Breakbeat is a kind of dance music with an uneven, jumpy drum pattern. Most pop and house music puts a drum hit on every one of the four beats in a bar — a steady thump-thump-thump-thump you can march to. Breakbeat does not do that. The drums fall in a broken-up pattern, so the rhythm trips and skips instead of marching. That is where the name comes from: in old funk and soul records there was a 'break', a short part where the singing stopped and only the drums played. DJs found those few seconds, looped them, and built whole new songs on them. Those looped drum patterns are breakbeats, and music built that way is breakbeat. You will hear the word two ways. It can name the music style — 'She plays breakbeat', 'a breakbeat night at the club'. It can also name the drum loop itself — 'that famous breakbeat', 'he sampled a breakbeat from a 1969 record'. It is also used before another noun: breakbeat music, a breakbeat track. The word matters in music history because breakbeats are the floor that hip-hop, drum and bass, and jungle were built on. It is a specialist word — DJs, producers and music fans use it easily; most other people have never said it.

碎拍（電子舞曲曲風）；斷拍