Breakbeat talk! What makes for a good break? [video + samples DL]
Talking about what makes for a good breakbeat and what to take into account for a while now. Let's listen – you get samples too!
Been meaning to talk about what makes for a good breakbeat and what to take into account for a while now. Obviously talk alone would be boring, so I'm going through some examples.
I'm also hooking you with a batch of breaks so feel free to download this folder📁
You can always count on Uncle Fanu hooking you up with some goodies!
Some of those definitely work as a main break, while some can be used as layers.
Some are raw, and some I've processed myself.
Let me know what some of your fave breaks are and hey if you make some music with some of these breaks, do let me know!
Phew, I recently got a new Mac Mini, and good lord it's taken so much work to redo everything from scratch. I notice my mic sound came a little distorted (sorry!) even though I swear the settings are the same…this is one of the pains of setting a new computer.
Comments (12)
Nice one for highlighting our use of the Behind the wall of sleep break. We used it on our Red Sky track Dead Water (which came out on Make or Break, see bandcamp!). Both me and my production partner Mark love Black Sabbath and we are from Birmingham (the home of Sabbath and birthplace of heavy metal) so it was great using Bill Ward's drums. Please i urge everyone to give it a go!!
I love the "Thigthen up" as much a i hate it. I find it really hard to work with. The snare and ride are so good, but i can't get it under control to work with. So i am very happy that you included it the break. I can analyze it and see what you did with it and recreate it.
Maybe a point to this conversation could be the opposite "what makes for a bad break"? Not talking about personal tastes of course, one could use a "bad break" in creative ways. One could even make not particularly loud or snappy beats (God forbid! lol). I'm talking more about breaks that lacks something but we still like alot tonally, and how to complement them to reach the status of "good", aka useful for making dnb.
Good topic in a way :)
At the moment I love the Ritmos de Bahia break by Dave Pike Set and the Fritz Pauer, Understanding break. The Ritmos break has a lovely snare towards the end.
Ritmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ndl3KKqfBc
Amazing video, I hope you'll keep talking about this topic! Sometimes I get fixated with drum stuff that aren't really breaks at all.. like this instrumental track of Chico Science. These are really percussions, it's a modern take on a classic folk Brazilian genre. I've cut the bass out with AI and made it into dnb. Tonally I think it's amazing but I'll have to beef it up with layers. The fact that it has that triangle and sort of tamburine (kind like Hotpants) is beautiful. What you say, could you work with something like this or do you think it's wasted time? https://youtu.be/vv9rrhWIDXE?si=S8kPNwi9O5xI6a3l
Oh that definitely sounds useful - and funky!
Another great video thanks. I'm not sure I'd say it's my favourite break but I enjoyed using the drum solo from a live version of Blue Monk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wURR2OQ-9vY) ripped from an old tape. A lot of jazz tracks have drum solos if you're willing to do the work of combing through. This is what I did with it: https://tricearkayik.bandcamp.com/track/prisoners-of-time
Nice stuff man! Your song reminds me of dgoHn a bit!
Some nice breaks in that folder.. looking forward to checking out this video. That buddy rich apples one is one of my favs, didn't know what it was until now!
I *think* that Apples break may be a part of Photek's classic and often discussed KJZ tune!