The Amen break Is a 6 second (4 bar) drum solo, a break beat many believe to be the most sampled loop in music history. It helped spur the creative use of samplers and spawned an entire musical subculture. The Amen Break has become so universal that Neat Harrison, creator of the sound art installation “Can I Get An Amen? ” argues it has “entered into the collective audio subconscious. ” The Amen Break gets its name from The Winston song “Amen Brother,” a track on the B-side of their 1969 record “Color Him Father. Neat Harrison traces the Incredible history of the Amen Break over the last 40 years.
One appearance Is on “Straight Auto Compton. ” Jungle music Des began experimenting with the solo, slicing and retooling each kick and each crash to a point of dance-ability and syncopation into a realm of pure beatification and self-indulgence. Hundreds and potentially thousands of tracks were created using the “Amen Break. ” The success of the “Amen Break” can be credited to several factors: Its raw and powerful energy, the mechanical creation of the sampler, ND the rapid demand for break beats by hip-hop and electronic artists.
To fill this demand, record companies created compilation albums featuring songs with great break beats for convenient scratching and mixing. “Amen Brother” was included in the first “Ultimate Breaks and Beats” by Street Beat Records and on other sampling collections by third-party companies such as Zero-G Limited. Many believe the “Amen Break” carries a spiritual power and some hidden, universal meaning. Michael Schneider, a writer and educator, analyzed the waveform of the “Amen Break” and covered that the peaks of the waves correspond remarkably to the Golden Ratio.
Schneider observed that when the wave was turned vertically, the “Amen Break” peaks aligned with the Golden Proportions of the ideal human body, as if the music represented the ideal human harmony in audio form. Unfortunately the fact that still remains is that third-party companies are selling the appropriated “Amen Break” as their own copyrighted material. Around the early sass, various copyrights existed for the same drum loop. On the one hand, this prevented the original artists from receiving a dime for their work.
Yet at the same time, open access to their music sparked decades of musical innovation, the effects of which are still being seen in music today. When looking at media history, the threat of corporate entities seeking control over media they’ve laid claim to is practically never-ending. As the latest creative sampler in the digital age, the Internet faces onslaught by proposals like SOAP and ACTA. As that happens, It will become more and more necessary to monitor he difference between copyright that protects the public good and copyright that advances private gain.
But the SOAP and ACTA protests remind us of another thing-? creativity and its remarkable ability to come out on top. The use of the “Amen Break” alone is a striking example of the human ability to make creative work under strict confines. The self-imposed standard of Jungle music to work within the “Amen” could have been Its downfall, and yet to the Des, each Individual snare, each hi-hat, each music can develop into an entire subculture, Just think what we can do with eight.