The Amen Break Re-recorded

We’ve really gone to town on this one! We took 3 kick drums, 5 snares and 5 ride cymbals. Then carefully built a recording setup and treated each voice to create the MAXIMUM possible sonic contrast. And then we painstakingly performed The Amen Break with each and EVERY combination.

With 75 main grooves, plus a few extras and some percussion of naturally…

… The Amen Break Re-recorded revises, revisits and reinvents the undisputed heavyweight drum loop of all time…

WTF is The Amen Break?

Well, if your browsing a drum loop library and asking this question, congratulations! We’re not going to get into the history of the most sampled drum loop of all time right here. We’ve written an article over here with lots of information, links and some really nice documentary footage about the history of the original recording and the way it has been used.

But to cut a very long story short, the Amen Break is a 4-bar drum loop taken from “Amen Brother” by The Winstons. It has been used in literally thousands of songs and recordings spanning many different genres, but perhaps is most famously credited as being the foundation of Jungle and Drum & Bass.

The “Voices”

Okay, so once again we’ve gone into a TON of geeky detail in our blog post about the recording and production of The Amen Break Re-recorded over here, but here’s a basic run down of the drums or “voices” we used and how we treated them.

Kicks

Ludwig 70’s vintage 22 x 16″ – Tuned medium low, front head on, but with hardly any damping. A big fat vintage “open” tone.

Yamaha 5000 22 x 16″ – Tuned WAY up high with no damping and no front head. This thing really sings for it’s supper. Booooooooooom!

DW Collectors Series 22 x 18″ – Our standard “session” tuning, WAY down low, plenty of damping, front head on. A great “microphone-friendly” modern kick sound with plenty of controlled bottom-end.

Snares

Ludwig “Black Beauty” 14 x 5.5″ – The Black Beauty is a treasured beast among us drummers! It has a unique ringing quality due to the shell, but with plenty of “bouff” to boot. Medium tuning, average damping. Labelled in the audio files as “BB”.

DW Collectors Series 14 x 5″ – A beautiful maple snare with plenty of warmth and bite at the same time. Tuned relatively high with light damping. Labelled in the audio files as “DW”.

Yamaha (??) “Deadsnare” 14 x 6″ – We’ve never been quite sure what this piece of dogshit actually is. But tune it so low the lugs are falling out then flip an old snare head and put on top, and VOILA! The deepest and deadest snare you could hope for! Labelled in the audio files as “YamDead”.

Pearl Full Floating Brass 14 x 6.5″ – This thing is an ANIMAL. It certainly is not the Ludwig Supraphonic that John Bonham used, but treated and tuned this way, it certainly does a pretty good impression. Labelled in the audio files as “Pearl Bonzo”.

Pearl Maple Piccolo 13 x 3.5″ – This is so high pitched and cutting that it sounds a little like the snare on The Amen Break when it is sped up in the way the jungle/drum’n’bass guys do. Labelled in the audio files as “Piccolo”.

Rides

We say “rides”, but only 3 of them are actually ride cymbals!

“Ride 1” – 20″ Zildjian K Custom Hybrid Ride

“Ride 2” – 20″ Sabian Dark Ride

“Ride 3” – 18″ Paiste 404 Medium Ride

“Ride 4” – 14″ Zildjian A Custom Fast Crash

“Ride 5” – 8″ Zildjian A Custom Splash

Extras

We couldn’t resist doing a version of the Amen Break on a child’s drum kit! The 14″ kick is INSANELY high pitched with no damping, the tiny snare tuned quite low, and then we recorded one with a splash “ride” and one with a straight crash. BONKERS.

And then there’s percussion. An interpretation of the Amen Break on congas and cowbells, plus the usual Beat Shed extras of various percussion (tambo, caxixi, shaker, etc.).

The Formats

As well as the WAV stereo mixes and 24bit multi-tracks, we also produced the Amen Break Re-recorded pack in REX, Apple Loops, and Stylus RMX formats.

These files are variable tempo versions of the stereo mixes. They have been carefully sliced and tested (down to 10bpm BELOW the original tempo, above this sky is the limit!) to stretch to the tempo of your project. These 3 formats cover just about any software or workstation you may be using.

For more technical information, and to check which format to use with your system, visit the formats page.

Specifications

Files included in the Amen Break Re-recorded Loops Pack 

WAV package: 88 WAV files – (Stereo 16bit, 44.1 khz)

REX2 package: 88 REX2 files

Apple Loops package: 88 Sliced AIF-C files

Stylus RMX package: 88 Directories containing XML and “audio” files

Multi-Tracks: 939 WAV files (24bit, 44.1kz) – individual files for each channel. DRY with no effects or processing.