Breakbeat music was arguably introduced to the Bronx massive¹ by Kool Herc in 1969, a DJ who arrived there from Kingston, Jamaica, with a skill known as 'cutting breaks'. It was Grandmaster Flash however, the legendary Hip Hop pioneer, that first utilised 'breaks', created Breakbeat music and started a revolutionary new form of music production.

Breaks?

In any musical track that employs drums and a drummer to keep to a particular tempo and add rhythm (irrelevant of the genre/period), there usually exists a standard drum pattern². This standard rhythm will continue for a section of several bars - the exact number depending on the time signature that the track is written in, the style/nature of the track itself and how flash the drummer is feeling at the time. In the last bar of the section the standard rhythm (or beat) is broken up by a bar that is a little different. The aim of this bar is to break up the monotony, create a sub-rhythm and lead the musicians into the first beat of the next section. This bar is called the break.

Breaks are often the moments when a drummer gets to shine and the key features of a break therefore are that they generally feature percussion only and are usually a little bit 'flash'.

Breakbeats?

Old School

By using two record decks and a mixer³ the DJ uses two records to;

• Play a break from record A
• Quickly change the source on the mixer to record B
• Play a break from record B whilst simultaneously re-cuing the break on record A
• Quickly change the source on the mixer back to record A

This process, 'cutting', is then cycled, creating a new rhythm entirely made from breaks. Skilled DJ's can quickly locate different breaks on the record/different records and create a whole new backing track over which MC's (or rappers) can wax lyrical.

New School

With the advance of technology it is now possible to sample music, chop out the breaks and re-combine them without needing the proficiency of the DJ who can do this on the fly. This is clearly an art in itself but differs somewhat to the Old School DJ's who were essentially using their record decks as a live musical instrument and humanising the recycled beats. Some 'New School Breaks' sound more electronic due to this lack of human quality but the relative merits of each 'school' can be, and are, argued elsewhere (furiously!).