Re: What the hell???

Tony Reid (t-bird@salata.com)
13 Jun 96 09:52:52 -0800


> Words like beakbeat etc arent definitions but descriptions; its hard
> to describe what something sounds like without them. Breakbeat is
> referring to the drum pattern which seems to stop and start again each
> loop (JK of Jamiroqai said its music for people who cant match their drum
> loops)
that may be what people are using that word for now, but the origin of the
term "breakbeat" is from hiphop. basically what they were talking about was
the part of the source tune where there was a "breakdown"--the most energetic
section where the drums would be featured. in a breakdown the non-percussion
instruments either drop out, or are minimized, so that the beat comes out
more. the classic example of this (and most recognizable breakbeat) is in
james brown's "funky drummer" when he says "when i count to four, we gonna
give the drummer some...1,2,3,4!" and then all the other instruments drop
out, the drummer plays the groove for a few bars, spices it up for a few, and
then the band comes back in. before sampling allowed "looping" of the beats,
djs would have 2 copies of the same record, and go back & forth between 2 dex
where they had the breakdown cued up. instead of having to wait for the break
(the most exciting part of the song), they would play ONLY the breaks. the
dancers came up w/a special type of dance ("break-dancing") that was the
equivalent in their medium of what the dj was doing--constructing routines
that were solely built of steps usually in the climax of the routine. so,
you can see that the original definition of "breakbeat" would be beats from
the breakdowns. in a practical sense, it would indicate that the song being
described would have looped beats probably of a hiphop flavor.


> Another new name is trip hop which is exactly the same as hip-hop;).

this is just inaccurate. admittedly, there's probably more in common than
proponents of either bag is willing to admit, but they're NOT identical. if
one must think of trip hop in terms of hiphop (which wouldn't be a bad place
to start), consider it "experimental instrumental (usually) hiphop". one's
much more likely to find bleeps and other electronic sounding elements, and/or

more links to dub (reggae) in terms of mentality/sound.

si> Yeah, but you sit down to listen to trip-hop ;-)

not always. tranquility bass has done some tracks that i can get people to
dance to (e.g. "cantamilla").

t-bird

... ...and that's the t-bird opinion (whether you asked or not!)