Dubstepforum.com

So I'm making a track, and it sounds like this:

Soundcloud

If you have a sub, you can hear the bass and it's very attractive. If you don't have a sub, it's just a loop. How do you go about making shit interesting without the brostep basses?

Might sound like a stupid question, idk, seems valid in my head.

So your asking how do you make dubstep without bass?

Ehhh, pretty much I guess. but disregard this question, it was me being dumb. I just have to write a good song, and then people won't care how hard the bass hits, it'll just be a add-on.

Flux Pavilion seems to be doing alright with this. Ask him

Dude, Flux Pavillion has a fucking HARD hitting bass. Don't hate.

Nobody will like good dubstep without a sub or not being able to hear the subbass on a tune, its bass music.

the people will hate it, but don't worry about the people who do not know you cant understand dubstep without being able to hear the sub.. that's not the people you wanne try and get your music out to.

Is that just really low bass, or does it have no bass?

Cheeky wrote:Nobody will like good dubstep without a sub

Not entirely true. Obviously listening with decent headphones or a sub system is best, but i honestly enjoy listening to the deep and dark side of dubstep even through laptop speakers or the fucking shit ones in my Corsa. Even if all i can hear through them are drums, i still enjoy it. Don't know if it's because i enjoy the drum pattern, or i enjoy imagining the sub. But fuck it, i enjoy it just as much.

ChadDub wrote:Is that just really low bass, or does it have no bass?

It does have bass, but it isn't made exclusively for listening with subs. He manages to keep it interesting without focusing too much on the sub-bass.

Oh I get it

PERCEPT wrote:

Cheeky wrote:Nobody will like good dubstep without a sub

Not entirely true. Obviously listening with decent headphones or a sub system is best, but i honestly enjoy listening to the deep and dark side of dubstep even through laptop speakers or the fucking shit ones in my Corsa. Even if all i can hear through them are drums, i still enjoy it. Don't know if it's because i enjoy the drum pattern, or i enjoy imagining the sub. But fuck it, i enjoy it just as much.

this. if a song is good enough i can manage without the sub.
however much i want it

I think the purpose is to make people dance. If you aint got no bassline, people won't dance for very long. Tunes with simple sub bass tend to stand the test of time, you know why? because bass is a very simple thing, and does not to be complicated or elaborate to sound good and make people happy.

Interesting is a different thing, and comes at a low priority when I make music somewhere underneath phat, sick, deadly and badman.

All the folks saying subs and bass aren`t necessary really need to go re-listen to the music they are choosing to make.
Ayatollah posted a track that very cleverly uses bass but it still uses bass none-the-less.
Higher bass tones are heard better through non-sub systems.

Either way, saying the bass isn`t necessary is just ludicrous.
We make BASS music.
You do the math.

Bass is one of the defining factors of the style. Back when Techno was starting to crest in popularity (yes, im that old, heh) there were people who would crank out these beatless soundscape toons and we had similar discussions. Some were like "how can you call this stuff techno while leaving out the very thing that defines it as such?" That music soon became known as ambient and spun off on a direction all its own. Dubstep without bass? You might be onto something here, but I think people will stop calling it dubstep at some point.

Electric_Head wrote: Either way, saying the bass isn`t necessary is just ludicrous.
We make BASS music.
You do the math.

I agree 100% with this, however as I understood it the OP wants to make dubstep-ish music that also sounds interesting on a system without decent subs. I think it should be doable, hence the track that I posted, cos it's primarily directed at a non-audiophile audience. Dubstep on the other hand isn't.

thats like watching a TV with half the screen covered