Can I get an Amen? The Winstons’ Classic Break Examined

It’s been called the most important six second drum loop, it’s virtually spawned an entire genre, it’s subject to much debate in all corners of the internet from the legal ins-and-outs to how best to chop it up. In-fact it’s so famous it’s probably entered the unconscious musical vernacular like the Wilhelm scream did with foley, yes it’s the Amen break.

The track this ubiquitous drum break was lifted from was entitled ‘Amen, Brother’, and was recorded by The Winstons in 1969. It’s actually as a b-side to their single Color Him Father released on Metromedia. The song was actually a cover of Jester Hairston’s Amen, written for the 1963 Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field. The break kicks in around 1.26, listen below:

With over 1882 listed citings on Who Sampled that’s not even scratching the surface of how many records have plundered their record boxes to samples this six seconds of drumming history. Here’s an excelled documentary on the history of the amen and its usage, which I won’t be able to cover all of. It’s probably the most comprehensive one out there, so really worth watching it:

High profile uses of the Amen include Shy FX and UK Apache, the Futurama theme music, Mantronix, LTJ Bukem, Oasis, N.W.A, David Bowie, The Prodigy, Primal Scream, Renegade, Tinie Tempah, Squarepusher, Egyptian Empire (which is also sampled in The Prodigy’s Climbatize), and hot off the press – Meridian Dan.

Without diving into the legalities of drum break sampling, it’s fair to say there has been some tension with its liberal usage in hip hop and jungle with little monetary compensation. Recently however, Long live beautifully crafted Jungle! user Martyn Webster started a campaign to remunerate The Winstons for their recordings (sadly the drummer Gregory C. Coleman died in 2006) initially setting out to raise £1000. Without high profile support they smashed their target and raised £24,000. You can read about it here.

Richard L. Spencer, the sole surviving member of the group (who holds the copyright to the recording) told the BBC:

I felt as if I’d been touched somewhere where no one is supposed to touch. Your art is like your children, it’s like a part of you. I felt invaded. I felt like my privacy had been taken for granted. And as a historian, as a social scientist, I also felt like the history of African-American music from the 1800s to the present is basically carted ff by other people who became very wealthy and rich and we’ve usually been left out. [sighs] You almost have to do like we did when we gave up Africa and just go… well, that’s the way it is. I’m flattered that you chose it, but please make it a legal interaction here and pay me. The young made that played that drum beat died homeless and broke in Atlanta, Georgia around 1996.

The break has seen unparalleled popularity within jungle and drum’n’bass, being a cornerstone of the genres. In this article we’re going to have a look at some approaches of chopping, processing, resampling, layering and hopefully doing something fresh with it.

Why Does the Amen Sound so Good?

I spoke to recording techniques and vintage production extraordinaire Hal Ritson of Replay Heaven and The Young Punx about how the Amen was recorded and what about it that attracts us to it like moth to light:

The main characteristic of the Amen break is the harmonic intensity and sonic character it brings to any track. Recorded on only one or two mics at some distance from the kit and hence capturing a lot of the sonics of the room, and with quite loosely tuned kit leaving toms to ring sympathetically with the snare hits etc, the sound is much looser and more ambient than either more contemporary close mic drum sounds, or most programmed beats. This means its addition to any track immediately adds a space and depth to the sonic soundscape. While this is true of many vintage break beats the Amen break seems to have a uniquely appealing ‘colour’ to it that adds enough ‘darkness’ to the sonics to make any music sound cool and edgy, without becoming too depressingly dark.

Its almost infinite usability appears to stem from many elements in the break being perfectly balanced for practical use: It has just enough organic groove to add life and vibe to a beat, while being close enough to a straight 16 grid to not clash with straight programmed elements.

The balance between the transient impact of the hits, and the ambient space of the room seems to strike the right balance between being punchy enough to stand on its own as the sole drum beat in a track, while being soft and spacey enough to sit on top of or within programmed elements without fighting with them in the mix.

It is a regular enough pattern to lay down a hypnotic looping groove, but also has small variations in the playing (particularly the end of the phrase) that enable it to be used with variations in the pattern, or in new creative ways, particularly when heavily edited and re-triggered. (Some sub genres of DnB seem to consist almost entirely of people finding more and more intricate ways to trigger Amen into complex patterns!)

And the balance of weight between the most important loud hits, and the more subtle grace notes in between is very well composed, and in particular seems to sound good whether its played slowly as a hiphop break, mid paced as house or breaks, or sped up fast to jungle speeds.

I recently discovered this thread on Dogs on Acid, claiming this to be a direct quote from Rodney Mills, the engineer who recorded Amen, Brother. It’s hard to completely substantiate this quote, as there appears to be no record of it elsewhere, however the level of detail would lead me to believe it’d be an odd thing to lie about.

Amen, Brother was recorded to an Ampex 440 1/2 inch 4track tape recorder. Bass & Drums were on 1 track, Horns were overdubbed to a separate track, instruments (Guitar, Organ) were on a separate tracks. I’m pretty sure I would have used all 4 tracks. Tape machine was set to 15ips [inches per second] speed. Mixing would have gone to an Ampex Mono machine for radio and an Ampex stereo machine for single sales to the public. The producer was Don Carroll, who was a record promotion man for major labels before he took up producing…

…The studio was a pretty live recording environment so it was a little tricky to get good presence on the drums without other instruments leaking onto the drum tracks or drums bleeding on other instrument tracks. Microphones used on the drums would have been a Neumann U87 on overheads (we had recently switched from the Telefunken 47‘s to get the latest Neumann mikes), an Altec 633 on Kick drum, an RCA Bk-5 on snare (a ribbon mike that could handle loud volume). At that time we had very few dynamic microphones. Bass would have been direct (no amp). The console was a custom 4 channel (Buss) console that had Langevin equalizers, Gotham audio faders, and no panning control. Stereo was still young at that time.

Full quote available on Dogs on Acid

Early Examples

The earliest example I could find of Amen, Brother being sampled was in two hip hop records, Salt N’ Pepa’s I Desire from 1986, taking both the drum break and more uncommonly the horn section turnaround leading into it.

…and the other was from the same year is Stetsasonic’s Bust That Groove, also sampling the horns.

Responsibly Sourced Amens

It also turns out where you get your Amen from has a big impact on the sound of it, due to mastering and various other sonic considerations. I spoke to producer, journalist, DnB trainspotter and friend of the family Tim Cant about sourcing your Amen:

There are tons of places to source Amen breaks, but they’re not all equal. The CD compilation DJ Pogo Presents Block Party Breaks 2 seems like the most obvious place to grab it from, especially if you don’t own a turntable, but for some reason I never got on with it. Maybe it’s how it’s been mastered but I could never get it to sound right, though I’m certainly not dismissing my lack of ability as the culprit. Likewise, I ended up never using Amens I sampled from Mantronix’s King of the Beats (available on various CD compilations) either. I don’t use it personally, but Renegade’s Terrorist is an easy to track-down jungle Amen with the crash and everything, and you can buy a .wav version from Beatport if you need it in a hurry.

My personal recommendation for a digital Amen source is the awesome and super cheap Simon Harris sample CD Broken Beaten Scratched, which includes a couple of fantastic-sounding second generation Amens and loads of other classic breaks. For me these versions beat out anything else from Zero-G Datafiles to Jungle Warfare.

You can check Tim’s music on his SoundCloud and his words in Computer Music and Music Radar. To learn more about the Amen’s history, musicality and usage, have a read of Ethan Hein’s blog, this Resident Advisor article and this excellently researched blog from Discogs on the different pressings of the record from original single to album to a version with more room reverb.

Sampling

If you have access to a good turntable, stylus, pre-amp and soundcard then you could try buying a copy of the original and recording it into your DAW. I opted to buy an Mp3 off of iTunes, which is fine for educational purposes. But it goes without saying that you should always try and sample from lossless audio formats such as WAV and AIFF. I’ve brought the track in Ableton Live’s arrange view and disabled warping. The break starts at around 1.25, here it is:

There nice clearly defined transients and for a sixties stereo recording, the drums are fairly central, which makes this nice and easy to sample.

Next, enabling warping and setting the algorithm to ‘beats’, I’ve set about locking the downbeats at the beginning of each bar. I’m not warping every single transient as this will sap the groove out of our beat. Later down the line once we layer it with other breaks I might refine the timing a bit.

The original loops sits around the 136 bpm mark, but let’s move our host tempo up to jungle territory of 165 bpm. We can either now keep the loop in audio or transfer it to a sampler.

In audio, two of Ableton’s algorithms will work nicely for us, Beats will preserve the pitch information and Re-Pitch will treat the pitch like vinyl or tape – so if we increase the tempo the pitch will increase and if we slow the tempo down the pitch will drop. Here’s how the two examples sound:

Beats:

Re-Pitch:

By far my favourite way to sequence breakbeats in Ableton Live is using Simpler. Add the already warped break to a blank Simpler instrument or drag on the track area of a blank MIDI track. Enable Slice mode (green) – this will allow you to sequence sections of the sample via MIDI triggers starting at C1. Ensure the Warp is enabled (pink/red), I’m using Re-Pitch for extra Amen-authenticity.

We’re going to slice our Amen by 1/8th notes, so change the default Division from Transients to 1/8 (blue). Set the sample Playback to Thru (white) – this means the whole sample will continue to play through the sample and set the Trigger Mode to Gate (orange) so the sample will play back for the duration while a note is held down, rather than irrespective of the MIDI note length.

There are some other options available for a closer sound to breakbeat hardcore pioneers. I’ve mentioned in a previous article this Audio Effects Rack by Illum which emulates the much sought-after E-mu SP-1200 sampler. Used extensively by hip hop, house and DnB producers, it has a classic sounding 26 kHz sampling rate and bit depth of 12. You can see a video of it in action here and download the .adg here. The other big sampler of the era would be early Akais, like the S900, S950 and S2000. There’s a great Akai sampler emulator by the AKAIZER Project, which you can download here. Samplers like the E-mu e6400, which sadly I’m not aware of a software emulation of.

Chop Suey

This is where it starts getting fun. Once we have our amen locked to our tempo we can start chopping it up. Let’s look at audio examples first. I’ve started by cutting each bar into a new clip using the (cmd + e) and colouring them all different colours (ctrl + click).

Now I’m going to cut up the main sections even further, rearranging them. As a guide line I’m not going to use a cut smaller than 1/16. In addition I’m going to keep the main kicks and snares on beats 1, 2, and 4 (there will be exceptions) – having this consistency will keep the groove rolling nicely, but don’t feel confined to it; it’s just a suggestion. I’m moving the cuts around using alt + drag. You can experiment by reverse, adjusting clip volume and transpose (won’t work in Re-Pitch mode) with various slices.

Layering Different Sounds

Amen, Brother may be one of the most famous breaks, but it’s certainly not the only one worthy of a mention. The Worm, Think, Do The Do, Funky Drummer, Hot Pants, Impeach The President, Humpty Dump, Apache, Cold Sweat, Soul Pride and Assembly Line are a small section of other breaks that have become part of the lingua franca of jungle music.

Let’s start layering some of these up with our amen, as they all have very different characteristics. I’m not condoning music piracy, but for the purposes of education, most of these can be found online.

Here are some examples of amens layered with other popular breaks. I’ve done very little in the way of chopping these, just occasionally lining up some hits. There’s no processing either, except some mild limiting. Here’s the amen layered with:

Jimmy McGriff – The Worm

A break characterised by the regular cowbell and airy quality.

Lyn Collins – Think (About It)

Famous for it’s unmistakable vocal shouts and shrill tambourine, the Think break sounds great sped up.

James Brown – Soul Pride

A frenetic, roomy breakbeat that has a lot of different sections you can sample from.

Bobby Byrd – Hot Pants (Bonus Beats)

One of the toughest breaks out there, another great tambourine.

The Vibrettes – Humpty Dump

A chunky, almost distorted break with a roomy kick and ghosted snare hits.

James Brown – Funky Drummer

One of the most famous drum loops, a roomy drum solo with light 1/16th note swing.

Incredible Bongo Band – Apache

Another huge break – complete with bongos (as the name suggests), a very stereo mix.

James Brown – Cold Sweat

An airy, cymbal heavy break with a lot of off beat snares.

The Commodores – Assembly Line

Complete with group vocal shouts and a pingy-ride cymbal.

Resampling

This is where a lot of classic Amen sounds can be found. We’ve talked about resampling in various other articles, but in principle it’s taking a second generation sample. For example sampling the Amen from the intro from N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton. This would have its own processing, pitching and chopping, making it virtually an original source.

A fantastic source of second generation samples is the Blu Mar Ten collection of Jungle samples. I definitely implore you to get it! It’s packed full of pads, vocals and fx but most importantly breakbeats from the jungle/DnB era prime for resampling. Let’s dig around in there and see what Amens there is to be found… I’ve added Ray Keith’s Terrorist using the RePitch algorithm, working at 165 bpm.

I’ve layered a break from Sample Magic’s SM101 Vintage Breaks (SM101_brk_Toy Drummer_127bpm) and chopped it to fit our Amen.

Now I’ve added in the first two bars of the break from Quincy Jones’ Fat Poppa Daddy and pitched it up three semitones. I’ve rearranged the first two breaks to fit the unusual offbeat timing off our newest addition:

Let’s tidy our breaks up. Our Amen is a bit left heavy so use a Utility plug-in to isolate the left channel. I’ve high and low-passed it (100 Hz and 14 kHz) and dipped some mids out at 650 Hz. On our Toy Drummer break I’ve added a Waves PuigChild 670, SoundToys Decapitator, Softube’s (free) Saturation and iZotope Vinyl (which is sadly 32-bit only).

To our Fat Poppa break I’ve added Tone2’s BiFilter2 (again, 32-bit only) with a low-pass filter and tube amp distortion. I then added Live’s Gate and SPL’s Transient Designer to boost the transients. All three breaks are routed to a group (shift select then cmd + g) with Waves Kramer HLS and Audio Damage Rough Rider. I then resampled our break onto a new audio track, set the algorithm to RePitch and moved our tempo to 172. Now you can chop up your new, original breakbeat to your heart’s content!

I’ve written something on resampling and recycling samples (in particular drums) here, detailing how you can process breaks to “fake” their heritage. A great example of resampling the Amen is the Tramen break.

The Infamous Tramen

A term often batted around (usually incorrectly) is that of the Tramen. This is a second generation break often attributed to Trace, hence the name, popularised during his early tech step musings around ‘96-7.

The break was in-fact created by Dom & Roland, as the interview with him in Dark Masters below details:

I made the Tramen from a few well known old breakbeats, three of them layered together cut to the same groove. They were all originally off vinyl, I then EQ’d them all to do a different task within the beat… break 1: hats bite, break 2: ride groove and sheen, break 3: weight and roll. I still layer breaks if I need to, but would much rather find one that has all the elements I need in it, that way I don’t have to have my brain done in by working out the phase relationship between them as I layer three kicks or snares on top of each other. The three breaks were then squashed/distorted into one by driving the input gains on my analog desk (very hard to get right in digital) then resampled and chopped up again. So Trace came round to use me as an engineer for a few tracks and convinced me he should use it(!) We ended up doing a few tracks together that all turned out to be classics. Sonar and Mutant Jazz Revisited were the first. One of the tracks I left the break clean on its own for a bar, that’s where everyone else nicked it from. Everyone from Ray Keith to Bad Company and Optical have based whole tunes around it since. It used to piss me off, but now I suppose I feel honoured.

Mutant Jazz Revisited already has a healthy of DnB sample legacy.

The breaks mentioned above are of course the amen (break 3), Alex Reece’s remix of the Model 500 tune The Flow:

..and a live version of James Brown’s Tighten Up:

I’ve pulled all three breaks into Live ready for chopping up, working at 170 bpm. The Model 500 track has the break isolated in the intro and from the James Brown track the ride cymbal break enters at 1.49. Let’s start with The Flow break. I’ve added the individual hits to a Drum Rack, extrapolating a kick, hat and snare, each Simpler instrument inside the Drum Rack uses the Classic playback mode, allowing me to envelope each hit accordingly.

From this I want to isolate the kick and hats with some clever EQ. Firstly let’s get the break in mono by adding a Utility and monitoring both channels. The right channel sounds a little phasey so I’m going to just use the left. Next add an EQ Eight. I’ve added a high-pass at 85 Hz to remove any low rumble, dipped around 700 Hz to remove some of the presence from the snare and added a high shelf at 13 kHz to bring the hats out. Finally there’s a steep low-pass at 18 kHz to remove any super high frequencies.

Now let’s move on to our Amen. I again want to add this to a Drum Rack, but instead I’m only going to add the third bar where the second snare hit falls on the four-and. Here’s the MIDI, slightly re-programmed:

Again this is a bit right heavy, so using the same technique as before, let’s add a Utility plug-in and examine both sides. The left sounds quite dull whereas the right is a lot shinier. Next add an EQ Eight and remove below 200 Hz with a high-pass filter. I’ve also dipped a little around 257 Hz and boosted around 534 Hz to bring the snare shuffles out. Finally I’ve low-pass the break at 10 kHz.

Finally let’s move on to the Tighten Up. I’ve pitched this up a semitone and re-arranged it quite heavily, getting the ride to play on beats one-and, three and four (slice 9):

The Utility plug-in isn’t necessary here as it already sounds quite mono, so let’s EQ it. I’ve high-passed at 400 Hz, brought out the ride bell with a very sharp Q at 2.74k HZ and added a high-shelf boost at 12k Hz.

I’ve also added a Redux plug-in to each track with a bit depth of 16 bit. This won’t drastically change the sound but it’s what the Roland S760 Dom used had. Next shift select the tracks and hit cmd + g to group them together for processing.

Dom also mentions it’s quite hard to emulate the analog desk distortion he achieved, which I’m going to attempt using to get close to with Waves SSL E-Channel Strip. I’ve driven the input quite hard and brought down the output gain accordingly with about a dB or two of compression. I’ve boxed the sound in with a high-pass at 90 Hz and low-pass at 15 kHz. There a boost at 100 Hz where the kick sits, some attenuation at 300 Hz, a boost at 600 Hz and finally a high shelf at around 6k Hz.

Next I’m going to add some PSP Vintage Warmer, a great (and cheap!) Distressor emulation (Pensadia‘s SOR8) running into Audio Damage’s Rough Rider and Waves Aphex Vintage Exciter. For Vintage Warmer I’ve used the Mix semiDrivenTape preset, which really beefs the break up. Using the mix on the Distressor I’ve blended in a super compressed version of the break with the dry before hitting Rough Rider, which dulls the break a bit without killing the Ride cymbal. Finally using the Grunge Vocal preset on the Vintage Exciter, our break is about done.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not exactly like the Dom & Roland/Trace version, but having each layer gives you far more flexibility to adjust the phase of various hits (kicks especially), process the layers separately and control the overall distortion.

I personally think there’s still a lot of interesting sounds to be made with the Amen break, the recording and playing of it makes it timeless, and used tastefully it can add a real weight, groove and sheen to tracks.

It can of course work both ways and within certain genres the usage of it can become a bit tiresome and lacking in innovation but I wouldn’t let that saw you from having a go with it yourself.

Part of the beauty of the Amen is how liberally you can pitch and speed it up and down, as well as it being quite a mono sounding break. It has all the ingredients for being a perfect studio utility, even if not used at the forefront of the mix. Hopefully some of this has inspired you to look into use Amens in your own music, weather is be jungle, DnB or not. Enjoy!