Dub

Dub is less a genre than a method: take a finished reggae recording and turn the mix itself into a performance. Strip it to drums and bass, let fragments of the other instruments flash in and out, and drown them in echo and spring reverb.

Where it comes from

In late-1960s and 1970s Kingston, Jamaica, producers began releasing instrumental “versions” of hits on the B-sides of singles for sound systems, where deejays talked over them. Engineers turned these versions into an art form. King Tubby worked from a small studio in the Waterhouse district, riding faders and a high-pass filter on his customized mixing desk. Lee “Scratch” Perry built a wall of tape echo and phasing at his Black Ark studio. Errol Thompson, Scientist and Prince (later King) Jammy pushed it further, and Augustus Pablo made the melodica a dub instrument. In the UK, Jah Shaka, Mad Professor and Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound carried it into steppers and digital dub.

Dub's methods run through almost all later bass music: jungle, trip-hop, dubstep and, directly, dub techno. In 1990s Berlin, Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus (Basic Channel, later Rhythm & Sound) fused dub's echo chambers with Detroit techno, creating a style built from one filtered chord, endless delay and a steady kick.

The ingredients

Tempo and feel

Roots dub sits around 65–85 BPM with heavily swung 16ths. Steppers and digital dub run around 140 BPM with a half-time feel. Dub techno is 112–125 BPM, straight.

Drums

• One drop: kick and rimshot together on beat 3, nothing on beat 1. The empty downbeat leaves room for the bass.
• Rockers: kick on 1 and 3 with more syncopated, driving hi-hats.
• Steppers: kick on every beat, rim or snare on 3. Militant and marching; the bridge to techno.
• Hats are swung 8ths or 16ths, with occasional open hats and tom fills going into new sections.

Bass is the lead instrument

The bassline is the tune. It's deep and round (a rolled-off bass guitar or a sine-based synth), melodic, usually from the minor or minor pentatonic scale, and full of rests. Space is part of the bassline. A riddim usually repeats a one or two-bar figure for the whole track.

Skank and bubble

The skank is a short, bright chord chop on beats 2 and 4 at slow tempos (or every offbeat at double time), usually a high, close-voiced minor triad. The organ bubble is a rhythmic keyboard pattern in 8ths or 16ths that rocks between a low and a high note. Melodies come from melodica, horns or organ, usually in minor pentatonic.

The mix is the performance

Everything from lesson 3, effects and the mix, lives here: drop-outs, echo throws on the rim and skank, spring crashes, high-pass sweeps on the whole band, delay feedback swells, and the dub siren. Arrangements usually start with the full riddim, strip down to drums and bass, bring fragments back with echoes, and rebuild, with every change landing on a 4 or 8-bar boundary.

Dub techno: chords into space

Dub techno takes the echo-and-space mixing of Jamaican dub and points it at techno. Basic Channel set the template: one filtered chord stab, sent into tape delay and reverb, with the mix itself as the performance.

The recipe: a four-on-the-floor kick around 120 BPM, a single minor 7th, 9th or 11th chord stab placed off the beat and fed into a dotted-eighth delay with 50–70% feedback, long dark reverb, filter automation over minutes, a sub bass that barely moves, soft hats, and often vinyl crackle or tape hiss as a bed.

The chord is usually a minor 7th or minor 9th. It's open and unresolved, so it can sit over one bass note forever, and it's filtered so hard it becomes texture more than harmony.

The delay is tempo-synced, often to 3/16 (a dotted eighth) so the echoes fall between the beats. There's a filter inside the feedback loop, so each repeat comes back darker than the last and the echoes recede. Riding the feedback up toward runaway and then pulling it back is the dub move. That's what Throw does while you hold it.

Reverb, tape hiss and a little crackle glue it all into one room. Keep the kick deep and round and the hats soft.

The dub station loads here.

Sound design recipes

Play each sound here, then open it in the synth lab to take it apart.

Build a dub track, step by step

1. Set tempo to 72 BPM with strong swing (50–60%, on a swing control where 0% is straight).
2. Program a one drop: kick and rim on beat 3, hats on 8ths with ghost notes.
3. Write a one-bar bassline in A minor pentatonic. Leave at least two rests. Start it on beat 1, where the drums are silent.
4. Add a skank on beats 2 and 4 following i–iv (Am–Dm).
5. Set up a quarter-note or dotted-eighth delay and a spring-style reverb on sends. Route the rim and skank to them lightly.
6. Record the mix live: mute and unmute, throw single hits into the echo, sweep the filter, swell the feedback. Do several passes and keep the best.
7. Arrange in 8-bar blocks: full riddim, drums and bass only, echoes, rebuild.

Hear each riddim here, or open it in the groove machine to change it and play the dub desk.

Listening list

• Keith Hudson, Pick a Dub (1974)
• King Tubby meets Rockers Uptown, with Augustus Pablo (1976)
• Lee “Scratch” Perry and The Upsetters, Super Ape (1976)
• Scientist, Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires (1981)
• Prince Jammy, Mad Professor and Jah Shaka for later roots and UK dub
• Basic Channel, BCD (1995), and Rhythm & Sound, for dub techno
• Deepchord and Echospace for modern dub techno