Breakbeats
From DNBWiki
A Breakbeat is a small section of a record (usually) containing only drums or percussion. The word breakbeat can be sometimes used to describe loops of full musical sections, especially in hip-hop terminology. Within dnb they are also frequently referred to as simply breaks.
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[edit] History
The use of breakbeats first began in the 1970's when hip-hop DJs would cut or cross-fade between two copies of the same record at the point where the song breaks down to just the drums. The New York DJ Kool Herc is widely credited with pioneering this proto-version of beat juggling. MC's increasingly began to rap over the looped instrumental 'beats, thus creating the template for Hip Hop as we know it today. The use of breakbeats surged in popularity with the increase in the use of samplers, as small sections of music could easily be recorded, looped and manipulated. Jungle, which evolved from early hardcore, was principly identified from the use of breakbeats. The producers of the time became more and more sophisticated in the editing of the breakbeats, resulting in far more complicated drum patterns.
[edit] Usage of Breakbeats in Drum'n'Bass
Breakbeats are normally first loaded or recorded into a sampler. They are often chopped into smaller parts, sometimes as small as each constituent hit, often using a tool such as Recycle. This enables more flexibility to re-arrange the breakbeat. The parts of the breakbeat are then usually arranged and rearranged using a sequencer. Sometimes time-stretching is used to match the speed of the original breakbeat with the tempo of the track. During the early days of drum and bass, the use of 'pitching-up' of breaks was frequently used to bring the break upto a faster tempo.
[edit] Finding breakbeats
Besides crate-digging (of course) you can find a huge number of breaks on the grid. Either discover the name of the break and then search for that, or search for "breaks2dl". If you are posting breaks to the grid please also include "breaks2dl" so they will show up in searches.
[edit] Tutorials on using breakbeats
[edit] Useful Grid threads on using breakbeats
- What's the best software to chop breaks?
- Where to chop breaks?
- Manipulating breaks - different levels of resolution
- Chopping the tighten up (turned into a general discussion of preserving the drummer's groove)
- Recycle sucks! (turned into a discussion of alternative slicing methods)
- Do you quantise your dancefloor beats?
- Writing drumfunk tips
[edit] External Resources
- Grid thread: These are the breaks - a list of breakbeats used in Drum'n'Bass, and the name of the original track/breakbeat sampled.
- External Link: Rolldabeats.com Breaks Thread - A more concise and up-to-date version of above with many audio clips.
