halfstep?

[dubway]

Who's The Halfstep Originator?
Loefah?

[baz]

the "halftime" (snare on the 3rd beat) dubstep stuff seems to me really to just be reggae made on sequencers, albeit with a syncopation that is reminiscent of garage tracks - though many reggae riddims have a huge shuffle to them too.

this thread looks like it's gonna go off on the incredibly anal genre distinctions between breakstep and dubstep again...

[triac]

Anyone for some 1-step....

[dubway]

the "halftime" (snare on the 3rd beat) dubstep stuff seems to me really to just be reggae made on sequencers, albeit with a syncopation that is reminiscent of garage tracks - though many reggae riddims have a huge shuffle to them too.

this thread looks like it's gonna go off on the incredibly anal genre distinctions between breakstep and dubstep again...

yap

[gravious]

Anyone for some 1-step....

hehehehe.
sounds cool

[blackdown]

Who's The Halfstep Originator?
Loefah?

yeah i think so, though Wonder's grime anthem What seemed to about at the same time.

[blackdown]

this thread looks like it's gonna go off on the incredibly anal genre distinctions between breakstep and dubstep again...

OK let's stop then. we've been over it before anyway.

[alex bk-bk]

didnt Wonder invent halfstep

[paulie]

i disagree. dubstep now might have nothing to do with the existing garage scene, but it has a direct linage back to it. so saying it had absolutely nothing to do with it is wrong. there is a heritage in beat programming from r&b-influenced 2step garage, a legacy of using single hit sounds, not looped breakbeats (or busy, break beat-like programming). hence why it's called dubstep....

I'm not airbrushing anything it's a question of definitions. there's a long, clear dubstep lineage back from the current scene through Horsepower to El-B back to Groove Chronicles and UK garage.

Yes, but we're not talking about lineage, otherwise (as I said) you might as well call DnB hardcore or everything disco... or the blues... or whatever. Dubstep may have past links to 2step but it's irrelevant now so why harp on about it. The reality is that the music today owes as much to breakbeat as it does to electro or DnB or whatever else you might think of... just not garage.

And to talk about breakbeat vs dubstep in terms of beat programming and sample use is frankly hilarious! Almost as hilarious as defining half step by the settings on a producer's sequencer.

these lose genre definitions might seem very specific, but they're not imposed top-down, they come bottom-up from the producers' tracks and sets themselves.

Definitions are imposed by DJ sets? How's that? Don't you mean by people's interpretations of them? Or rather, by journalists with too much time on their hands?

[alex bk-bk]

i still think of it as garage, and i like that. lovei t when kode9 drops the occasional 2step tune at FWD. I hated garage in school so its such a revelation to get into grime and find out what i missed back them. The tail end of speed garage & 2step was fucking amazing

[paulie]

And by the way, the notion of Loefah or Wonder "inventing" "halfstep" is absurd.

Can we just talk about tunes please? Why do they have to be categorised?

[stone]

Can we just talk about tunes please? Why do they have to be categorised?

Sorry, I just wanted to know what vex'd was talking about in this interview.

[alex bk-bk]

i dont think its unhealthy to be analytical or think technically about music, necessarily, especially in beats-y music

[prismatic7]

Ok, with a little googling, I found this on a blog page:

As a producer I’m fascinated and excited by the ‘halfstep’ rhythm pattern emerging in dubstep, which inverts the characteristic jungle technique of running a dub bassline at between 75 and 95 bpm while the percussion operates at 150-190 bpm. ‘Halfstep’ settles a half-tempo drum pattern against a bassline running at the main tempo of the track - more sedate than jungle, perhaps topping out around 150 bpm. This is not a characteristic of all dubstep - while there have been producers working in the genre for longer than grime has existed (the early dubstep scene began in perhaps 2000/2001) the rules and conventions of the sound are not as hard and fast as they are in its more widespread cousin. In any case, ‘halfstep’ drumlines mark out dubstep as a significantly different sound from its predecessors, in a way that only a few truly radical shifts in techno music have done. The change from techno to ‘ardkore, and from ‘ardkore to jungle, for example, are two moments that saw a radical stylistic shift in musicological terms.

The existence of halfstep convinces me that dubstep is more than just 'dark minimal breakbeat' because you don't even need breaks for it do be dubstep. that is nuts!

HA! that's my page... Poorly Controlled

I'll make a few qualifications here - I'm no musicologist and certainly no DJ. The 150 bpm limit i mention in the lifted text from this post is a really big ballpark! Also, I'm an Aussie (Melbourne) who still hasn't found a dubstep night to go to, so it's all surmise and conjecture with regards to what the music is for.

That being said, dubstep's not 'dark minimal breakbeat'. it's not 'breakbeat garage', 'dark 2step' or anything like that. My argument is - and I think it's a pretty solid one - that dubstep is a totally radical development in the history of electronic music. It doesn't sound like anything else on earth, even though the roots of the music are clear (dub, 'ardkore, jungle, garage, hiphop blabla).

The halfstep is dubstep's equivalent of 'one-drop' reggae rhythms - not all reggae is one-drop style, but all one-drop rhythms are reggae.

[unlikely]

you cant really say dubstep sounds like nothing else on earth. It sounds like lots of things.

[fubar]

dubstep also sounds very different between every track that is pigeon holed with that name, over analysis of a genre by artists and listeners eventually destroys it and forces sub genres to be created, maybe that it is enivitable anyway but this sound is still young!

[orson]

[fubar]

look at what happened to breaks & D&B I think my point is valid, too much thought about what makes it popular too much standardiziation leads to all the gay clownstep pendulum shit and samey breaks that has flooded the market, this is an intersting new sound but theirs not point over analysing its features it just leads to shitty music.

[boomnoise]

look at what happened to breaks & D&B I think my point is valid, too much thought about what makes it popular too much standardiziation leads to all the gay clownstep pendulum shit and samey breaks that has flooded the market, this is an intersting new sound but theirs not point over analysing its features it just leads to shitty music.

i'm curious as to how exactly you can explain this causal relationship. i don't believe thought and analysis can lead to 'shitty music'. conversely, i think there is a much stronger argument for claiming that thought and analysis can actually progress music. popularisation will perhaps ineveitably lead to commercialisation and certain ideas and thought may advance this process but to claim anything above and beyond that!?

[fubar]

if you are thinking and analysing about what particular artists have done thats fine but once you start labeling that as what you think the genre is then it will eventually end up in a standardization of that sound progression occurs from change anything else eventually dies out as an art form. But yes you're right popularization can be the biggest killer but that in my opinion is because of this idea of genre, I just dont like things being pidegeon holed to much its pointless.