Sunday, April 08, 2012
Recording: The World’s Most Important Drum Loop
Pro Sound Web: Depending upon which musical world you live in, you may or may not know about a short 5.2 second drum loop that has spawned several musical subcultures, from hip hop to jungle to hardcore techno to drum and bass. The loop is what’s known as the “Amen Break,” and comes from a short drum break on the B side of a 1969 record by funk band The Winstons. The song is called “Amen, Brother” and the drummer was Gregory Cylvester “G.C.” Coleman.
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This was a fascinating video giving us an amazing insight into the use of the Amen Break. It is interesting the turn that it takes against the overly litigious RIAA and copyright holders in the current market. This documentary shows one of the best examples of how artistic expression is just a piling on of one generation onto the previous. The use of samples in the music industry has gotten out of control but making good music out of samples is almost as original as actual musical instruments.
I'm definitely read articles similar to this before. The original band must be ridiculously proud of themselves. However, I don't really think they're entitled to royalties. If I write a book, and someone else uses a sentence of mine in a book of theirs, about something completely different, I don't think I should have rights to that one sentence. They're not really copying content of meaning. I'm sure many arguments can be made against that, though.
Music is fraught with similar recurrences, and I was excited to hear about this one since I hadn't previously. Some other examples of common commonalities are certain chord progressions and the baseline from Pachelbel's canon. http://www.whosampled.com/ has a listing of more specific instances of sampling.
I don't think that this is bad or unfair, and poetry, painting, drama, etc., are all filled with similar tools; that's the way art works. As many artists have said, "good artists copy, great artists steal".
I would also agree that I don't feel they are entitled to royalties. In this case, I think just knowing that music they created is used all over the world now would be enough satisfaction. Sampling is found SO much in music today, and not just 5.4 seconds of it. Sometimes it bothers me when a sample is used from a piece of amazing music and then only recognized for the piece its sampled in. such is life I suppose.
I'd actually seen this film before, and, weirdly, last night I finished a paper examining reproduction versus revitalization in art.
The conclusion I come to every time I think about this topic is that referencing (whether that mean drawing inspiration from an artist when you create your work, making a direct reference, or, in this case, sampling) is not just a possible side effect, it is a necessary step in the process of creating a new piece of art. We must be able to build upon previous works in order to create new meaningful pieces. We must look to the past, and use that past, to be able to create for the future.
Hip-hop fascinates me because (as far as I can tell) it is the most up-front artistic genre when it comes to this topic. Hip-hop never tries to deny that it copies, in fact, it thrives on copying.
I find the popularity of the Amen Break so interesting. I have seen the video before and read about the history of this drum clip, since it is at the root of my favorite genre of electronic music, Drum and Bass. I consider it a huge success that G.C. Coleman and The Winstons could come up with such a versatile and catchy loop. Also, segments of songs are sampled all of the time, and having to pay royalties to use the Amen Break would have hindered the development of modern Drum and Bass and so many other genres.
So I recognized that beat instantly. It's definitely been sampled enough that it's in the common musical lexicon but I don’t think this is that uncommon: There are a lot of samples that have been used to that point in music. I think that Kerby Ferguson’s “everything is a remix” makes a good argument to that point. Also, I think it’s a big stretch in saying that all of the drum samples in jungle came from the aman drum break. It is interesting that he is using this odd history of the aman break as an argument for public domain.
This was a very interesting video and I wonder how many times things like this happen. This example was very unique in how ubiquitous it was and how obvious the connection is between the various iterations. I know OFTEN that one artists work will inspire another and so on and so on. It is just very hard to track until you see something like this. Who knows, Mozart may have influenced Metallica who influenced Josh Grobin. My example is silly. . as far as royalties go, yes, I think that these folks deserve some money but figuring out how much money could get very complicated considering the generations of copy-
The Chord phrasing is well thought, and perfectly fits the song. https://musicadvisor.com/piano-chord-progressions/
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