Breakbeat is electronic music built on a syncopated, chopped-up drum break instead of a straight four-on-the-floor kick. As a genre it usually means the big beat and nu skool breaks scene of the 1990s and 2000s, around 120 to 140 BPM, with big basslines, rave stabs and samples. Here is what each part is and how they fit together.
Works in any DAW, with any sampler and any synth. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Breakbeat is dance music built on a chopped-up drum break rather than a straight four-on-the-floor kick. A drum break is a short drum passage sampled from old funk and soul records, sliced into its separate hits and rearranged into a new, rolling, syncopated groove. As a genre the name usually points at the big beat and nu skool breaks scene of the 1990s and 2000s, which sits around 120 to 140 BPM and pairs the break with big basslines, rave stabs and cut-up samples.
The ingredients are fairly consistent from track to track. Get the break rolling first, and the rest is mostly a matter of which parts you lean on and how you process them:
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 120 to 140 BPM | The big beat and nu skool breaks range, faster than hip hop, slower than jungle |
| Drum break | Chopped and rearranged | A sampled funk or soul break that drives the track instead of a straight kick |
| Backbeat | Snare on 2 and 4 | The anchor kept from the original break so the groove stays readable |
| Bassline | Big and driving | A fat synth or sampled bass that pushes the track along |
| Stabs | Rave and orchestra hits | Short, sharp sampled chords that add bounce and energy |
| Samples | Vocals and FX | Cut-up vocals, risers and noise sweeps that mark the sections |
As a genre label it is loose and people draw the lines differently, but the acts most often filed under the big beat side of breakbeat in that era include The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy, at least as they were commonly grouped at the time.
Take a drum break, slice it into its individual hits, and program those hits into a new syncopated pattern with the snare landing on the backbeat, usually somewhere around 120 to 140 BPM. The classic breaks come from old funk and soul records, the best known being the Amen break and the Funky Drummer break, though you can chop any break the same way. The slicing and reordering is what turns a plain loop into a breakbeat groove.
A break is a short passage where the other instruments drop out and the drums play alone, lifted from a funk or soul record. The famous ones carry a lot of history, but they also carry rights, so the safe path is to chop your own recorded drums or use cleared or royalty-free breaks, and treat the classic ones as a reference for the feel rather than something to lift. Plenty of strong tracks are built entirely from played parts and cleared sounds.
Slice the break into its separate pieces, the kicks, snares, ghost notes and hats, then replay those slices in a new order rather than letting the loop run straight. Keep a snare on beats two and four so the backbeat stays clear, and use the smaller hits in between to build the fast, rolling movement that gives breakbeat its funk. The tool that does this cutting is a sampler, which has its own walkthrough in what is a sampler.
A chopped break on its own is often too thin for a big system, so it is common to layer your own kick and snare under the break for weight, then process the whole thing for punch. EQ to carve space, compression to even out the hits, and a little saturation or distortion to add bite are the usual moves. The aim is a break that cuts through and hits hard while still swinging.
A break is someone else's recording. Using a record you do not have permission to use is copyright infringement, and it does not matter how much you chop or rearrange it. So work from material you are allowed to use: your own recorded drums, royalty-free or properly licensed break and sample packs, or hits you play in yourself.
Breakbeat usually pairs the chopped break with a big, driving bassline and short stabbed chords. The bass is often a fat synth or sampled bass that follows the groove and pushes the track along; the stabs are short, sharp chords, frequently rave or orchestra hits sampled from house and rave records, that add bounce on top of the drums.
The bass is a large part of the energy, so it tends to be fat, mid-forward and driving, often with a bit of distortion or an acid-style filter moving on it. Keep it fairly simple, lock it to the groove of the break, and leave room at the very bottom so it does not fight the kick and turn the low end to mud. How to write the notes and shape the tone sits in its own guide on basslines.
Stabs are the short chord hits that give the style a lot of its rave flavour, often an orchestra hit or a chord sampled from an old house or rave record. Place them off the main beats so they add bounce rather than sitting on top of the snare, and keep them short and sharp so they cut through. The same rule on samples applies here: use hits you have cleared or played yourself.
Over the top go the cut-up vocals, risers, noise sweeps and one-shot effects that mark the sections and build tension into a drop. These are decoration rather than the core, so they work best used sparingly, threaded across the arrangement to signal a change rather than filling every bar.
Loop the chopped break with the bassline on their own and leave it playing for a minute. If those two already lock together and pull you in, the track will work, and the stabs, samples and arrangement are what you build on top. If it bores you before the minute is up, the fix is in the break and the bass, not in more samples over the top.
They are close relatives. Breakbeat, in the broad big beat sense used here, is the slower family at roughly 120 to 140 BPM, while jungle and drum and bass are faster breakbeat-based styles built on the same idea of a chopped, rearranged break but sped up, usually around 160 to 175 BPM, with much heavier sub bass underneath. So breakbeat here is the wider, slower umbrella, and those faster styles are branches of the same tree.
| Style | Tempo | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Breakbeat / big beat | 120 to 140 BPM | Slower chopped break with big synth bass, stabs and rave samples |
| Jungle | around 160 to 170 BPM | Faster chopped breaks, ragga and reggae roots, heavy sub |
| Drum and bass | around 170 to 175 BPM | Faster still, tighter break with deep sub and reese bass |
If you want the fast, half-time-feel end of this rather than the slower big beat sound, the build is close but the bass and the tempo change a lot, and that has its own walkthrough in how to make drum and bass. The chopping skills carry straight over; you mostly speed the break up and put a heavier sub underneath.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The part that ties breakbeat together is often the sound rather than the notes: the warm, gritty, worn character of old records, the slight wobble and dust that a clean digital loop does not have on its own.
SILT is a generative tape-loop instrument. Feed a break, a stab or a sample in and it smears it with tape wow, flutter, dust and dropout, turning a clean loop into the warm, gritty, sampled character breakbeat is built on. It works on your own material, so the character comes from a break, hit or loop you are allowed to use. It runs in the browser, or as an Audio Unit, a VST3, an AAX and a standalone.
It does not chop your break or write your bass; it makes the aged, moving layer that the rest of the track sits on. The break is still yours to cut and rearrange however you like.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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