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Hi guys,

I have been listening to a lot of old school dubstep (e.g. early benga & skream) and i have been wondering whether old school dubstep uses chords or chord progressions. From what i have listened to so far, it doesn't seem like they did. Any advice guys?

Here is the play list that i have been listening to:

Benga - World War 7 - YouTube

I am trying to recreate some old shcool dubstep tracks

not really, lot of single notes. there are exceptions of course, but that was generally how it was. now, years later, that sound has been rinsed to death and now things are way more melodic and percussive. of course there are still some artists staying true i.e. vivek

Right, and this is some purely mad scientist vibes here, but would it be possible to load a song into Melodyne (Midnight Request Line, por ejemplo), isolate the melody via the frequency recognition feature, then bounce out a MIDI file based on that?

i'd think so yeah. maybe putting it in a daw and high-passing the bass out so it can read the melody better? interesting idea.

difference wrote:i'd think so yeah. maybe putting it in a daw and high-passing the bass out so it can read the melody better? interesting idea.

Would killing the lower frequencies in a synth line change it's key?

(Not a music theory head, not sure if that's an obvious question or not)

Or you know, you could just sit at your keyboard and spot the notes by ear. Most tracks are pretty simple harmonically. From memory, Midnight Request Line just sits on a Phrygian tonic most of the time, moves up to Mixolydian then Lydian for the turnarounds.

Most tunes follow a similar theme, droning on a minor or Phrygian root note with a few brief changes to break up the monotony.

Thanks guys for the replies. Yeah, i have been wondering whether there were chords used in old school dubstep.

SunkLo wrote:Or you know, you could just sit at your keyboard and spot the notes by ear. Most tracks are pretty simple harmonically. From memory, Midnight Request Line just sits on a Phrygian tonic most of the time, moves up to Mixolydian then Lydian for the turnarounds.

Most tunes follow a similar theme, droning on a minor or Phrygian root note with a few brief changes to break up the monotony.

No offense to wub and difference...but I couldn't agree more...you don't even need to know shit about theory if your ear is even half good. Sign of the times really, the over complicated technological solution.

I bought FL Studio's expensive, native pitch correction/detection software thinking I'd use it all the time. I hardly ever use it. If you could sell Image Line licenses second-hand, I'd sell it in a heartbeat.

Not that I'm a theory nut, but having looked up the scales for a lot of those tunes it would seem they use those exotic scales quite often. I like using pentonic scales quite a bit, love 'em...get great things out of them quite easily for whatever reason. They work well for dark electronic stuff, dunno why.

Get a guitar or keyboard. There are 12 tones in music. Try 12 times to match the first pitch. Rinse/repeat. Over time this will become accumulatively easier and easier, you'll become a better musician overall

I think Midnight Request Line uses inverted minor chords

wub wrote:Right, and this is some purely mad scientist vibes here, but would it be possible to load a song into Melodyne (Midnight Request Line, por ejemplo), isolate the melody via the frequency recognition feature, then bounce out a MIDI file based on that?

isnt there an ableton vid that deconstructs request line? that push video?

Nevalo wrote:

wub wrote:Right, and this is some purely mad scientist vibes here, but would it be possible to load a song into Melodyne (Midnight Request Line, por ejemplo), isolate the melody via the frequency recognition feature, then bounce out a MIDI file based on that?

isnt there an ableton vid that deconstructs request line? that push video?

Was just using it as an example.

In my personal opinion, I never thought that oldschool sound was special because its producers had mastered music theory. It kind of reminds me of the trap trend of today -the progressions and melodies are often just an ornament on whats going on in the lower frequencies.

If you looking to achieve that old sound, I think this is the last place you should study. Its kind of like asking what "filthy bass" sounds trance producers use. Dubstep emphasizes "vibe" and "groove". Tracks like Request Line (which actually sounds very different from whatever else was coming out of the scene then!) were probably made through trial and error and Skream thinking "oh this sounds cool" as he played with rather random notes in his sequencer, which would explain the parallel key modulations another poster was talking about.

If all these guy were actually learning proper music theory we would probably have heard a lot more tunes released in happy C major ( ) then the modes and minor keys dubstep lived in. The melodies and chords are often so simple that just messing around in the sequencer you can make darker and more dissonant sounds which come off like more advanced music theory than just playing all the white keys on the keyboard with C as the tonal center.

pretty sure request line was just like an fm chord or something... but yeah it's not like good dubstep has NO chords. maybe some tunes don't have true chord progressions if they're just like bass, kick, snare, and hihat. but most of them have some chords. look at like anti-war dub or filth or something.

with world war VII, just from listening i would say there are definitely chords in there. i haven't checked it under a spectrum, but from what i hear, the lead marimba-ish sound is probably individual notes, but there are some pads underneath that are probably chords, with a very concrete progression beginning at 0:50.

nope it was cm my b

Wait, that guy's name is Ski Oakenful?

u fukin kiddin me?

legend4ry wrote:

Cheers!!!

would kill for that ableton project file

I've never really been into dubstep but I listened to Midnight Request Line and I'm really likin it.