Media & entertainment
The Amen break: how six seconds of a 1969 drum solo built modern music
11 min
One short drum break became the rhythmic backbone of hip-hop, jungle, and dance music worldwide, while the drummer who played it lived and died with almost nothing to show for it.
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Show notes
Gregory Coleman played the seven-second drum solo as filler for a nineteen sixty-nine B-side track.
The break features a delayed snare and early crash cymbal that provided organic warmth for future genres.
Hip-hop producers used the E-mu SP-twelve hundred sampler to turn the obscure solo into a production staple.
British producers accelerated the break to one hundred sixty beats per minute to create jungle and drum and bass.
Gregory Coleman died homeless in two thousand six without ever receiving royalties for his influential drumming.
A GoFundMe campaign eventually raised twenty-six thousand dollars as a moral royalty for the surviving band leader.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Accidental Masterpiece2 min
- 3The Crate Diggers and the Hip-Hop Explosion2 min
- 4The Jungle and Drum and Bass Evolution3 min
- 5The Human Cost of a Sample3 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- Six seconds that shaped 1,500 songs - BBC News
- The Amen Break — how an obscure 1960s B-side became the most sampled song in history — FT.com
- How the Amen Break Became the Most Sampled Drum Break in Music History - Business Insider
- The Story Behind the 1960s Drum Beat That Launched a Thousand Copycats - Songfacts Articles
- Case Study 13.1: The Amen Break — One Six-Second Dru... | Physics of Music | DataField.Dev
- Amen Break: The world’s most sampled drum beat — Twenty Thousand Hertz - The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.
- Behind the Sample: The Amen Break — findyl
- Amen break
- What Is the Amen Break and Why Is It Everywhere in Electronic Music?
- History of The Amen Break: Immortality In 7 Seconds | The Music
- Funk Band Behind 'Amen Break' Drum Riff Receives Long Overdue Notoriety : NPR
- Funk Band Behind 'Amen Break' Drum Riff Receives Long Overdue Notoriety : NPR
- 10 Things You Need To Know About: The Amen Break • UKF
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