IDM Mailing Archive

To PARAPHRASE my memory of _Cut n' Mix"_, a excellent book about the history of post-r-n-b soul music (touching on the history of scratching/rap and the history of Jamaican pop music from Sam Cooke influences to Alpha Blondy): Dub was birthed from the studio mixes of 'Rocksteady', a late-60's bass-heavy reggae popular for street dancing. Around the young music/dance scene, there was a competition between different folks' "sound systems" (kind of like in people's cars "rap-mobiles" in the US suburbs right now) about how loud they could be and, specifically, how many people they could get dancing at their street parties. (This book shows pictures of some sound systems, which could roll around on casters and were pretty homebuilt-looking. To get the beat of the music to travel further through the crowds, everyone gradually started turning their sound-systems' bass up and up This gradually influenced how the music was recorded/composed (like 808 bassdrums in rap in the US in the 80-90's). Rocksteady stood out from previous forms of reggae in that the beat was slowed down from the dancehall style and the bass was cranked up to the foreground. (I think the book talks about the popularity of pot in the late 60's crossed with rocksteady leading to the appreciation of the trippy mixes of folks like Lee Perry and Linval Thompson, Joe Gibbs, etc who did the mixing of efx and echoes for instrumental tracks/backing for the MC's that sung over the music (part of how the roots of dancehall/ska got started). Dub was born out of the instrumental remixes/b-sides of the 'straight' songs from this time. Eventually, the remix engineers got acknowledged as the "scientists" who mastered these mixing skills. If you buy both dub and reggae from the 70's, you can figure out who engineered which straight tracks by recognizing the beats, horns, bits of vocals, etc in the dub tracks (usually not just named after the original track). The key devices in making dub are the multitrack mixer/tape (mixdown setup) with space echoes on the auxilliary efx channels, so you can grab any sound in any channel of the mix and toss it into the space echo..cho..ho ho ho ho HO HO HOhhOhhOOHHOHH <- like that, where it feeds back! There were studios like Black Ark, Studio One, (can't recall more right now) that became the hubs (because of their mixer-consoles, revoxes, space echos and other post-production gear) through which those into dub attained status and skills in the studio. This could be compared to techno; where programming skills directly relate to your inclination to tweak machines on-the-fly and get the sound you spontaneously imagine. _Cut n' Mix_ covers Grandmaster Flash a little as well! According to the book, he had a degree in electronics and started street mixing by tapping the power from the neighborhood streetlights to run the sound system/turntables? There are a few good interviews in this book... - Solenoid On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Gonzi (Fresh) wrote:

quoted 41 lines This is from alt.culture:

> This is from alt.culture: > > dub > Afro-Caribbean psychedelic music of sound subtraction. In dub, > the > producer becomes the center of the Jamaican reggae experience, > shining an aural X-ray onto the sound to illuminate the bass and > drums at its skeletal framework; vocals are sparse, other > instruments > drop in and out dramatically, and sound effects are added > seemingly > at random. By 1970, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Joe Gibbs, Bunny Lee > and other producers' dub "versions" were staples of Jamaican > single > B-sides; King Tubby came next, raising further the level of > technical > sophistication. Today Adrian Sherwood, the Mad Professor, and > Jah Shaka, are dub's chief practitioners, while the music's > production tricks have become staples of house, techno, and > ambient recordings. > > But it's really more complicated than all that. You might want to check > this out: > > http://www.seacoast.com/~c/dub.htm > > Basically, you probably want to start with people like Lee Perry, King > Tubby, and Mad Professor and work from there as these are the > originators of the sound. There is an excellent profile of Lee Perry in > Grand Royal magazine #2 as well as a ridiculously extensive overview of > his work. > > happy hunting, > _____ > / ,-,_) > /,_) > (/ RESH > Live & Direct from the G-Spot, > Orange County, California, USA > http://www1.linkonline.net/fresh/fresh.htm >

solenoid@europa.com <------+