Breakdowns (music)

In music, a breakdown is part of a song in which various instruments have solo parts (breaks). This may take the form where all instruments play the verse together, and then several or all instruments individually repeat the verse as solo parts.

A breakdown is a popular musical style particularly in Bluegrass, notable examples being Earl Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Breakdown.

Disco mixer and remixer Tom Moulton invented the "disco break" or breakdown section in the early 1970s. Moulton had been remixing a dance record (”Dreamworld” by Don Downing) which "immaculated" (went to a higher key) towards the end, and he wanted to cut parts together that were in different keys. To do this, he separated two sections with non-tonal information. He edited in a section of drums, and the aesthetic effect was immediately found to be pleasing to dancers. The placement was also useful for club DJ's, providing a rhythm-only section of the recording over which to begin mixing in the next record to be played.

Moulton has maintained that his innovation was an accident. The placement followed the patterning of a traditional pop recording: it replaced the bridge typically found in such a record after the second chorus. A clear example is the breakdown in "My Lovin' (Never Gonna' Get It)" by En Vogue: a sampled male voice can be heard introducing this part of the record with the sentence "and now it's time for a breakdown". Longer tracks often have two, three or more breakdowns.

Initially the transition to the breakdown was an abrupt absence of most of the arrangement in a disco record as described above. Hi-NRG records would typically use a pronounced percussive element, such as a drum fill, to cover the transition, and later genres reach the breakdown section by a gradual reduction of elements. In all genres, the stripping away of other instruments and vocals ("breaking-down" the arrangement) helps create intense contrast, with breakdowns usually preceding or following heightened musical climaxes. In many dance records, the breakdown often consists of a stripping away of the pitched elements (most instruments) — and often the percussion — while adding an unpitched noise sound effect. This is often treated with a lot of reverb and rises in tone to create an exciting climax. This noise then cuts to a beat of silence before returning to the musical part of the record.

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