Why cant wobble and Dub heads just get along?

[slothrop]

Jumpup heads don't think the elitists have any right to hate on their music

while there are two camps with differing opinions, i think the anti-wobble camp have a right to complain about wobble because a) the sound that created the dubstep scene to begin with (2000-2005) wasn't the mid-range wobble sound and b) said mid range wobble sound is now the dominant default/mainstream club sound, rather than being a being a balanced part of a wide, healthy dubstep spectrum.

(i should point out though that in 2010 i mostly think of this battle of being pretty much over and the quest for the incredible sense of musical progress that the wobble formula prevents as being carried on by headz elsewhere).

Yeah.

To be honest, I can't be bothered complaining these days because it's so easy to find music that I do like, and I'd rather do that than sit around here starting beef. But it's kind of understandable that people get pissed off - a lot of people (myself included) found dubstep as a breath of fresh air after getting progressively more pissed off at the state of jungle / dnb, and the fact that what we'd got into as a diverse and exciting scene had mostly turned into linear kill-your-parents aggro for teenage boys. So we thought, hey, here's this great diverse and exciting scene - lets stop making a fuss about dnb and go and listen to that instead, leave straightforward moshy midrange aggro to the people that like it, let them have their scene and we'll get on with our lives somewhere else.

Fastforward a few years... yeah.

I'm not saying it's particularly suprising, and I'm not saying that my tastes are more 'right' than anyone else's, but I can understand why people get wound up about the same thing happening twice running.

Anyway, I'm currently holding out for a revival of 2005 style deep weighty halfstep...

[rob sparx]

Seriously though I don't consider anything pre 2004 dubstep as producers were calling it garage or breakbeat back then...

well thanks for the update: those of us standing in Velvet Rooms circa 2001 listening to Hatcha drop "Red 1" on dubplate don't agree, regardless of what it was or wasn't called ("the FWD sound") at the time.

Saying that you have to get rid of midrange to progress musically is bullshit there are epic harder tunes out there with tons more soul and life to them that some of the boring as fuk IDM cack that gets so much love on here

there are many things that wobble has but soul sure isn't one of them, unless you call "soul" the sound of screaming midranges having an infantile tantrum. you also set up the false supposition that the opposite of wobble is IDM cack: i'm just as interested in IDM cack as I am in brostep. obviously dubstep can be, is and was so many amazing sounds inbetween those two.

and you mention progression but one thing that makes wobble so dull, beyond what it sounds like, is it's predictability: 16 bar halfstep intro, swearing/immature aggressive film sample drop and ... ooh look, large dynamic range change into a mid range modulated "bassline".

wobble fiends can rightly argue that it "goes off" in a club, fair play it does, but lets not talk about progression.

Nah we're not actually disagreeing you are right aside from a few tunes I'm not into the spazzy generic brostep your rightly putting down but there is a lot of music that sits somewhere between the harder side of deep and jumpup which is in one camp or the other depending on ppls opinion. Artists whos music im playing like Chasing Shadows, Distance, Tunnidge, Kryptic Minds etc all use "midrange" sounds including the occasional wobble so I don't buy the all midrange is shit argument at all that so many ppl on this forum bang on about. When ive spoke to other djs about this they dont think all midrange is shit their just very selective with what they play and dont like anything that sounds too stupid which is far from writing off all midrange.

I do play some harder stuff like my new bits, some Bar9 (not the too stupid stuff like Midnight), 16Bit, Numbernin6, Shackles (deffo one to watch out for just had his 3 latest tunes played by Oris Jay at the last DMZ one of which im releasing on SOURG005) and Akira Kiteshi etc but ive yet to play anything by Caspa/Rusko/Excision/Datsik/Borgore/Cookie Monsta/Doctor P/Funtcase etc and I don't know whats going on in ppls heads who can't tell the difference between these producers as they far from all sound the same

[The Phantom Banger]

Seriously though I don't consider anything pre 2004 dubstep as producers were calling it garage or breakbeat back then...

well thanks for the update: those of us standing in Velvet Rooms circa 2001 listening to Hatcha drop "Red 1" on dubplate don't agree, regardless of what it was or wasn't called ("the FWD sound") at the time.

Saying that you have to get rid of midrange to progress musically is bullshit there are epic harder tunes out there with tons more soul and life to them that some of the boring as fuk IDM cack that gets so much love on here

there are many things that wobble has but soul sure isn't one of them, unless you call "soul" the sound of screaming midranges having an infantile tantrum. you also set up the false supposition that the opposite of wobble is IDM cack: i'm just as interested in IDM cack as I am in brostep. obviously dubstep can be, is and was so many amazing sounds inbetween those two.

and you mention progression but one thing that makes wobble so dull, beyond what it sounds like, is it's predictability: 16 bar halfstep intro, swearing/immature aggressive film sample drop and ... ooh look, large dynamic range change into a mid range modulated "bassline".

wobble fiends can rightly argue that it "goes off" in a club, fair play it does, but lets not talk about progression.

Nah we're not actually disagreeing you are right aside from a few tunes I'm not into the spazzy generic brostep your rightly putting down but there is a lot of music that sits somewhere between the harder side of deep and jumpup which is in one camp or the other depending on ppls opinion. Artists whos music im playing like Chasing Shadows, Distance, Tunnidge, Kryptic Minds etc all use "midrange" sounds including the occasional wobble so I don't buy the all midrange is shit argument at all that so many ppl on this forum bang on about. When ive spoke to other djs about this they dont think all midrange is shit their just very selective with what they play and dont like anything that sounds too stupid which is far from writing off all midrange.

I do play some harder stuff like my new bits, some Bar9 (not the too stupid stuff like Midnight), 16Bit, Numbernin6, Shackles (deffo one to watch out for just had his 3 latest tunes played by Oris Jay at the last DMZ one of which im releasing on SOURG005) and Akira Kiteshi etc but ive yet to play anything by Caspa/Rusko/Excision/Datsik/Borgore/Cookie Monsta/Doctor P/Funtcase etc and I don't know whats going on in ppls heads who can't tell the difference between these producers as they far from all sound the same

hello rob sparx

[gwa]

can i ask, seen as you are a producer who's been around for a while and obviously has heard his fair share of wobbles.

what do you get out of that music?

what do you feel when you listen to it?

does it take you on a journey?

etc,

I'd really like to know what people think about it who listen to a lot of it. i'm far to into the funky / 130 scene , even sometimes straight 4x4 house. but i don't mind the odd occasional wobble, although too much of it and it will bore me.

[rob sparx]

Rob please list some examples of the boring IDM cack you so frequently reference.

maybe it's geiom. gravious, boxcutter, pangaea, burial, shackleton & funckarma.....i love all of them

Burial is one of my favourite artists, Geiom is a sound geezer we're on slightly different wavelengths when it comes to production but I do like some of his stuff, Boxcutter ive always liked but yea of what ive heard of those other guys so far im not feeling and I don't consider whole sets with no drops to be that much better than sets where every tune drops.

Thats just my shitty opinion though everyones got their own taste etc don't think im not into deep music just not some of those guys

[seckle]

Jumpup heads don't think the elitists have any right to hate on their music

while there are two camps with differing opinions, i think the anti-wobble camp have a right to complain about wobble because a) the sound that created the dubstep scene to begin with (2000-2005) wasn't the mid-range wobble sound and b) said mid range wobble sound is now the dominant default/mainstream club sound, rather than being a being a balanced part of a wide, healthy dubstep spectrum.

(i should point out though that in 2010 i mostly think of this battle of being pretty much over and the quest for the incredible sense of musical progress that the wobble formula prevents as being carried on by headz elsewhere).

Yeah.

To be honest, I can't be bothered complaining these days because it's so easy to find music that I do like, and I'd rather do that than sit around here starting beef. But it's kind of understandable that people get pissed off - a lot of people (myself included) found dubstep as a breath of fresh air after getting progressively more pissed off at the state of jungle / dnb, and the fact that what we'd got into as a diverse and exciting scene had mostly turned into linear kill-your-parents aggro for teenage boys. So we thought, hey, here's this great diverse and exciting scene - lets stop making a fuss about dnb and go and listen to that instead, leave straightforward moshy midrange aggro to the people that like it, let them have their scene and we'll get on with our lives somewhere else.

Fastforward a few years... yeah.

I'm not saying it's particularly suprising, and I'm not saying that my tastes are more 'right' than anyone else's, but I can understand why people get wound up about the same thing happening twice running.

Anyway, I'm currently holding out for a revival of 2005 style deep weighty halfstep...

I agree with you on many levels, but its important to add that the generation thats 16-20 right now and fully loving drop centered predictable 140, were in their diapers when jungle was still groundbreaking. this new generation grew up on drum and bass, not jungle. i think like many of us in our late 20's to 30's, we fell for this sound because it was referencing so many elements. i'm not saying that the 16-20 yr people don't have good taste, i'm just saying that their reference point is different, and because drum and bass has been so predictable between 2000-2010, they seek and respond to the predictability to some degree. i think that the older crew that have amen in our bloodstream want fucked up patterns and surprises. a good example of what i'm talking about is a tune like addison groove "footcrab" or any of untold's tune, where there's no way you can see whats coming round the corner.

[fractal]

Jumpup heads don't think the elitists have any right to hate on their music

while there are two camps with differing opinions, i think the anti-wobble camp have a right to complain about wobble because a) the sound that created the dubstep scene to begin with (2000-2005) wasn't the mid-range wobble sound and b) said mid range wobble sound is now the dominant default/mainstream club sound, rather than being a being a balanced part of a wide, healthy dubstep spectrum.

(i should point out though that in 2010 i mostly think of this battle of being pretty much over and the quest for the incredible sense of musical progress that the wobble formula prevents as being carried on by headz elsewhere).

Yeah.

To be honest, I can't be bothered complaining these days because it's so easy to find music that I do like, and I'd rather do that than sit around here starting beef. But it's kind of understandable that people get pissed off - a lot of people (myself included) found dubstep as a breath of fresh air after getting progressively more pissed off at the state of jungle / dnb, and the fact that what we'd got into as a diverse and exciting scene had mostly turned into linear kill-your-parents aggro for teenage boys. So we thought, hey, here's this great diverse and exciting scene - lets stop making a fuss about dnb and go and listen to that instead, leave straightforward moshy midrange aggro to the people that like it, let them have their scene and we'll get on with our lives somewhere else.

Fastforward a few years... yeah.

I'm not saying it's particularly suprising, and I'm not saying that my tastes are more 'right' than anyone else's, but I can understand why people get wound up about the same thing happening twice running.

Anyway, I'm currently holding out for a revival of 2005 style deep weighty halfstep...

I agree with you on many levels, but its important to add that the generation thats 16-20 right now and fully loving drop centered predictable 140, were in their diapers when jungle was still groundbreaking. this new generation grew up on drum and bass, not jungle. i think like many of us in our late 20's to 30's, we fell for this sound because it was referencing so many elements. i'm not saying that the 16-20 yr people don't have good taste, i'm just saying that their reference point is different, and because drum and bass has been so predictable between 2000-2010, they seek and respond to the predictability to some degree. i think that the older crew that have amen in our bloodstream want fucked up patterns and surprises. a good example of what i'm talking about is a tune like addison groove "footcrab" or any of untold's tune, where there's no way you can see whats coming round the corner.

amen brother! i totally agree with you on the difference between kids who grew up to jungle and kids who grew up to drum and bass... the difference, imho, is drum programming: in jungle it was wild and could be anything, in drum & bass it was that same fucking beat over and over again, and that is what were seeing in wobblefest dubstep, the same beat, different samples, drop... it's just boring to a lot of older folk,,,

@ rob, i dont know about where you're at, but people in my neck of the woods get down to stuff like shackleton... there may not be a lot of drops, but long progressions get us excited too! he was here a couple weeks ago and the floor was MOVING!!!! this whole notion, that you cant dance to stuff unless it's a party tune, is silly

[gwa]

also seckle, you gotta remember 16-20. people wanna PARTY. its good party music because its full of energy.

i can safely say that i agree with the 'fucked up' pattern, intelligent music that takes your breath away is the one.

end of the day anything with a groove that you can have a little dance to is good music, music without groove is not music (imo)

[Mr Mechanicz]

Aswell as mid-range wobbles n all tht people love 2 slate...i personally dont like the use of the word DUB in dubstep now adays...DUB is and oldskool genre, art, technique etc...tht has helped push the music world into different directions, nearlly all music takes influence from it...bk wen i first started listenin 2 dubstep in like 03, i got drawn to it immediately because i could identify the sound as wot it wos...u had ure 2steppy garage people, ure reggae dub n roots people,jungle & DnB etc...But now adays i get pissed of to see a person saying ''yeh man heres my new dub listen 2 this'' then wen u play it its wot u people r callin ''brostep'' ..i dont understand how dubstep changed from a genre of deep thought and meditation in2 something tht is lookd at as ketamin music...fair enough the jump up hype stuff isnt shit...i actually like alot of it...but i dont get were people get off on purposely making emotionless tunes to think ure gonna get a reaction from a crowd etc(WOW factor)....and to be honest thts were i think the problem with dubstep is...music's growing wider every sec of the day...if not for people in the past tht layed down a solid foundation in music we wouldnt have these opportunities...i think we need 2 start adding the soul bk in2 the music....alot of adults around me can sit down n listen 2 alot of the dubstep tunes because of the soul the tunes are carrying..but wen they hear alot of jump up they dont understand it..if people started aiming at a wider audience with there tunes maybe dubstep will grow bigger than it is now.

[numaestro]

I love deep dubstep, the dubby side of dubstep was what initially attracted me to it back in the day before the term 'brostep' was ever shit out of someones poo hole. I also like the wobblely stuff. Why all the beef.......? Discuss?

What beef? A few blokes arguing on an internet forum is hardly a major crisis If it wasn't that it would be about football, or turbo injection or hedge funds...

I reckon a better question is :Why do people try to make a drama out of little things on internet forums?

And the answer: people like arguing


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[rob sparx]

@ rob, i dont know about where you're at, but people in my neck of the woods get down to stuff like shackleton... there may not be a lot of drops, but long progressions get us excited too! he was here a couple weeks ago and the floor was MOVING!!!! this whole notion, that you cant dance to stuff unless it's a party tune, is silly

I don't agree that you can't dance to a tune unless its a party tune at all but I think theres a serious neglect of melody and harmony by a lot of artists in deep and jumpup and those elements are all the more important when theres no big basses or leads in the tune, funky drums sub and nice atmos/bleeps alone just dont do it for me - some of the old DMZ and Skream stuff didn't always have much of the way in melody but that was more on the grimy than the intelligent tip which I think worked a whole lot better. I'm feeling stuff like Synkro/Indigo/Breakage/Silkie/Koldfoxx/Numbernin6's deeper bits and DJ Madds new progressive stuff but I don't see what all the fuss is about with Shackleton etc ppl are always telling me how great that music is but when I check out the odd MAH archive I just don't get it, just seems like a bit of a case of the emporers clothes to me. I'm not writing those producers off though I'll keep checking their stuff out mabeye ill find something I like just hasn't happened yet.

There is a lot of deep stuff I really like but I wont play because the beats aren't dense and funky enough to keep feet moving much more so at a lot of venues in the UK where the audience is younger and less patient than in Europe. I know everyones got different opinions on this but whilst I think a dj can educate their audience to a certain extent I think theres limits to how much you can "educate" your audience before they lose interest and im much more interested in hearing sets with a wide variety of styles than sets where its hard to tell the difference from one tune to the next.

BTW anyone who thinks I can't knock up a decent deep track should check out "Going Back" on my page (http://www.myspace.com/sparx3000) sure if Mala or Shackleton had wrote that tune some of you lot would be all over it!

[Mr Mechanicz]

sure if Mala or Shackleton had wrote that tune some of you lot would be all over it!

[Skimple]

I just feel that the wobble tunes go way o.t.t and put in all these crazy wobble riffs and its just in your face and in your ears. It also feels like the tunes are been stuck together with pritt stick, like theyve got a kick snare and put a couple of wobble diffs in there and then add some robot fx and then a sample and 10 mins later there putting it on soundcloud. Too rushed and to similar. everyone is jumping on it which is fair enough theres a niche in the market for it and its got a good following. But to be honest its got a bit boring. Its like "ah listen to this excision track" but wait...it sounds just the same as next mans track.
I'm partial to a bit of wobble but i prefer my bass weight and atmosphere. Each to their own though really.

[kion]

There is a lot of deep stuff I really like but I wont play because the beats aren't dense and funky enough to keep feet moving much more so at a lot of venues in the UK where the audience is younger and less patient than in Europe. I know everyones got different opinions on this but whilst I think a dj can educate their audience to a certain extent I think theres limits to how much you can "educate" your audience before they lose interest and im much more interested in hearing sets with a wide variety of styles than sets where its hard to tell the difference from one tune to the next.

BTW anyone who thinks I can't knock up a decent deep track should check out "Going Back" on my page (http://www.myspace.com/sparx3000) sure if Mala or Shackleton had wrote that tune some of you lot would be all over it!

I f*kin love that track (Going Back), been playing it on radio recently. I'm into that kinda stuff big time, and along with artists like Silkie, it's injected with funk, feeling and is a dancefloor mover shaker. I think highlighting wobble is a bit of a red herring, it's not wobble per se, it's usually that the wobble is underpinned by uninspired drums. Rob Sparx has funk in his drums, so does Silkie, and artists like Mala do too. There's far too many straight-laced 'rock'-like beats being bashed out along with a particular type of vibeless midrange that's currently saturating the scene. And cue generic bone-cracking snare too! The snare doesn't have to be like that on every track.

Seven and LV's 'Saturn' has some truely inspired funk-fuelled drum programming, and take note of their snare - nice and understated. The bass rolls!

[Corkz]

depends man- i listen to wobbly/dirty dubstep cus its exciting and makes me dance like a nutter

[kion]

depends man- i listen to wobbly/dirty dubstep cus its exciting and makes me dance like a nutter

it ain't that style in itself that's the problem, it's that style when done very badly that's created a problem. I love it too if it's been produced well and not knocked out in 5 minutes.

[wascal]

...it's usually that the wobble is underpinned by uninspired drums.

this x 1000000

[Krood]

if the production is nice and the bass heavy and a mood is created then its usually fuckin good. whether that mood be messy, heavy, chilled, atmospheric, angry, chilled lets face it, if you can feel it, the track is guna be BOOM

[cloak and dagger]

There's far too many straight-laced 'rock'-like beats being bashed out along with a particular type of vibeless midrange that's currently saturating the scene. And cue generic bone-cracking snare too! The snare doesn't have to be like that on every track.

EXACTLY



blackdown hit the nail on the head as well; I got into this music before any of the soulless, amelodic, 1/8 quantized heavymetalstep existed, and if it had, I'm not so sure I'd be into it as much as I am. I got into minimalism, space, groove, and bass, along with the open-minded attitude of the scene and genuine willingness to push boundaries, even by the producers who had seen success. I've said it before, but I'll always have mad respect for Skream for just making the tunes he wants to when he EASILY could have made two dozen Midnight Request Lines after that track blew up. Even when Coki started doing stuff like Spongebob, etc., I didn't have a problem with it; I didn't like the tunes, but I respected an artist for trying something different, pushing boundaries, and carving a sound. The 3000 clones of that who have released music since have pretty much caused me to stop associating myself with dubstep, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[Corkz]

depends man- i listen to wobbly/dirty dubstep cus its exciting and makes me dance like a nutter

it ain't that style in itself that's the problem, it's that style when done very badly that's created a problem. I love it too if it's been produced well and not knocked out in 5 minutes.

yeah fair point man