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THE AMEN BREAK

The Break

Four bars of drums. About seven seconds. Played by one man, in 1969.

The break comes at about one minute and twenty-six seconds into “Amen, Brother”. The band drops out. Gregory Coleman keeps playing. Four bars. Then the band comes back and it is gone.

There is not much to it. A kick drum. A snare. A ride cymbal. One open cymbal near the end. That is all.

Four bars

Bars one and two

The same bar, played twice. The ride keeps eighth notes, steady as a clock. The kick lands on one and just after. It comes back late in the bar, twice, close together. The snare cracks on two and four.

Between the loud snares sit soft ones. Ghost notes. Barely touched. You feel them more than you hear them. They make it roll.

Bar three

It starts the same, then holds back. The last snare does not come on four. It waits half a beat and lands late. The bar leans forward.

Bar four

Here it comes apart. No kick on one. A ghost snare slips in just after it. The kick comes off the beat. On the and of three the ride gives way to a splash of open cymbal. Some hear a crash. Our score writes an open hi-hat. The last snare is late again. Then it is over.

No click

Coleman played to no click track. The break runs at about 136 to 138 beats a minute. Inside it, the notes drift. One count, by Ethan Hein, puts the sixteenths anywhere from about 120 to 165. Our score says 140, a round number for the page. The record is not round. That drift is the feel. A machine can copy the notes. The feel is harder.

In the box

The same MIDI file, opened three ways. Nothing changed but the view. Get the file below and open it yourself.

The Amen break MIDI file open in GarageBand
GarageBand, piano roll. The free one. Every hit is the same green dash. Ride on top, open hi-hat, snare, kick at the bottom.
The Amen break MIDI file open in Logic Pro
Logic Pro, piano roll, collapse mode. Colour is force: red hits hard, green-blue is a whisper.
The Amen break MIDI file open in Ableton Live
Ableton Live, folded to the four drums in use. The lane at the bottom shows how hard each note is struck. The low ones are the ghost notes.

What you can do with it

Slow it down

In 1986 Ultimate Breaks & Beats put it out slower, to suit hip-hop. Slow a record and the pitch drops with it. The kick goes fat. There is room for words.

Speed it up

In Britain in the early nineties it went the other way. Faster, then faster again. Samplers like the Akai S950 could stretch time, changing speed and pitch apart. The snare went to a crack. The kick went thin. A big bass line went under it. That was jungle, and then drum and bass.

Chop it

Cut the four bars into single hits. Put them back in a new order. Same words, new sentence. The Chop button below does it in one go.

Swing it

Push every other sixteenth a little late. A straight grid starts to shuffle.

Take it apart

Take out the ghost notes and it goes stiff. Take out the kick and it floats. Try it.

Play with the Break

The grid below is the Amen. The drums are ours, not his. Your browser makes them from nothing. Press play. Then change it.

Downloads

Our own transcription, written down from the record. It is not the 1969 recording. Whether a drum pattern can be owned is not settled. See Copyright.

Sources