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The Amen Break

Seven seconds of drums from 1969 ended up in thousands of tracks. Meet the Amen break, the four-bar drum break Gregory Coleman played in Amen, Brother by The Winstons, sampled in hip hop and above all in 1990s jungle and drum and bass. Build our own breakbeat in the same style on a 16-step grid, hear why funk drumming grooves, then chop it into slices, rearrange them and speed it up like a jungle producer. Every beat is our own: the original recording is never played. The first lesson of Modern Grooves.

In this lesson you'll

  • Know the story: Amen, Brother by The Winstons (1969), B side of Color Him Father; drummer Gregory Coleman's four-bar break, sampled in thousands of tracks (hip hop, jungle, drum and bass); no royalties for the band, and a 2015 crowdfunding of about £24,000 for bandleader Richard Spencer.
  • Program a funk breakbeat on a 16-step grid: kicks off the beat (1, 8, 11), snare on 5 and 13 (beats 2 and 4, the backbeat), soft ghost notes in between (7, 10, 15), hi-hats on the eighth notes, and spot the variation over four bars (a late snare, a shifted kick).
  • Chop it like a producer: cut a bar into four slices (A B C D), play them in a new order (A C B D), rearrange single hits, and speed it up from a funk 100 BPM to a jungle 170 BPM (jungle sat around 160 to 180 BPM).

Music in this lesson

  • Amen, BrotherThe Winstons · 1969

Remember

The Amen break is a four-bar drum break by Gregory Coleman in Amen, Brother by The Winstons (1969). Short, clean and unaccompanied, it was sampled in thousands of tracks, above all in 1990s jungle and drum and bass, yet the band never received royalties.

Funk drumming grooves because the kicks land off the beat, the snare keeps the backbeat on 2 and 4, and soft ghost notes fill the gaps, so it already swings; over four bars the drummer adds little surprises: the snare lands late, the kick shifts.

Producers sped the break up (around 160 to 180 BPM in jungle), chopped it into slices and single hits and rearranged them: the same drums became a whole new instrument.