The Amen Chops groove
The real Amen break, sliced into sixteen pads and pitched up to 165 BPM: eight single hits and eight half-bar chops of the actual recording, so the loop, its classic re-chop and a snare-rush fill are all made of the same four bars.
What makes it feel this way
This one is not synthesized. Every pad is a slice of the actual recording: a four-bar drum break in the late-60s funk tradition, released to the public domain on Freesound by gowers, cut here into sixteen playable pieces and pitched from its native 140 up to 165 BPM. That upward pitch is not a compromise - it is the sound. The samplers that built jungle and drum and bass out of this break had no time-stretch worth using, so producers sped the whole loop up and let the snare turn papery and the ride turn to glass. Bring the tempo back down to 140 and the pitch follows it, and you are hearing the drummer again.
The bottom two rows are single hits, each taken from bar three of the break: the kick on beat one with the ride under it, the pushed kick on the "&" of three, the snare on two, the late snare that bar three lands on the "&" of four instead of the four, two ghost notes, the ride alone, and the kick that arrives with the crash in bar four. The top two rows are the break itself in eight half-bar chops, so pattern A is simply the loop played through in order - bar 1a, 1b, 2a and on - and any chop retriggered early cuts the one before it, which is what a chop pad on a sampler does.
The variation is the oldest jungle edit there is: play the first half-bar again where the ear expects the loop to resolve, drop a second snare under the chops, and let the fourth bar fall back into the original. The stripped pattern uses no chops at all - it programs the amen out of its own single hits, which is the way to hear how much of the feel lives in the ride bleed and the ghost notes that every slice carries with it. The fill runs two bars of the loop, then eight sixteenths of alternating snare and ghost rising in velocity into the crash. Swing is zero on purpose: the timing is already inside the recording.
Drag the chops around the grid, tune a single pad down an octave for the boom-bap version, or set the tempo to 174 and everything pitches up with it.
What BPM is amen chops?
The amen chops groove on this page runs at 165 BPM, straight, no swing, over 4 bars. Change the tempo in the transport if you want it faster or slower - the pattern keeps its feel because swing and velocity travel with it.
Wondering about tempo? What BPM is the Amen break? - 136-137 BPM, and why.
It is loaded and playing
This page loads the groove as a full four-part arrangement - a main groove, a variation, a stripped-back section and a fill - chained together, on a kit built only for this rhythm. Press Space to hear it, open EDIT to see every hit on the step grid, and change anything you like. SHARE copies a link that rebuilds your version.
Other grooves
- Boom Bap91 BPM · HIP HOP
- Chipmunk Soul91 BPM · HIP HOP
- East Coast Hip Hop92 BPM · HIP HOP
- Trap Hi-Hat146 BPM · TRAP
- Dubstep140 BPM · BASS
- Four on the Floor124 BPM · HOUSE
- Disco120 BPM · DISCO
- Techno136 BPM · TECHNO
- Two Step134 BPM · GARAGE
- Motorik146 BPM · ROCK
- Jungle174 BPM · breakbeat
- Liquid Drum and Bass174 BPM · drum-and-bass
- Neurofunk Drum and Bass174 BPM · DRUM AND BASS
- Ragga Jungle170 BPM · breakbeat
- Amen Break174 BPM · BREAKS
- Funk Break102 BPM · BREAKS
- Half-Time Shuffle92 BPM · ROCK
- Bo Diddley Beat136 BPM · ROCK
- Second Line92 BPM · FUNK
- Dembow96 BPM · DANCEHALL
- Bossa Nova136 BPM · LATIN
- Afrobeat114 BPM · AFRICAN
- One Drop Reggae74 BPM · REGGAE
BAP Studio is inspired by classic 16-pad sampler and drum-machine workflows. It is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Akai Professional, Roland, or any other manufacturer.
Made by Max Berggren.