The Most Sampled Song Ever 

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.

😂😂😂 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

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

I want to see that video.

Maybe tomorrow.

YES!

It's scientifically catchy.

Anything Danny Elfman does, really

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

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 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

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

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!

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!

I scrolled down so far because my first thought was "oh, hey, sonic adventure DX"

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.

ayo?

Your breakcore

vibrating at golden frequencies

I thought the drum rhythm in "Freedom Or Fire" sounded familiar somehow

You just described how tempos work lmao

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.

can't deal with the fact he drew my spirit animal to the words "lazy and unhelpful". It's trying it's best.

I'm glad someone mentioned this. It's so iconic on Eyeless....

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.

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.

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 RU-vid video" face is pretty funny.

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.

I agree, this insight is going to help me write dance music breakbeat turnarounds *so* much.

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.

Straight Outta (Cassie) Compton or whatabout Straight Outta Callaghan?

Magikarp as "Lazy and unhelpful"

The cheat is grounded!

Strong Mad

I will never ever ever ever ever write a song about the sibby.