Breakbeat
A drum pattern or passage that emphasizes a song’s instrumental break, often by isolating and repeating a syncopated groove.
Drum break: A brief passage in a recording where drums play without the main vocals or other instruments. Breakbeats often derive from drum breaks isolated from funk and soul recordings.
Funk: A dance-oriented music genre built around strong grooves, syncopated rhythms, and prominent bass lines. Funk recordings supplied many of the drum breaks later sampled into breakbeats.
Breakbeat (electronic dance music): An electronic dance music genre centered on syncopated drum patterns rather than a regular four-on-the-floor beat. This genre makes breakbeat rhythms the main framework for dance tracks.
Four-on-the-floor: A dance rhythm with a bass drum on every quarter-note beat in a bar of four. Its regular pulse contrasts with the syncopated, broken patterns associated with breakbeats.
Sampling (music): The use of recorded sound excerpts as material in a new musical work. Producers capture breakbeats by sampling the original drum passage.
James Brown: An American singer, bandleader, and songwriter whose rhythmically influential recordings helped shape funk. Breakbeat producers drew on the isolated drum passages in his recordings.
Jungle music: A British electronic dance genre that developed in the early 1990s, combining fast breakbeats, bass, and sound-system influences. Jungle producers reworked breakbeats into rapid, densely chopped rhythms.
Boom bap: A hip-hop production style marked by hard, prominent kick and snare patterns. Boom bap usually centers a newly arranged groove, while breakbeat production often foregrounds a sampled break.
Audio loop: A sound recording arranged to repeat continuously or for a set number of repetitions. Repeating a short break creates the steady rhythmic foundation of many breakbeat tracks.
The Winstons: An American soul group active in the 1960s, known for recording “Amen, Brother.” Their recording contains the Amen break, a defining source of sampled breakbeat rhythms.