Would dubstep benefit from not having subgenres at all?

Forensics · Post by **Forensics** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:00 pm

Fragmenting a scene can be very bad news. Like when people turned from 'breakstep' to 'halfstep' and some great artists started getting ignored a little bit. Or more recently when people turned back away from 'halfstep' towards 'breakstep', and then started slagging off the 'halfstep'. Ri-di-c-u-lous. Taking a more dangerous example - I can just see the media giving Burial his own genre, and the rest of the scene being passed back off into obscurity having been soiled with generalisations about the wobble or the beats or whatever

The term dubstep Never neatly fitted the music, it's just the banner under which we all came together. Dubstep could mean anything around 140bpm to me, and I like that vagueness. I've never sat down and thought - I'm gonna make a tune/beat/ANYTHING that sounds like/fits into ANYTHING ELSE!! Dunno why I'm posting here really, normally avoid this kind of thread. And I have no personal concern for genres/catagories/anything in particular.... but there are my thoughts anyway!

Littlefoot · Post by **Littlefoot** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:33 pm

i disagree it can mean anything

Dubstep does have a sound you know

thats why it doesnt sound like anything else.

Id say its Bass heavy forward thinking electronic music at 140ish, originally with a 2step style rhythm, evolved into a half step and now who knows

saying its bass heavy music as 140 means its about 50000000000000000000000000000000 things its not

Forensics · Post by **Forensics** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:42 pm

Bah! It sounds like a LOT of other things. Do I really need to list the many different other genres this scene is mixed up in/influenced by?!

rhetoric_dub · Post by **rhetoric_dub** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:00 pm

defo, if you can keep away from labelling sub genres then it would be better and keep a scene together BUT the bigger a genre gets and the more diverse and different the different sounds within the genre become then the sub genre's natrually occur and they make sense

take DnB for example: liquid and neurofunk are so different in sound that it kinda makes sense to have them in different sub genres. i myself dont like most liquid but like a lot of amen/neurofunk/techstep so its useful for me to be able to label that.

slothrop · Post by **slothrop** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:19 pm

I'm not a fan of everything in its own little box thinking, but I think the massive fear that evil journalists are threatening to create some sort of subgenre based apartheid system is a bit over the top. I'm kind of afraid to describe what a tune sounds like in case anyone thinks I'm trying to define a subgenre.
"Yeah, I like that tune, it's deep."
"Deep dubstep!?! WTF! Why do you have to compartmentalize everything? It's all just dubstep, man!"

It's shit when everything becomes compartmentalized and seperated off, but I think that's down to uncreative musicians and unadventurous DJ's and will happen regardless of whether people start coining terms like 'deep liquid handbagstep' or 'neuro dubcore' or whatever. In fact, I think it normally starts to happen before people coin a term, just with people ripping off a couple of artists or only playing records that sound pretty similar.

Also, while I like DJ's who play tunes from across the board, I think a scene trying desperately to hold together can get like a couple who stay together and hate each other rather than splitting up and staying friends. I can imagine that as the scene grows, there are going to be more and more people who want to go out and have a good time to some fun boshing tunes and aren't particularly into deep meditational vibes or garagey stuff. And as a result that the biggest and most successful DJs and producers are going to be the ones who don't really go for deep meditational vibes or garagey stuff or playing tunes from across the spectrum. And that becomes a vicious cycle - I've already had loads of arguments who don't know that there's anything to dubstep beyond the wobbley anthems, so those people won't find out about the deeper stuff so fewer people will support it so it'll get played less etc. At that point it maybe becomes worth admitting that hey, maybe what we're playing over here with our taste for deepness and diversity is a different scene so just because you're not into that sort of stuff doesn't mean you won't be into this sort of stuff.

This kind of happened with a lot of more experimental drum and bass producers they're marginalized within the dnb scene because they aren't producing big techy balls-out stompers and a lot of people who might support them just don't listen to drum and bass anymore, largely because they got fed up with the big techy balls-out stompers.

Sorry if this sounds negative - I'm actually really optimistic about the future of whatever we want to call this music. I just think you can go too far wallpapering over cracks. If anything I think it leads to more moaning as people constantly moan about DJs who aren't being diverse enough or producers who aren't being experimental enough on the grounds that they're giving the scene a bad name...

NB to me this isn't even about not playing specific tunes, it's more about playing all sorts of tunes vs playing only certain sorts of tunes...

rickyricardo · Post by **rickyricardo** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:35 pm

Things will always split, and people will always find names to categorize what they split into. There's nothing good or bad about it....that's just nature.

Our brains are hardwired to work this way, so it's a little silly to fight it.

Threnody hit the nail on the head. Why stop with dubstep? Why stop with electronic music? Heh, why even stop with the label of "music"? Taking this arguement to reductio ad absurdum only proves to me how necessary (and inevitable) labels really are.

Vice T · Post by **Vice T** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:15 am

Isn't Dubstep a sub genre?

south3rn · Post by **south3rn** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:26 am

one of the best things about dubstep is you can go from something like spongebob into the cay's craze dmz remix and no one will look at you funny.

if you were playin dnb and moved from spor to calibre i'd reckon people might give you a funny look.

it's this ability that surely makes dubstep subgenres obsolete.

djshiva · Post by **djshiva** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 2:39 am

South3rn wrote:one of the best things about dubstep is you can go from something like spongebob into the cay's craze dmz remix and no one will look at you funny.

i dunno. i personally would prolly look at you a bit weird for that one.

dj_rasheed · Post by **dj_rasheed** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 6:04 pm

ThinKing wrote: don't really think we're at that point, but if it happens there ain't much we can do to stop it.

fractal · Post by **fractal** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:39 pm

South3rn wrote:one of the best things about dubstep is you can go from something like spongebob into the cay's craze dmz remix and no one will look at you funny.

if you were playin dnb and moved from spor to calibre i'd reckon people might give you a funny look

it's this ability that surely makes dubstep subgenres obsolete.

seriously... dnb's chocked full of one dimensional dj's, dubsteps already got its fair share of kats who only play one style... its fuckin boring!!

thegrizwalds · Post by **thegrizwalds** » Wed May 06, 2009 10:01 pm

dubstep seems to be going the way of the sub-genre...its just more of an unspoken thing IMO.

The trendier "raging" dubstep, the hip-hop style ish, ragga/dub influenced stuff, and the spaced out ish all seem to have producers that stick to 1 or 2 of those styles...

not really sub-genres, but it helps to identify with the listener since not every listener is a fan of all styles of dubstep out there (its increasing variety is prob why its audience has grown so much in the last 1-2 years)

im a fan of most, but i agree with fractal...the same style tune after tune at a show gets boring

caunterstrike · Post by **caunterstrike** » Wed May 06, 2009 10:12 pm

would dubstep benefit from not having this forum so people are free to do what they like without hundreds of people saying its wrong or shouldnt be done?

saxenhammer · Post by **saxenhammer** » Wed May 06, 2009 10:22 pm

Old man in leather.

Sweating like fuck.

And it's not even hot.

threnody · Post by **threnody** » Wed May 06, 2009 10:34 pm

3/2kick · Post by **3/2kick** » Wed May 06, 2009 11:22 pm

caunter wrote:would dubstep benefit from not having this forum so people are free to do what they like without hundreds of people saying its wrong or shouldnt be done?

hate to say it mate but im starting to think along the same lines as you

divanrod · Post by **divanrod** » Thu May 07, 2009 12:52 am

People only pigeonhole themselves when they decide to make their music sound a certain way. Subgenres only serve to describe a certain sound within a certain sound. are you telling me a Jakes song is going to sound the same as a Shackleton song? Really? It is through this point made that subgenres have use.

Another way to look at it (I use this a lot). You got fruit. Do they all taste the same and have the same nutrition values? No. So you go deeper. Apples, oranges, pears. Are all apples the same? No, you got gala, fiji, granny apple smith, etc. I believe the same principle can be applied to music.

surface_tension · Post by **surface_tension** » Thu May 07, 2009 1:24 am

Dubstep doesn't have subgenres, only subhumans who make up the notion of subgenres

abZ · Post by **abZ** » Thu May 07, 2009 1:42 am

caunter wrote:would dubstep benefit from not having this forum so people are free to do what they like without hundreds of people saying its wrong or shouldnt be done?

IDK This forum has a lot to do with how widespread the genre has gotten. I remember reading the blog they had before the forum came along and they listed the all the dubstep releases in a single post! Anyway, the forums aren't going anywhere so don't even bother wasting a thought on it.

threnody · Post by **threnody** » Thu May 07, 2009 7:45 am

Spot on abz.....before dsf there really wAs very little info online....you had garage pressure and dubplate.net and apart from that it was just a case of searching uptown records or independance records where dubstep releases hid amongst the swathes of grime releases.....

When dubplate.net first shut there was almost nothing for a while (as garage pressure didn't have a forum)...when this place came along it gave an onlne place to swap dubs and get chatting to the handful of producers making wildly different music under the dubstep banner....before this incarnation of the dsf there was another version at dubstep.forumspace which ran for a while....

Of course Music is bigger than a forum but in the early days it was one of the only ways to find out aboutthe music....this is before myspace had such a hold and when you could search YouTube for dubstep and NOTHING came up.

Would dubstep benefit from not having subgenres at all?

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