breakbeat science

Musicologist blogger Ethan Hein with a breakdown of a famous break, that sono-icono imperishable known as Amen. 

However, Hein confesses that notation can only get you so far in terms of penetrating the mysterious power and inexhaustibility of the Gregory Coleman drum part. After much talk of snare pickups and sixteenth note subdivisions, the last of 13 steps in his analysis more or less involves throwing up his hands:

"Apply groove, which in this context, means the specific microtiming of the break as performed by Gregory S. Coleman. You can’t represent this step in notation!

Groove is much more than just the timing of drum hits, but it’s a starting place. In the Ableton screencap below, the grid lines are sixteenth notes. The yellow markers show the onset of each drum hit. As you can see if you look closely, hardly any of them are exactly where they are 'supposed' to be."

He further admits defeat when he comes to the timbral characteristics of the break, a huge part of why Amen have its effect (which is then intensified further by choppage and EQ):  

"You can’t adequately represent the Amen via MIDI or music notation. Its timbre is doing as much musical work as the placement and timing of drum hits. The sound of those drums is instantly recognizable, even when they are sped up, slowed down, transposed in pitch, chopped up and so on. Maybe once I have a better handle on how timing works in this kind of groove, I can start thinking more seriously about timbre too."

It's consoling to know that technically informed scholars have not completely put out of work those of us who work with feelings and images - at least for now.  

Here's an earlier Hein analysis of "The Funky Drummer" break. 

And here's a really interesting blogpost in which Hein discusses The Headhunters's "God Made Me Funky". He is dead right in saying that the track gets much less compelling when it loosens up into more freeform playing with the entry of the sax solo. But that first ultra-tight section , ooh goshhh

toytown tekno 1 of ?

 

The naughty naughty joke here is that "Rhubard and Custards" were red and yellow capsules of Ecstasy very popular in '92.

The pills were described warmly by a nostalgic raver on the Discogs thread  as "very rushy!"

That might be because they had amphetamine and methamphetamine in them as well as a decent amount of MDMA, at least according to this late '90s medical journal article. 

"Normality, believe!"

 

"Jim and Emma, get out of John's bed"

the flip

 

the whole session (or what i got of it)

raver, rave, raving (slight return)

History Is Made At Night posts a newspaper cutting that shows that  "raver" and "ravers" was well established as the term for marauding mobs of hard-partying, up-all-night youngsters in the UK by the late 1950s

Here's the text, again heisted from History Is Made At Night:

40 coffee bar night spots- some of them dimly lit cellars were teenagers go on unlimited necking parties - have earned for the seaside town of Brighton this new title… It's ravers' top town.

The "ravers" are gangs of young people who travel from London on early morning milk trains to have a rave day and night whooping it up in the coffee bars.

Why ravers? Because they move around in a crowd not caring where, not caring why...

The dingy ill-ventilated coffee bars have one piece of equipment common to all. The juke box. To the canned music the teenage ravers jive themselves into a frenzy. As they jive they kiss. When they tire they lounge around often on the floor because there aren't enough seats.

And the necking goes on continuously. In London coffee bars necking is strictly forbidden. But no such prudery in Brighton. There the ravers can neck from 11:30 am to 11:30 pm and no one will tell them to calm it down.

When they have enough of one bar the rave starts up again and they move to the next spot. Often the ravers carry their own musical instruments and jive in the streets.

They are not popular with the Brighton police who will be keeping a special watch for them on bank holiday trains this weekend. Not long ago a trainload of ravers paraded to through Brighton streets at dawn, singing, jiving and waking sleeping people

(Sunday Pictorial, 29 March 1959)

The last line about "singing, jiving and waking sleeping people" reminded me of this '93 classic that hijacks Aled Jones: "we're walking in the air....  while people far below are sleeping as we fly". E makes of us angels...