The History of the Amen Break

Written by Meenakshi Nirmalan

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out how to play the Amen Break on drums. Considering I’ve been playing the instrument for a while, it’s odd that it hadn’t crossed my mind to learn what is maybe the most famous groove in modern music. I looked up the sheet music online and learned it the same day. Although the phrase is short and isn’t particularly challenging technically, it sounds incredible when played at a fast tempo.

The Amen Break is the most widely sampled loop in music history. The four-bar solo is sourced from the song Amen Brother, by funk and soul band The Winstons. Gregory ‘G.C.’ Coleman is on drums. Amen Brother was one of the more overlooked tracks from The Winstons’ discography - the track is an instrumental on the B-side of the 1969 album, Colour Him Father. Although its title track was a hit, winning a GRAMMY for best R&B song, it wasn’t until two decades later that Amen Brother garnered attention. Fuelled by the development of hip-hop in the late 80s, an explosion of artists started to sample a section from the middle of Amen Brother. Those 6 seconds – known today as the Amen Break - changed the course of music forever.

  Drum Notation for the Amen Break

There’s no definitive answer as to why the Amen Break sounds so good. What I personally love about the beat is how intricate it is, whilst simultaneously sticking to the basics of drumming. The first two bars are the same. We hear consistent eighth notes on the ride, interspersed with snare hits. Ghost notes are played on the snare at the end of both bars, adding extra texture. Beats 2 and 4 are accented – pretty standard. The double kick pattern is interesting; we first have two eighth kicks, accompanying the first two hits on the ride. Later on in the bar, they’re played as sixteenth notes, towards the end of beat 3. The groove pattern changes in bars 3 and 4: the snare is displaced. Instead of being played on beat 4, it is played on the final eighth note of the bar, diverging from conventional note emphases. Moreover, there’s no double kick to start off bar 4 – these come slightly later on. We also have a crash cymbal in the final bar, instead of one of the ride hits. It’s tidy, it’s versatile and the subtle changes in the last 2 bars work well, driving the groove.

The mass use of the Amen Break was partially driven by the invention of the E-mu SP-1200. Launched in 1897, this drum machine revolutionised sampling, making the technique easier and more prevalent in contemporary music. As the machine was geared primarily towards sampling percussion - unlike other samplers, like the Fairlight CMI - it expanded the possibilities within this field. Moreover, the track appeared in the 1986 edition of Ultimate Breaks and Beats - a series of hip-hop compilation albums - bringing the Amen Break to the mainstream. Some of the earliest notable sampling of the loop includes Salt-N-Pepa’s 1986 track, I Desire, and also N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton in 1988. Many hip-hop artists slowed the sample down, giving the beat an easy, laid-back feel. Both I Desire and Straight Outta Compton are at around 100 BPM, considerably slower than Coleman’s original, played at around 136 BPM. Later on, artists started to experiment further with the sample’s tempo, massively speeding it up. 

This breakbeat is considered the backbone of genres pioneered by 90s rave culture - genres such as Jungle and Drum & Bass. When sped up, the sound is energetic, perfect for rave environments. The Amen Break is the foundation across the repertoires of countless electronic artists’, such as Skrillex, C418, Aphex Twin and The Prodigy, to name a few. Moreover, the beat has seeped its way into other genres, such as Britpop, Art Rock and Nu-metal, used by Oasis on D’you Know What I Mean? (1997), David Bowie on Little Wonder (1997) and Linkin Park on Massive (2023) respectively. Despite the Amen Break’s widespread popularity, The Winstons didn’t receive royalties for the drum beat. Gregory Coleman died in poverty in 2006. To make amends, a GoFundMe was set up in 2015, raising around £24,000 for the rest of the band. At time of writing, the Amen Break has been sampled over 6,000 times. The beat is still frequently sampled today, cementing its status as one of the most influential features of contemporary music.

Bibliography

Brown, H., 2020. The Amen Break — how an obscure 1960s B-side became the most sampled song in history. Financial Times, 13 April.

Mixmag Originals, 2018. The History Of The Amen break. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFKMtv8tU0U [Accessed 4 Aug 2024].

Savage, M., 2015. Amen Break musician finally gets paid. BBC, 11 November.