Reggae/Dub style dubstep production

[RmoniK]

just add a shitload of delays and reverbs, and an ocassional guitar/organ/piano skank on the backbeat now and then.

[walker101]

thanks alpha , sum great tips

[frank grimes jr.]

This is the sound I tend to make, and all I can really offer is that it helps to learn the foundation riddims.
Most of my music is recycled riddims I learned, when I had a bass.

[4bstr4ck3r]

- Write a simple but efficient bassline
- Make it skanky (!)
- Find a cool vocalist
- Put a delay with a lot of feedback in a send, a long mid-freq reverb in another one, and launch the send one or two seconds when you want the effect
- Make an interesting dubstyle progression

[burning prophet]

i used to produce a lot of experimental reggae dub, far before i ever had heard about dubstep at all.

you can check the sound out here;
http://www.myspace.com/kayagardens/music

i tried to first start of by making a nice setup of tracks instruments for reggae;

bass - needs to drive the whole tune so work it well!

rythm;
drums
percussion1
percussion2
rythm guitar (mute)
organ
piano

musical;
lead piano
lead organ (optional)
guitar1
an optional second guitar
brass instruments, meaning, trumpets, trombones, tubas flutes and what ever in that line

it is optional to add more tracks for what ever extras

as you see i ordered the instrument tracks in rythm and musical, its because some of the intruments that are used for rythmic purpose, like the skank and bubble, needs different tracks for best dubbing.

the skank and bubble kan be made with what ever instrument, but most common is to use guitar/organ/piano.

if i use piano for skank, i chose some NON-orcestral piano, even electrical ones are ok, pass it thru overdrive, reverbs and delays.
for the guitar that is used for making the bubble, or even for the organ it is possibloe to use any guitar fx of the time era like wahwahs and similar.

my normal method is after the base riddim, is to make a melody for one or various instruments. one method is to make several instruments that accompany each other, or let them play a line each in kind of duet style or call and and answer.

once the whole basic track is done, i start to dismember it to dub it. this way you can have all different instruments on their own channels, playing, while you go swaping thru sounds, adding ecchoes and isntruments as you feel like.

to have as some kind of reference of the musical part and how it degrades into abstract sound, i keep the original version as an intro of a few minutes or so, then when i feel fit i remove all the channels and break it down to bass, drums and occasional skanks and hits. for fun it is possible to try a melody line written for one instrument, over to a track with an other synth/instrument. often a guitar line can sound beatyfull accompanied by for example a trumpet.

at this time i used to use a lot sampletank, but nowadays i think the sound of it is a bit limited, but for most wanting to produce reggae, there is a nice selection of muted guitars, brass sections etc. its obivous there is a lot more nice sounding vsti.

tips for getting a freaked out delay line is to put in series a number of interesting plugings to affect the sound in various ways. there is no limit to the imagination when making upp a dub delay station i used to have various, to have several different sounding echoe machines to use as i please when dubbing the track.

at this time i used to produce in cubase, but i now much prefeer and recomend ableton live for dubbing, since there is no virtual limits to how many vsti fx you serial connect..

or you can just use samples

peace!

[sackley]

2 things.

1. Great thread.

2. I've given up on getting "big brostep" drums out of my recordings and am leaning towards experimental stuff. Did a 2-mic recording onto tape yesterday. Gonna do a bit more today with different mic placement and then try that "tape re-bouncing" that legendary brought up. Will try to post the results if I think it'd be of use to anyone...

[bum robot]

big ups on this thread

[wub]

Nice tips AC, biggups

[staticcast]

Its so hard to get that vintage sound though.

in general i'm not one for the tape vs. digital arguments, but this is one case where it's nearly impossible to recreate the vibe of multiply-submixed sounds w/o tape. The wonders of shit like the congos' "In the Heart of the Congos" is that so many elements are like 3rd, 4th, 5th generation removed-- recorded, bounced, re-bounced, re-re-bounced, re-re-re-bounced, etc. it does wonders to the higher elements of your tracks-- all those sharp-but-not-sizzly hihats, etc.

i have yet to come across any sort of digital emulation that can do that. maybe multiple layers of fatso or something.

for a feedback loop in logic, just create an aux and feed it back to itself via the sends. if you create an intermediary aux, you'll get phasing problems (one of those moments where logic's PDC craps out.)

Word. UAD's Studer emulation seems to sound pretty spot-on, though. I haven't got a UAD card so I can't try out the real demo, but the video sounds about as close as anything I've heard. There aren't many "real" emulations on the market, as oppposed to generic "tape warmth" VSTs which don't sound particularly realistic. Digi's Heat looks alright but very, very subtle and I'm not sure it can really be pushed into full-on saturation.

http://www.uaudio.com/products/software ... index.html

Their Echoplex emulation is pretty sick too. On a budget, the tape echo in Guitar Rig isn't bad but I wouldn't use it purely as a tape sim.

[bum robot]

BUMP and i found this really good website with alot of info from equipment to effects and everything else, check it out here, theres also a forum. http://www.interruptor.ch/dub.shtml

[nylle]

hmmmmmmmmm

best tip

[Sirius]

hmmmmmmmmm

best tip

well considering king tubby didn't smoke & lee perry hasn't smoked in the last 20 years...
I don't think it really matters ah!

!!chea

[burning prophet]

a quite good tape sim is FERRIC TDS.

[bum robot]

cant say the weed doesnt help

[staticcast]

a quite good tape sim is FERRIC TDS.

it sounds nice, but not much like tape IMHO

[alphacat]

hmmmmmmmmm

best tip

well considering king tubby didn't smoke & lee perry hasn't smoked in the last 20 years...
I don't think it really matters ah!

!!chea

Tubby was a natural genius and didn't need augmentation; Perry is batshit crazy and also doesn't need any help getting "out there."

Weed is not essential... but it sure does help.


re: UAD Studer emulation plug - obviously these guys are industry heavyweights and lots of bigtime 'name' producers use 'em with fine results. That said; it's still an emulation - a model. It can only reproduce the aspects of the original deck that were known and which were decided to be modeled by the programmers. This is an important distinction because not only is the software not splattering electrons semi-randomly onto a ferrous medium like the hardware did, but its attempt at digitally modeling that splatter is likely based on a mathematical algorithm of the final sounds as recorded to tape on a Studer and not the process that got those sounds onto the tape in the first place.

An analogy might be someone attempting to imitate a Jackson Pollack painting based solely on looking at finished paintings and never watching the actual methodology employed to make the paintings in the first place. If the results make you happy, then it might be moot - but ultimately all you can ever do with this approach is based on what's already been done and not a set of open possibilities in action.

God, I hope some of that made sense...

That said, sound is sound and it doesn't matter where it came from, only the end result. Even using standard cassette tape to re-amp your drum tracks will yield a noticeable thickening effect to the sound. Be sure to record it to tape as loud as possible without getting any unwanted distortion (although tape distortion is much nicer than digital distortion imho.) This will help keep the signal-to-noise ratio manageable.

[staticcast]

re: UAD Studer emulation plug - obviously these guys are industry heavyweights and lots of bigtime 'name' producers use 'em with fine results. That said; it's still an emulation - a model. It can only reproduce the aspects of the original deck that were known and which were decided to be modeled by the programmers. This is an important distinction because not only is the software not splattering electrons semi-randomly onto a ferrous medium like the hardware did, but its attempt at digitally modeling that splatter is likely based on a mathematical algorithm of the final sounds as recorded to tape on a Studer and not the process that got those sounds onto the tape in the first place.

An analogy might be someone attempting to imitate a Jackson Pollack painting based solely on looking at finished paintings and never watching the actual methodology employed to make the paintings in the first place. If the results make you happy, then it might be moot - but ultimately all you can ever do with this approach is based on what's already been done and not a set of open possibilities in action.

Fair point, but remember it's an emulation of a very top-end 2" reel-to-reel unit, where the performance is much more consistent and the "random" element much less prominent. I think it sounds pretty spot-on. I'd venture to say that it would actually be more difficult to model a Walkman than a Studer.

[bum robot]

bump for keepin this thread alive, really diggin all the info :corndance

[Sharmaji]

Fair point, but remember it's an emulation of a very top-end 2" reel-to-reel unit, where the performance is much more consistent and the "random" element much less prominent. I think it sounds pretty spot-on. I'd venture to say that it would actually be more difficult to model a Walkman than a Studer.

this is true-- a well-calibrated machine has some very specific--and, ideally, 99% re-creatable-- sonic stamps. a walkman will sound.. odd.

haven't used the studer plug-- does it emulate a 24 track, 2" only, or does it do 1/2", 1/4", 8 track, 2-track, etc? can you change the tape speed? can you ping-pong tracks?

beyond the compositional elements, the sound of classic 70s dub is the tape and the board, w/ everything running in the red. there's plenty good distortion plugs, would love to know if the UAD studer plug could start giving up the dirt.

[staticcast]

Fair point, but remember it's an emulation of a very top-end 2" reel-to-reel unit, where the performance is much more consistent and the "random" element much less prominent. I think it sounds pretty spot-on. I'd venture to say that it would actually be more difficult to model a Walkman than a Studer.

this is true-- a well-calibrated machine has some very specific--and, ideally, 99% re-creatable-- sonic stamps. a walkman will sound.. odd.

haven't used the studer plug-- does it emulate a 24 track, 2" only, or does it do 1/2", 1/4", 8 track, 2-track, etc? can you change the tape speed? can you ping-pong tracks?

beyond the compositional elements, the sound of classic 70s dub is the tape and the board, w/ everything running in the red. there's plenty good distortion plugs, would love to know if the UAD studer plug could start giving up the dirt.

It's an A800 emulation, and AFAIK it emulates pretty much every variable, including different tape formulations. I'm not sure about track widths but it definitely emulates change in tape speed. You can even fiddle with the bias settings, although I'd really like to know how they've modelled that as the bias stage is usually pretty transparent IME. Again, I haven't tried the working demo as I don't have the hardware, but the video is here:

http://www.uaudio.com/products/software ... 00_Trailer

The video doesn't show it being really maxed out (so actually I'm not sure if they've modelled the input circuitry overloading), but you can certainly hit the Echoplex emulation really hard so I'm fairly certain they know how to deal with tape saturation:

http://www.uaudio.com/products/software/ep34/index.html