Bubble Sorted Amen Break
149 points - today at 5:13 PM
SourceI wish it'd play through the whole thing in order at the end
(the amen break is one of the most commonly-sampled drum breaks in popular music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break)
zonkerdonker
today at 5:35 PM
And a tragic story at that:
>Coleman died homeless and destitute in 2006. It was unlikely he was aware of the impact he had made on music. Neither he [band leader Spencer] nor Coleman received royalties for the break.
I’ve heard conflicting accounts about their knowledge and royalties.
While I’m certain they didn’t receive royalties from all artists, I heard many 80s artists did. And Amen Brothers took others to court. So they would have know about the use of the break.
I will admit I haven’t done any independent research into this matter personally. Just echoing accounts I’ve read and taking their reports at face value.
> And Amen Brothers took others to court.
Who is "Amen Brothers"?
legitster
today at 7:12 PM
"Samples" were kind of like musical memes in the 1980s. What made for a good sample had a lot more to do with convenience and luck. The sounds that were picked for drum samples had more to do with how useful they were - the dynamic range, how isolated the drums are, how easy they were to mix.
The other famous drum sample - the "Funky Drummer" as drummed by Clyde Stubblefield for James Brown, Stubblefield didn't think the particular drum pattern he used was particularly noteworthy. In that case, James Brown's production choices were actually more key - his signature sound revolved around really crisp drums that he insisted needed to be clear on AM Radio and Jukeboxes. Which is what made it so useful for sampling.
tialaramex
today at 6:05 PM
A reminder that your society will be judged not on how the most fortunate lived but how the least fortunate lived. Context still matters but there's a meaningful difference between "Anne Brontë died of Consumption (Tuberculosis), at that time there was no cure" and "Dave died of TB, he couldn't afford the cure at current market prices".
What is a mote in such a society to do though? Dave couldn't afford the cure, but neither can I. What do you suggest I do to make it affordable for both of us?
Sure. Which is your society though?
creative-9
today at 7:34 PM
This is our manifesto. We are creative people. Here is our strategy for advancing creative work and supporting the people who do it.
We upvote comments that completely miss the point of how this algorithm works. We upvote comments that claim the algorithm does nothing at all. We downvote comments about how the creator of the original drum break died destitute.
Cool, but I don't see how it's sorting anything. It just seems to play a randomized arrangement of the slices. You can re-randomize as much as you like but there's no sort option as far as I can see.
joeypickles
today at 5:44 PM
It randomizes slices of the sample and begins to play the slices in the random order. Meanwhile it begins the bubble sort algorithm at a pace that matches the tempo, sorting the slices into their chronological order. Throughout, it only plays the unsorted slices. (I was kinda hoping it would play the sorted sample at the end.)
I actually wanted it to play them as it went, so that it would be <unsorted><sorted> each time through, with the former shrinking and the latter growing.
The idea is that it slices the Amen Break into however many slices you specify, and the list being sorted is the indices for those slices. At each step, it plays the slice the pivot is being compared to.
Because it only plays the samples being compared, it never plays the sorted chunks, so it's missing a "punchline" of sorts.
hyperhello
today at 5:46 PM
You're right. It doesn't play the sorted parts, which is strange. I expected to have a series of random-then-controlled slices with the random part getting shorter and the controlled part getting longer, but it really is just a shortening loop of random beats.
Would have been cool if it played the sorted ones at the end as a final run through victory lap
Did you play it to the end? It's absolutely sorting from smallest to largest. Unless you have a confused understanding of a bubble sort, it's doing a bubble sort
Not the OP but I stopped listening pretty quickly because I was confused about how it was sorted.
It wasn’t until I read your comment that I realised the sorting happened while you were listening rather than before hand.
ricardobeat
today at 6:02 PM
Same! thanks for saving the experience for me :)
So it's sorting from earliest to latest, really?
The value that is being sorted isn't obvious to me. It's obvious that it is sorting it. I'm guessing maybe some dB level of each of the hits/notes. If that was the case, I'd expect the initial unsorted view to line up with the pattern of the waveforms which is not the case. Maybe it's just an unsorted list of values sorted in sync to the rhythm. It's weird though that the segment corresponds to a segment of the audio. I just don't see how they are linked.
It's sorting by index of the slice. Pressing "shuffle" jumbles the slices up. So it puts the slices of the break back in the correct order. You never hear the result.
Set it to 8 slices and it becomes easy to see what it's doing: look at the waveform and the now-playing highlight jumping around.
throwuxiytayq
today at 5:37 PM
Give it a minute or two.
robin_reala
today at 6:00 PM
My personal prize for the most chopped amen goes to Breakage’s Final mix of Equinox’s Acid Rain VIP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoKlz6_I4vY
butterknife
today at 7:27 PM
Hype for Equinox in Sheffield on Sat
Wow I've heard pieces of this but never the full thing, incredible
marssaxman
today at 5:43 PM
I can't help laughing. This is great.
I don't understand the comparison function, but it's really enjoyable listening to the algorithm work out its logic.
This deserves the top spot on the front page!
Might I ask for the implementation of other sorting algorithms here?
That's a fun two minutes for any computer scientist drum and bass fan.
Not playing it all the way through at the end is diabolical.
It sounds like a Ventian Snares track. Love it.
-100 points for not having a volume slider.
onionisafruit
today at 5:57 PM
I would have expected it to be terrible to listen to, but it was pretty nice.
evereverever
today at 6:12 PM
This is bonkers and I love it.
idontwantthis
today at 6:56 PM
Can someone explain the comparison function?
No sound on iPhone. Shame Apple is so hostile to the web. Tragic really.
iOS seems to mute the web audio apis when the phone is in silent mode (the switch on the side of the phone). If you toggle it on, then this site (and many others) play sound.
I have no idea why it works this way and it’s frequently annoying.
bigstrat2003
today at 6:00 PM
Why wouldn't it work that way? Whether it's a hardware toggle like on iPhone or a software one like in Android, I want silent to mean silent. Not "silent but if a web page decides to play sound it can".
tialaramex
today at 6:13 PM
There is some amount of the "Focus follows brain" problem here. What we want is for things to do what we meant, all the time, and in this case it's very possible that the visitor wanted to hear the music. It is not practical (without yet to invented technology) for that to work so we have a substitute - there's a switch and you should remember to press it.
"Focus follows brain" is how everybody wants windowed UIs to work. When I type on the keyboard the letters go where my brain thought they should go - duh, but of course that's unimplementable, so the Windows UI provides "Click to focus" - if I click on a Window the typing goes there until I click another window, meanwhile some Unix systems do "Focus follows Mouse" - if I move the mouse over a Window then my typing goes there even without clicking. Neither is what we actually wanted, both are trying to approximate.
Many many times I have music playing in the background from another app while browsing. So no, there’s no way to focus follow brain. There’s just no way for this device to know what I want unless I tell it
probabletrain
today at 7:05 PM
media sound is generally unaffected by the silent mode toggle, which apple suggests is only for notifications. but the toggle inconsistently affects media, muting some things but not others. it's incredibly frustrating. android has much better audio controls for notifications, media, alarms, and vibrate.
LordDragonfang
today at 6:51 PM
Because silent mode is for the notifications. App volume has its own dedicated buttons.
The phone will still make sound if I launch a music app, why is a web page different?
And I hate web pages making sound! But the UX is confusing, and it’s changed over the years, seemingly without reason.
Iphones now have a software toggle as well, which may have coincided with the shift from “mute ringer” to “mute (almost) everything” that came with the multifunction button.
How old of an iPhone does one need to have that switch? My 6S+ has one, but a 15 doesn’t.
I can hear it. Chrome on iOS 26.
I need WebGL to play audio on HTML pages now?
probabletrain
today at 7:06 PM
it's an application built with webgl that plays audio, rather than just an audio player
themarogee
today at 7:09 PM
[flagged]