# AI Wiki - Music - Dub Music ## What Dub Is Dub is reggae taken apart at the mixing desk. Starting from a finished multitrack recording, the engineer removes most of the vocal, pushes the [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Bass and Drums|drums and bass]] to the front, drops instruments in and out, and throws fragments into echo and reverb. Wikipedia defines it as a style that "grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s", consisting mostly of remixes made by heavily manipulating an original recording. The key idea is that **the mixing desk is an instrument**: King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry, in Wikipedia's words, "looked upon the [mixing console] as an instrument". The performance happens during the mix, live, in real time, and two mixes of the same tape can sound completely different. For a player, dub matters for two reasons. It shows what a reggae arrangement is made of, because it strips it back to the parts. And it's the ancestor of the remix, of sampling-era production, and of genres from jungle and drum and bass to dubstep, all of which grew out of the same sound-system culture. ## Versions: Where Dub Came From Jamaican sound systems played exclusive one-off acetates ("dub plates" or "soft wax"). In 1968, sound-system operator Ruddy Redwood went to Duke Reid's studio to cut a dub plate of the Paragons' "On the Beach"; the vocal was accidentally left out, and the crowd loved singing over the instrumental. Producers quickly started putting instrumental mixes on the B-sides of singles, called **versions**. King Tubby, who also ran a sound system (Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi, from 1968), began swapping vocals and instrumentals in and out of his mixes. A version also gave deejays (the Jamaican word for MCs) a backing track to toast over, and producers a way to reuse a backing track for new songs. That reuse is [[AI Wiki - Music - Riddims|riddim]] culture; dub is its most experimental branch. ## The Key Figures **King Tubby** (Osbourne Ruddock, 1941–1989). An electronics repairman who opened a small studio in Waterhouse, Kingston, in 1971, first with a 4-track mixer, later with a custom-built 12-channel MCI desk. That desk had a filter he swept with a large knob (the "big knob"), and he added echo and reverb effects that were rare outside a studio at the time. Working from other producers' tapes, he mixed live: tracks "dropped out and brought back" as the tape played. Key records: Augustus Pablo's *King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown* (1976, with the single from 1974), *Dub from the Roots* (1974, Bunny Lee). **Lee "Scratch" Perry** (1936–2021). Producer and engineer who built the Black Ark studio behind his home in Kingston in 1973 with "rudimentary" gear: a four-track Soundcraft console, a TEAC tape recorder, an Echoplex delay and a Roland Space Echo. He layered sound effects and instruments across the four tracks and made dense, swirling mixes. *Blackboard Jungle Dub* (1973, mixed with King Tubby) is one of the first dub albums. The studio closed around 1979 (accounts of how it burned differ). **Scientist** (Hopeton Brown, born 1960). King Tubby's protégé, who started there winding transformer coils before mixing from the mid-1970s. As principal engineer at Channel One (from the end of the 1970s, on a 16-track desk), he mixed a run of dub albums with the Roots Radics band in 1980–82: *Scientist Meets the Space Invaders* and *Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires* (both 1981), *Scientist Encounters Pac-Man* (1982). Others: Errol Thompson (engineer of Derrick Harriott's *The Undertaker*, 1970, one of the first instrumental reggae albums), Herman Chin Loy (*Aquarius Dub*, 1973), Keith Hudson (*Pick a Dub*, 1974, often called the first thematic dub album), King (Prince) Jammy, and in the UK, later producers who took dub into post-punk and electronic music. ## The Techniques | Technique | What it does | Gear then | In a DAW today | |---|---|---|---| | **Drop-out** (mute) | Instruments vanish and return; often the bass drops out for a bar, then crashes back | Channel mute switches, faders | Mute automation, or clip gaps | | **Echo throw** | One word, snare hit or guitar chop is sent to the delay and repeats into the distance | Aux send to tape echo (Space Echo, Echoplex) | Automated send to a delay plug-in | | **Feedback** | Delay repeats build up, swirl and self-oscillate | Delay feedback knob, returns fed back | Feedback control, or the return routed back to its own send | | **Reverb** | Instruments placed in a big space for a moment | Spring or plate reverb on a send | Spring/plate reverb on a send | | **Filter sweeps** | The sound thins out or darkens and comes back | Tubby's "big knob" filter on the MCI desk | Automated high-pass/low-pass filter | | **Fragments** | A line of the vocal, a horn stab, then silence | Fader rides | Volume automation | Sound On Sound's guide to dub mixing gives concrete settings: put the delay on an aux send; set it to about 0.7 seconds with enough feedback for four or five repeats; set the time so the echoes fall in triplets against the beat; put an EQ or filter on the delay return to take out some high frequencies, so they don't build up in the feedback loop; insert a limiter on the return to protect your ears and speakers; and treat the reverb send as something you ride per instrument as the track plays. On mutes: "Learning to switch mutes a fraction before the beat is an art in itself." ## A Dub Mix, Bar by Bar A typical dub of an 8-bar minor riddim, as a mix plan. The chord loop is simple on purpose: the interest is in what drops in and out. ```chords {title: Dub mix plan for an Am–G riddim} {time: 4/4} {start_of_verse: Bars 1-8: full band} | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | {end_of_verse} {comment: All parts in, short vocal phrase on bar 1, thrown to the delay on its last word.} {start_of_verse: Bars 9-16: drum and bass} | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | {end_of_verse} {comment: Mute guitar, keys and vocal. Echo throw on the rim click of bar 12. Drop the bass out for bar 16.} {start_of_verse: Bars 17-24: return} | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | | [Am] / / / | [Am] / / / | [G] / / / | [G] / / / | {end_of_verse} {comment: Bass crashes back on bar 17. Guitar skank in with a spring-reverb splash on bar 17, beat 2. Filter sweep on the organ over bars 21-24.} ``` The same plan as a mute grid (X = on, . = muted): ``` Bar group: 1-8 9-15 16 17-20 21-24 Drums: X X X X X Bass: X X . X X Guitar: X . . X X Keys: X . . . X (filtered) Vocal: X* . . . . * = fragments + echo ``` ## Applying Dub in Home Recording You don't need a 1970s desk. Any DAW does it; the mindset is what matters. 1. **Record a riddim.** A drum loop in one drop, a bass line, a skank, a bubble (patterns in [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Bass and Drums]], [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Rhythm Guitar]] and [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Keyboards]]). Eight bars, looped. See [[AI Wiki - Music - Home Recording Basics]]. 2. **Set up two sends.** A delay (tempo-synced) and a spring or plate reverb. Put a high-cut filter and a limiter on the delay return. 3. **Pick delay times from the tempo.** One beat in milliseconds is 60,000 ÷ BPM. At 75 BPM: quarter note 800 ms, dotted eighth 600 ms, eighth 400 ms, quarter-note triplet about 533 ms. Triplet and dotted times make echoes fall between the beats, which is where dub's swirl comes from. 4. **Perform the mix.** Loop the 8 bars, hold the mute buttons and send knobs (a cheap [[AI Wiki - Music - Digital Pianos and MIDI|MIDI]] controller helps), and record your moves as automation in one pass, as Tubby did, rather than drawing them in. Do several passes; keep the best. 5. **Subtract first.** Most of a dub is removal. Start with everything in, then take away. The question for each bar is "what can go?", the same question good [[AI Wiki - Music - Arranging Songs|arranging]] asks. 6. **Watch the low end.** Keep reverb and delay off the bass and kick, or high-pass the returns, so the bass stays solid. For practice, a dub mix of your own riddim is also an excellent backing track: the drop-outs force you to keep time through bars where only the drums play ([[AI Wiki - Music - Playing with Backing Tracks]]). Recording your playing over it and listening back ([[AI Wiki - Music - Recording Yourself]]) shows quickly whether your skank rushes when the bass disappears. On guitar, a tape-echo or analog-delay pedal with tap tempo gets you the same throws live: a single skank or a short lick, then let the repeats fall ([[AI Wiki - Music - Guitar Effects]]). ## Listening List - **Lee Perry and King Tubby – *Blackboard Jungle Dub*** (1973) - **Augustus Pablo – *King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown*** (1976): melodica, Tubby's mixes - **King Tubby – *Dub from the Roots*** (1974) - **Keith Hudson – *Pick a Dub*** (1974) - **Scientist – *Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires*** (1981) Listen first for what is missing, then for where the echoes fall. ## Key Points - Dub is reggae remixed live at the desk: vocals removed, drum and bass up front, parts dropped in and out, echo and reverb thrown on fragments. - It grew from B-side instrumental "versions" (from 1968) made for sound systems and deejays. - King Tubby (custom MCI desk, filter, live drop-outs), Lee Perry (Black Ark, 4-track, tape echo) and Scientist (Channel One, Roots Radics) are the core figures. - Practical recipe: delay and reverb on sends, triplet or dotted delay times, filter and limiter on returns, mutes performed in real time. - Dub led to the remix and influenced jungle, drum and bass and dubstep. ## Open Questions - Which reverb units did King Tubby actually use (spring units are often mentioned in secondary sources but not in Wikipedia)? Michael Veal's book *Dub* (Wesleyan, 2007) is the likely source to check. - What was Tubby's "big knob" filter exactly (high-pass, band-pass, parametric)? Accounts differ. - How did Scientist's 16-track mixes at Channel One differ in technique from Tubby's 4-track era? ## References - Wikipedia, "Dub music": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music - Wikipedia, "King Tubby": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Tubby - Wikipedia, "Black Ark Studios": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ark_Studios - Wikipedia, "Scientist (musician)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist_(musician) - Andrea Terrano, "Dub Mixing", Sound On Sound (July 2007): https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/dub-mixing - Wikipedia, "Riddim": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddim ## Related - [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Music]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Riddims]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Bass and Drums]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Rhythm Guitar]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Reggae Keyboards]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Ska and Rocksteady]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Home Recording Basics]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Arranging Songs]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Guitar Effects]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Playing with Backing Tracks]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Recording Yourself]]