Making Dub Music: Impossible or am I'm I just not stoned enough? (man takin' away my sensi!)

* "reel to reel" -- this is what happens when you have to get up early in the morning slaving for bread, sir (Abbots mouth needs to be fed).

ILM?

WTF dude I made you eggs and toasts.

:D

this is a thing that can be done

get one junglist synth

FYI, King Tubby never touched drugs in his life

Really? Awesome.

I don't think you were even allowed to smoke tobacco in his studio!

Imagine what it would have been like with drugs...

Shite probably

Also I think I'm right in saying Lee Perry didn't smoke weed until relatively late in his career... tho it was the rum that fucked him up more than the weed

I did a sound engineering course back in the day (when I was unemployed and directionless, as opposed to just being...) and one of my tutors (the one who wasn't in Shriekback) did show me how to get that dubby sound. Something to do with using a delay as an insert rather than a send and patching it to itself. Well, anyway, I tried it on a Mackie desk with some chums a few weeks later and the results were rubbish and undubby. They don't ask me to engineer their records any more.

tip:

When I did some dub at home, I had very little 'effect' on the bass, the other instruments had reverb in general, and 'echo' only on one or two things.

Use some old analogue echo (tape good but expensive, bbd fx are cheaper and more reliable), have it coming back on a channel rather than a return, and eq it, and patch it back into itself for those manic building oscillations. Also try overloading the echo input for extra dirt.

King Tubby used spring reverb, a Fisher Spacexpander, although you'd probably get near enough with a guitar amp spring.

Hihats could have a phaser or flanger on them for extra spaceyness. There's some youtube videos of people playing reggae/dub drums, check those for inspiration, they've a different feel to other drumming.

And check the dub discussion board too.

I've tried and I can't make convincing dub for shit, so a) you are not alone and b) you might want not to listen to me, but I will repeat some advice that stuck with me on the topic anyway. (This is pretty much all off some other website which I can't find right now but maybe you can. It probably has more tips that I don't remember.)

Don't forget that ye olde 70s dub legends were using analogue gear which was often pretty cheap or bashed-up and would seem crazily primitive now (often just four channels), and that most of the effects are the sound of faders being ridden live on the mix.

So, think what instruments or effects might end up together if you had limited channels available, set up in advance a limited number of effects chains that you can manually fade up or tweak the settings on, and try playing around in realtime. Since you're probably digital you have the advantage of being able to go back and edit it, but go with your first reactions: try to keep the "live" feeling of any good bits and just cut out or redo any less successful bits instead of nursing them, i.e. don't spend hours prissing over it or you'll likely end up in sterile 90s digidub hell.

Also, avoid digital silence. When manually cutting tracks out by sliding the fader on a cheap desk, they won't be completely muted. Turn them right down but not completely silent so there are still little ghosts of them snaking around barely audibly. A little barely perceptible background noise like tape hiss might improve the sound.

Yeah. I got nothing really. But I'll be checking this thread and trying again sometime.

There was a good sound on sound article on this no so long back. The big tips from there was bring effects back on channels rather than on returns and you can mix them (and resend them out) more effectively.

Well, I did two 'convincing' dub tracks (well, I liked 'em), and all of what you said was right: Analogue echo/reverb, 4 tracks tops, no digital silence of any kind, yeah.

don't approach it like you're making a techno track or some shit. play as much live as you can. stay away from grids/metronomes. don't tempo sync delays. don't worry about noisy recordings. use a good bass. try and record at least one track with a mic to capture some air. don't try and mix the track loud. if you have any outboard or knobs, jam the fuck out of them.

those are some of my personal rules when making dub.

Crackle Box OTM

We should do a 'throw your dubs on here' thread.

i did a dub remix of jaymc's old band, track 11. wish i could've played drums on it and used some analog gear, but it's all digital.

^^ was waiting for Jordan to show up and mention that: I really loved the sound of that track!

aw shucks

This may or mayn't help:

http://www.interruptor.ch/dub.shtml

Soz I just read the thread back and realised equaliser kinda linked to there.

use only two tracks and two effects.
bass and drum on one, all else on two.
reverb, echo, phaser are the effects to choose.
you can add stuff on a mic as you mix down.

spacecadet spot on with the don't turn channels all the way down tip, I love it when you can hear other tracks sneaking through the mix, just faintly

Another way of doing it could also have the fx send on pre-fader if your mixer or audio prog can manage it, so that when you mute the channel you still get the completely wet reverbed/delayed bit sticking out a little bit, could sound really ghostly.