn't much to *say* about most electronic music. It tends to be melodically and harmonically simplistic (even minimalist), and to focus more on timbre, rhythm, quotation (i.e., sampling), layering, and gradual development. Theorists need to develop more sophisticated concepts and vocabulary to talk about how those elements work and interact within a track, and how they contribute to its structure and emotional effect.
@@greenie2600 Traditional theoretical frameworks have definitely provided useful conceptual lenses for general music analysis, but I wholeheartedly agree that there are so many modern styles of music that don't succumb to that type of review at all. Music academics definitely still have a tight grip on the concept of melody and harmony, which is for sure useful. But, as you said, plenty of styles, especially of the last 40/50 years, have a textural or rhythmic forefront. We especially don't have as much of a frame of reference to analyze timbre and texture, and that is logically the next development necessary to digest modern club/dance, much of electronic music, and hip hop.
It's also in part due to Western music theory playing such a big role in analysis. Much of hip hop, funk, etc. has roots in Africa, which explains such an emphasis on rhythm. I'd love to have more study on theories that come from Africa or Latin America.
Classic beat. so cool to see a video about it
Love the breakdown of attack dynamics. I’m so so aware of the impossibility of replicating another drummer’s performance, but absolutely love trying to do it anyway.
More vids about electronic music and samples would be awesome! Thank u 12tone, u the man 👍
Coleman's work will live on forever
If mr. Coleman's consciousness is by any means existent after his body died then I believe you made him a realy happy person. Even if he had not realized the impact of his performance on the whole world's musical culture, he was an artist worthy of praise. I did not knew about his existence before watching your video and thats a shame. I feel straightforward sadness knowing now how he died- without money and recognition.
So... thank yu mr. Coleman, i had lots of fun listening to D'n'B. And thanks 12tone for bringing this up for us, the viewers
This Video is so great! Thanks for all these lil sketches
Such a fun and informative video! the little goblin you drew around 2:04 when talking about electronic DJs made me laugh. Good stuff
In music we tend to constantly talk about the importance of melodic and harmonic motifs, like that from Beethoven's 5th or the riff from smoke on the water, that we often forget the sheer genius of a good drum groove. The fact is, great melodies and riffs make songs catchy, but great drum grooves birth new genres.
What's neat is everyone could hear a different song when they hear this beat. For me I hear "It takes two"
Your channel showed up in my Suggestions a while ago, and I've watched quite a bit. There's a lot more I haven't watched (yet), enough that I simply assumed you'd already done a video on the break beat from "Amen Brother." Surprised to find that this wasn't true until yesterday; but not surprised, given the ridiculous well of content you have to draw from, that you hadn't got to it until now. Great video as always.
Well covered. There's definitely a push/pull to the beat through the intricate relationships between the various layers of drums and cymbals. Which is impressive when analyzed to this level, but also, when you actually play the beat, all of these intricacies fall away and it just becomes a fluid experience.
The Amen break was a series of noises I recognized from the background music of a game i heard at some point in my life. And had no way to know how i knew it. But the noise was in my veins when i heard it, jist thrumming along
oh my god I cannot thank you enough for releasing this video at this time, I've relatively recently gotten into drum and bass and have been trying for a while now to create my own music without a whole ton of success. If it was a genre I'd been into for a while, DNB would be perfect for me as a DAW is probably the instrument I'm most proficient with, but I come from rock and rhythm just isn't my specialty. I haven't even started the video yet, I just gasped when I saw it, but I'm about to be watching with so much excitement
OMG your exhausted pause and sigh before you into the whole GR part is priceless!!
Very insightful, thank you!
8:51 this drawing of Strong Bad takes me back. You should analyze some Strong Bad classics like "The System Is Down" and "Trogdor the Burninator"
The cheat is grounded!
Strong Mad
I will never ever ever ever ever write a song about the sibby.
Gather round. We're going to look at two songs that are forever intertwined. Let's see. We got Straight Outt' Compton and the Futurama Theme Song.
Wait, what?
Straight Outta (Cassie) Compton or whatabout Straight Outta Callaghan?
this is so so so helpful for making midis of the amen break on devices that can’t import samples; been playing with synths and sequencers on the DSI and this was critical
Can we all just take a minute and appreciate the fact that, despite there being many channels who use widely-available software recreations of this style, 12-tone still does these beautiful animations by hand on staff paper? Because i super appreciate it
I always thought it came from the Power Puff Girls theme. I had no idea the break had a name
NOOOO THATS THE FUNKY DRUMMER BREAK AAAAAAAAAAA
That's not even the Amen Break.
That's the Funky Drummer break.
To be fair, for someone with little to no skill regarding musical hearing, both sound pretty similar, if not outright identical (myself included, btw; I also totally thought this was the one in the PPG intro song)
@@Krlytz What a backhanded way to say that. I'm a musician, I just misremembered in the moment when I heard the break on its own. Y'all don't need to come at me like I'm stupid.
Haha, I've been hard at work on my next breakcore album, and I'm VERY pleased that I've intuited my way to the exact same manner of beat analysis as 8-Bit Music Theory has over the years.
Coleman passed about 9 years before I ever sampled the song, and I never even heard about that fundraiser. I was just a teen then. But if I had known, I definitely would have done something. The copyright lawyer of Coleman's estate had said that anyone who sampled the break was a plaigarist. I strongly disagreed, but now that I know what became of Coleman, I can't say I blame that lawyer for being so emotional about it.
This was moving! Thanks so much! 🤩🖤🙏🏻
You cant escape the Golden Ratio Spin.
Excellent video! The methodology was clear and compelling, you didn't fall down any music theory rabbit holes, and the "Three T's" section (issues often ignored by music theorists) provided a nice balance against the more analytical content.
I'm pretty sure the Powerpuff Girls Theme has a version of this beat
What a great video!
Really fun to hear your take on the amen break! I'm actually bouncing a jungle track with it right now!
I know it's not the point of the video but skipped over some interesting history around breakbeat hardcore where the amen came into uk dance culture, a few years before DnB existed. Also lots of examples of people using the second half of the break. The wonky kick and the cymbal hits are iconic
They are simply not that knowledgeable when it comes to the UK dance scene. There's a comment under the pinned comment that does a good job explaining how breakbeat hardcore became jungle, which became dnb.
At the risk of sounding mean, I *really* like the direction you've taken toward a more natural inflection. The weird insincere cadence that so many music youtubers use while talking has really started to grate me over time.
Great video. Thanks
I love how you explain and draw so cool😂
Could you do an analysis of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin?
When you asked us if we've heard that drum before, by god that sent me back to weekday afternoons on cartoon network and Powerpuff Girls...
I’ve been drumming for about 4 years, this beat has always been my favorite to play when I’m just goofing around playing. I don’t remember hearing it from a song, I don’t really remember where I learned it I was just always drawn to it. Pretty cool to learn so much about it.
First LTJ Bukem reference I've heard on a video anywhere, crazy respect
amen break basically made breakcore 😂
This will always be the Powerpuff Girls drumbeat to me!!
One thing i havent seen mentioned yet is that the snares in this have unique element, they atr pitched differently. The second snare in a bar is higher in pitch thaj the first, you can hear it quite well if you speed it up. This makes it easy to tune to your song vs tuning the kicks which can be difficult (harder to differentiate lower frequencies).
Top notch analysis with a chilling end
“The birth of CMH (cheap MIDI hop) can be traced back to a 2023 video by TH-camr 12tone, who ironically predicted no future for the concept, never dreaming it would come to dominate popular music two decades later.”
5:00 this is inaccurate. DnB and breakcore producers nearly always use the back half, even if just for a brief embellishment or transition, and many songs exclusively use bars 3 and 4.
Yeah I went to go comment exactly this
Absolutely fascinating. Thanks.
As a producing junglist, I’d add that the break contains the last generation of those old school hihats you typically hear in jazz recordings from a generation earlier where you don’t know if it’s a hihat or a ride cymbal you hear because it has a bell pitch where as now, most (if not all of them) are acoustic metallic treble white noise generators with no bell pitch to speak of.
I've chopped it, rearranged it, and listened to it a million times, but this in depth analysis is on another level...
And I saw your pinned comment about jungle/dnb and FYI jungle was first, dnb evolved from it, couple of years later...
Anyway, great video as always...
THIS IS YOUR BEST WORK. Seriously.
The section about TTT gave me a miniature mindblow - in the infinite multiverse, any parallel universe that branched off prior to the recording of the Amen Break will have a different dominant sample informing that universe's style of D'n'B. Wild.
Not a particularly musical or academic epiphany but hey, I'm not here because I know music theory, I'm here because of how accessible and interesting you make learning about it.
broooo im so glad u mentioned it in slipknot cuz i heard it in eyeless and thought it sounded amazing, didnt know if was from another artist til now