Big beat

	Big beat
Development phase:	Mid 1990s
Place of origin:	London , Brighton , England
	Stylistic precursors
	Soul , funk , rap , acid house
	Pioneers
	Fatboy Slim , The Chemical Brothers , The Prodigy , Apollo 440 , Propellerheads
	Stylistic successor
	Nu-Skool Breaks , Tek Funk

Big Beat (also Big Beats) is a style of electronic dance music that is essentially based on breakbeats . The term was coined by the British music press in the mid-1990s to describe the music of The Chemical Brothers , Fatboy Slim , Leftfield , The Crystal Method , Propellerheads and The Prodigy .

Style description

rhythm

The focus is on a differently composed basic rhythm, the sound of which is based on techno , hip-hop , breakbeat or house . While the rhythm in techno is played regularly (bass beat on every quarter note), in big beat it is typically irregular and usually moves between 85 and 160 BPM . It is supplemented by sampled loops of real drum breaks, which, by filtering out the bass and treble, acquire a telephone-like sound character and thus take a back seat. The kick drum (i.e. the bass drum ), however, usually introduces the beat hard, has a strong emphasis in the sub-bass area and is never in the same frequency band as the bass line . There are also elements of funk , jazz or acid house , which mostly serve as rhythmic elements. Therefore, only a limited melody can usually be observed, since the songs are primarily based on their sound and rhythm ( groove ), which is usually worked on in meticulous detail.

Arrangement / elements

In addition, there are often acid- like sounds from analog synthesizers (such as Moog , Roland TB-303 or Roland SH-101 ), vocal samples (mostly only short excerpts) and later rock guitar or organ samples. Die-hard producers still rely on drum sequencers from the 80s, mainly the Roland TR-808 and Roland TR-909 , which are very limited in their choice of sounds and are difficult to acquire today because they have long been replaced by completely digital drum computers. Among them, however, the Akai MPC 2000 in particular prevailed in this genre. Despite mostly complete digitization, it is not uncommon for a large number of analog effects to be used, tube amplifiers , vinyl samples (without much post-processing), tape delay or guest musicians of various origins.

Mixing

Big-beat sound sample

Attention is also paid to the spatial distribution of the effective elements. Often, tracks are set in the foreground as well as in the background using various room simulations, which creates a very full, powerful and mostly pleasant sound image, which is alluded to by the name Big Beat . Well-known representatives of the genre mainly rely on analog devices (analog mixers , tube amplifiers , tube compressors , analog distortion , phasers with analog oscillators, etc.)

development

Emergence

The Chemical Brothers are considered to be the founders of the Big Beat. In the mid-1990s they mixed soul , funk , rap and techno in their sets as resident DJs at the London club The Heavenly Social . From 1996, organized Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook ) and the Skint - label owners Damian Harris in Brighton Club Concorde , the club night Big Beat Boutique , regularly laying on at the Chemical Brothers. The club night, which later served as the namesake for the style, became a platform for further musical experiments. The style conglomerate of the Big Beat was further developed here by artists such as Fatboy Slim, the Lo Fidelity Allstars or Midfield General, who repeatedly inspired each other. Big Beat achieved relatively great popularity in the late 1990s, mainly due to the success of Fatboy Slim's second album You've Come A Long Way Baby . At the same time, the Propellerheads album Decksandrumsandrockandroll was released, a version of Big Beat that is based, among other things, on the sound of the James Bond films of the 60s and 70s. The Propellerheads also worked with Shirley Bassey , who sang the theme songs from three Bond films.

The style also established itself in the film and advertising sectors. In 1999, Big Beat was an essential part of the musical background for the feature film The Matrix . In the US, too, Big Beat grew as a form of recognition for electronic music. Artists like The Crystal Method and BT made significant contributions to the genre.

Further development

At the beginning of the new millennium, a new generation of the big beat grew, especially in England. Nu-Breaks or Nu-Skool Breaks are often used in this context . Artists like Adam Freeland , Elite Force , Rennie Pilgrem , Meat Katie , Dylan Rhymes etc. gave the style new impulses and brought influences from previously avoided genres to it. So you can find elements of rock , psy trance , pop , salsa , jazz , abstract hip hop and acid house in the big beat today . In the meantime, the style is already followed by a large community, which can be observed, for example, in London in the Fabric (a club that mainly promotes hard house and big beat artists and lets them perform). These representatives of the newer generation also speak of the style name Tek Funk .