making dub basslines

[Aloysius]

In dub music ...

Excellent.

[Fluffbomb]

I’ve learned loads from this guys videos


The biggest thing I’ve learnt is to spend more time working on the rhythmic interplay between the drums and the bass

[Spring Goose]

I’ve learned loads from this guys videos


The biggest thing I’ve learnt is to spend more time working on the rhythmic interplay between the drums and the bass

Thanks!

[kritikon]

Takes me forever hunting down good modern dub - obviously I like a lot of the older classic stuff, but there is some very good new (and new-ish) dub out there too. Deep Fried Dub seem to make a lot of remixes of other people alongside their own stuff - they make some pristine mixes with superb clarity IMO - better than most I've heard in that genre. Pitchblack go back to 2000 or so and AFAIK still going - a bit more electronic dance/dub hybrid but they still made and make some very dubby atmospheres.

I still do some of my own dub every now and then, and I definitely have to play in my basslines and the drumbeats. I tried programming rather than playing, and for me it just never worked. I often have to play in the beats as well, as opposed to my more usual programming beats. The bassline and the beats are generally very syncopated across each other in good dub (I guess any good reggae, really).
If you're doing some dub - I reckon you can do worse than to go back and have a deep listen to shitloads of the Bob Marley songs - so many of those have classic basslines bouncing off beats that when you listen hard, you notice they're also classic dub basslines/beats too. Almost any Marley bassline will sit in a dub track perfectly. And if nothing else on a summers day - listening to Bob is a pleasure anyway.

I'll hunt down some of the other decent electronic dubby stuff I have and link them...

[vurt]

seeing as we're doing so well...
great sporting moments in dub.

[thecontrolcentre]

seeing as we're doing so well...
great sporting moments in dub.

Great album. I love all Zion Trains early albums.
One of the best moments in my music career was when Neil Perch asked me how I made the bass so phat on the demo I sent them.

[kritikon]

You have to be selective with Salmonella dub though - they tend to throw out a lot of more D'n'B oriented stuff (not my cuppa tea) but when they make dub they do it very well.


Not one of their dub numbers - but they're damn fine live. Fat Freddy's Drop make the occasional dubby number based on classical Jamaican reggae, and you have to love a bandful of brass. Check out their album "Based on a True Story". Very melodic.

[vurt]

seeing as we're doing so well...
great sporting moments in dub.

Great album. I love all Zion Trains early albums.
One of the best moments in my music career was when Neil Perch asked me how I made the bass so phat on the demo I sent them.

awesome!!!
yeah they did some great stuff over the years.

saw them a good few times, played the nia centre in manc a lot, often with suns of arqa, being the west indian social club in moss side/hulme smoking bud was almost mandatory

[codec_spurt]

';lk

[kritikon]

I've not got much by the Red Eyes, but it's another cracking mix by Deep Fried Dub. I must look out for other stuff by them.

I quite like that dub is receptive of other influences - some world music style sampling in this one and I think it fits quite well.

[kritikon]

The Black Seeds - another band that when they go back to their reggae roots and do some dub, they do it well. But they too often veer off into funk. Seen them live a couple of times and last time it was mostly funk - I hated it. Can't stand funk. As Codec Spurt mentioned, funk's not far removed from reggae, but I really do loathe it for some reason.

[Hermetech Mastering]

Ryan Moore/Twilight Circus Dub Sound System is worth exploring for good modern Dub. Mostly played, recorded and mixed the old school Roots and Dub way. My fave Dub bassist is Errol "Flabba" Holt from the Roots Radics, a lot to be learned from studying his lines, even if you only apply it to synth bass etc.

[Spring Goose]

Thanks everybody for your contributions.

something i like



something else i like

[Aloysius]

Play Reggae Bass Like Flabba Holt

[Winstontaneous]

I've been playing bass for 36 years, for 10 years I worked with an Antiguan Rasta chef at restaurants, and I manned monitor boards and food booths at reggae/world music festivals. So I've put in my 10,000 hours of dub bass absorption/assimilation.

More than almost any other instrumental function, I believe that great reggae/dub bass playing is about channeling and transmuting cosmic spiritual energy into the audible realm. All great reggae/dub bass lines have an inevitablity to them...out of all the infinite possibilities out there, it's the great player's job to tap into that dimension and find THE ONE. And the mystery is how someone can do that song after song, night after night, year after year.

Beyond the greats already mentioned, Bill Laswell and Jah Wobble cannot be ignored. I had the privilege of seeing them play together in San Francisco a few years ago (with Josh Werner [from Matisyahu] on 3rd bass!) - truly remarkable how 3 guys playing Fender Precision basses through Ampeg SVTs could carve out their own distinct sonic territories. TBH Wobble's cowbell playing that night (for real!) was remarkably artful, finding the calm center in the eye of the hurricane.


...And it is Laswell who was entrusted with dub-ing the Marley master tapes, jeez, listen to Family Man erupting like a church organ in "Rebel Music":