Breaks: the jungle and drum and bass break plugin that edits itself

Drum breaks for jungle, drum and bass and breakcore, with nothing to clear

Jungle and drum and bass were built on chopped funk breaks: a drummer's two bars, sampled, sliced and replayed at 160 to 175 BPM. Most producers still start from sample packs of the same few records, which means the same breaks as everyone else and samples nobody cleared. Breaks plays its own: a modelled funk drummer and kit in a small room, playing eight original breaks with real micro-timing and ghost notes. Every hit is synthesised, so every break you print is yours.

The edit brain: chopping a break like it's 1994

The classic jungle sound isn't the break on its own, it's the edit: slices moved around, snares rolled, ghost notes dragged, a reversed snare swelling into the backbeat, a slice pitched down an octave. Breaks does that live. Edit sets how busy the chopping is, from the straight break at zero to full breakcore at the top, and six amounts decide what kind of edits you get.

The edits are deterministic: every decision comes from the Seed, the break and the bar, so the same bar of your song always gets the same edits, in the browser and in your DAW. Vary sets how many bars pass before the edits repeat, from two bars to never.

Fills, chopped breaks and hits on the keyboard

• C2 to B4: hold a key and the break plays, locked to your song position. White keys pick one of the eight breaks; black keys play the same break pre-chopped with its own edits.
• C5 to B5: one-shot fills that start on the next 16th: snare rolls, a reverse swell into a crash, stutters, a tape stop, a slice an octave down, a kick-and-snare tumble.
• Below C2: single hits (kick, snares, ghost, hats, ride, crash) to play your own fills on top.
• Latch keeps the break going after you let go, so you can perform fills with both hands.

The sound: a 70s funk kit through a 90s sampler

The kit is a tight kick with a beater click, a crackly snare with wires, washy hats, a ride and a crash, in a small room. Grit adds the record and sampler colour, from a gentle band-limit to crunchy, low-bit sampler crush. Punch is a drum-bus compressor with a slow attack so the hits poke through, Tone tilts dark or bright, and Tune, Decay and Wires shape the kit itself.

Breaks vs sample packs