Bum Bum Tam Tam

and brazilian funk music

Augusto Piccinini

Aesthetics of Electronic and Computer Music

University of Nottingham
Some topics I will discuss during this presentation...
(1) Why this track?! - youtube’s role in music production and distribution
(2) Origins and development of the brazilian funk beat
(3) How technologies supported this development
(4) Technological precarity and amateur musicianship as creative forces
(5) Analysis of Bum bum tam tam, pointing out some of its central aspects

Some topics I will NOT discuss... (even though they are interesting)

Lyrical content, sexuality, women’s role on funk music videos, social class issues
at work in brazilian funk, and so on.
Why this track?!
Most viewed youtube videos on the world

Source: kworb.net (accessed on 04/11/2018 at 17:25)

Most viewed brazilian music videos on youtube

2 main musical markets today:

- Brazilian funk
- Sertanejo universitário
(brazilian country)

Source: kworb.net (accessed on 04/11/2018 at 17:25)

Source: G1 portal // quoted from the official KondZilla youtube statistics
Why is this important?
Youtube is undeniably a massive force inside music industry today.

If a music track goes viral, it can only do so through youtube (eg: music videos themselves, react videos,
challenge videos, parodies, covers, re-uploads, choreographies, etc).

Unlike every other track to break the 1 billion view barrier, Bum bum tam tam was not produced under the
guidance of a label, neither recorded or produced by “professionals” with professional equipment.

The fact that bum bum tam tam reached such heights is noteworthy, especially because of the
technological precarity and music amateurship involved in its production. To understand this we must first
understand, briefly, about the cultural roots of brazilian funk music.
Origins of brazilian funk - development of its beat
- 1980s - first forms of dance music made
through electronic means (house and hip
hop), such as synthesizers and drum
machines.

- After 85, with the re-democratization of

the country, equipments and records
entered more easily on Brazil, making
them more available to lower classes… DJ Marlboro’s Funk Brasil, released on 1989,
with them came also DJing practices. Considered to be the beginning of brazilian funk
Volt Mix
- Early funk music was very Miami Bass’
inspired, but one record in particular was
prefered among DJs...

- 808 Volt Mix, produced by DJ Battery Brain

in 1988.

- This sample dominated funk music

throughout the whole 90s.

- (((((similar story with the Amen break and

jungle music))))
Tamborzão (“big drum”)
- On 2000, DJ Luciano created the Tamborzão beat with a Roland M8 RK2,
mixing some rhythmic cells from the Volt Mix beat with the “atabaque” beat.
- In a nutshell, he included conga and ton sounds from the drum machine’s
ethnic sound card to make it more “brazilian”.
- Tamborzão dominated funk productions throughout the 2000s

- Curiosity: the tamborzão beat was originally stereophonic, but was made
mono because DJs at the time wanted to save disc space to fit more tracks in
it (and save money).
Roland R8 MK2 drum machine, introduced in 1989

(((click for tamborzão))))

Tambor mágico and beatboxing
- On 2008, a new beat appeared, this time featuring some beatboxing
simulating the main rhythmic structure of tamborzão.
- By the 2010’s, some tracks started to use a pure beatboxing version of the
beat, mostly on tracks made in São Paulo as part of the sub genre
“ostentation funk”.
- digital technologies were increasingly available and allowed for easy and
cheap recording and overdubs.

Examples:
Tambor magico: MC Orelha - Faixa de Gaza (funk proibidão)
Beatboxing: MC Rodolfinho - Como é bom ser vida loka (funk ostentação,
one of the first KondZilla productions, marking his aesthetics of ostentation
and twerking)
 TCHUM TCHA TCHA TCHUM TCHUM TCHA

Tamborzão transcription for comparison:

Conga

Tons

Kick
Brazilian funk goes “mainstream” (read: upper and
middle classes starts to enjoy dancing to it…)
- From 2010 onwards, funk growed to become one of the main musical markets in Brazil, partly
because of the possibilities of circulation provided by Youtube and the efforts of production
companies like KondZilla (today’s 3rd biggest youtube channel, with more than 800 music videos
released).
Brazilian funk goes “mainstream”
- 3 main points of aesthetic change:

(1) The ease of musical production made possible on this last decade (DAWS may not be
cheap, but they are crackeable and will run in any modern personal computer; sample packs
can be illegally downloaded as well);

(2) the professionalization of funk music, more money coming in;

(3) Influence of american trap music (deep low kicks, hi hat triplets, stutter effects)

- The simplified tamborzão beat made with beatboxing is now being made with drum kits, using
modern sample packs typically associated with hip hop and trap. Because it is not sample-based
anymore, people get more creative with the beats.
-
- And thus we come back to....
Who’s MC Fioti
● Leandro Aparecido Ferreira, 24 years old.

● From the suburb of São Paulo (Capão

Redondo).

● Does not have any formal background in music,

does not play an instrument, self-taught in
producing music (he mentions in an interview
that he learned by watching tutorials on
youtube, the same youtube that would later
make it possible for his music to go viral).

● Produced bum bum tam tam in one night...

Bum Bum Tam Tam
- Produced on a personal laptop, as Fioti describes it: “full of viruses, the worst
possible”.
- Sony’s Acid Pro 7
Back in 2003 the Acid Pro 4 was released and it was the first
DAW with a concept of making it easy to produce loop-based
music. It introduced a beatmapping/warping algorithm and a
stretching effects with granular synthesis into the DAW
interface. Nowadays all of these features can be found in any
DAW. Which means that Fioti could have gotten the same
result using Ableton Live or Logic… And yet, who’s to say that
the DAW didn’t have any influence on the track production
process? If your creative process starts with a blank canvas
(like you don’t know what you are looking for), you will
generally follow the easiest, most intuitive paths, and these
paths are given by the DAW interface, the way the buttons are
functionalities are arranged on the screen and how easy it is to
use them.
Bum Bum Tam Tam, some analysis
- Very straightforward style of production;
- Minimal arrangement, basically 3 layers: (1) flute sample; (2) voice; (3) drum
kit.
- No synths or harmonic instrument (harmonic content is suggested by the flute
melody V - i )
- No bass line, only the bass suggested by the resonance of the kick drum and
its pitch shifts.
- Lots of empty spaces on the mix/arrangement that are filled in with a soaking
reverberation.
Flute sample
- First movement (Allemande) from
Bach’s Partita for flute in A minor.
- Possibly Pahud’s version (??)
- Sampled the first 4 bars, quantized
it and re-pitched it.
- Notice the amount of background
noise and the abrupt cut.
Vocality
- Fioti recorded his own voice with a smartphone, hence the nasal sound.
- Intensive use of pitch-shift, one octave up and one octave down (clever way
to introduce low and high content to a voice recording that has only mid).
- Voice goes from melody, to spoken, to percussion effect (heritage of the
beatboxing on funk): “Ô, “ei”.
- Tam Tam: onomatopoeic sound of something bouncing on the verse that
almost becomes part of the drum kit on the chorus (tantantantantan).
Beats
- Slight variation of the “tchum tcha tcha tchum” tchum tcha, using a low deep
kick and a snare sample.
- Pitch-shift on each last hit of the snare, one down, one up.
- Stutter percussive effect on the build up for the chorus (wrinkled sound),
perhaps from playing the snare samples really fast.
Aftermatch
- Initially the track did not play on radio and was not part of a major label deal.
- For some reason it became a viral on Indonesia, accompanying a sort of
dance challenge video.
- After the initial success, Island Records and Universal approached Fioti with a
proposal for a remix of the track. It was released on December of 2017,
featuring J. Balvin, Future, Stefflon Don and Juan Magán. It turned to be quite
lame, poorly produced, and didn’t receive the same love as the original.
References:
● Proibidão.org (research on brazilian funk made by Carlos Palombini)
● G1 entrevista com MC Fioti
Thank
you.