Dubstep Explained
Dubstep Explained
Dear Granny,
I am writing you this letter to answer in detail a question you asked me over the Christmas break. My dad says your radio is fixed now but if you’re still confused by what the sounds it was producing were, and their purpose, then read on.
The rhythmic beeps and growls being produced by you radio were a genre of modern music, called “dubstep”. It all started in South London in the 1990’s, when the working class youth began experimenting with combinations of house music and industrial reggae (we’ll talk about those some other day). A dark, intriguing, “two-step” rhythm instrumental genre was created, nicknamed “dubstep,” because it was an electro-house take on two-step dance music, and creating a dubstep track involved heavy use of a studio recording technique known as over-dubbing (recording sounds over each other to make it sound like they are all playing at once, but are in fact just different tracks layered over each other). Over-dubbed two-step was shortened to dubstep, and it remained a cult genre until after the year 2005, when artists like Skrillex and Bassnectar became popular through YouTube.
Dubstep rhythms are usually syncopated, meaning the emphasis is on the offbeat. The tempo is nearly always in the range of 138–142 beats per minute, with a clap or snare usually inserted every third beat in a bar. In its early stages, dubstep was often more percussive, with more influences from two-step drum patterns. A lot of producers were also experimenting with tribal drum samples, influenced by jungle-dance music produced in Africa which was also quite popular with the adolescents of South London.
One characteristic of certain types of dubstep is the wobble bass, often referred to as the “wub”, where an extended bass note is manipulated rhythmically. This style of bass is typically produced by a low-frequency oscillator (a machine built from scraps of old speakers rigged to an electric charge through a DJ’s sound board) being
Dear Granny,
I am writing you this letter to answer in detail a question you asked me over the Christmas break. My dad says your radio is fixed now but if you’re still confused by what the sounds it was producing were, and their purpose, then read on.
The rhythmic beeps and growls being produced by you radio were a genre of modern music, called “dubstep”. It all started in South London in the 1990’s, when the working class youth began experimenting with combinations of house music and industrial reggae (we’ll talk about those some other day). A dark, intriguing, “two-step” rhythm instrumental genre was created, nicknamed “dubstep,” because it was an electro-house take on two-step dance music, and creating a dubstep track involved heavy use of a studio recording technique known as over-dubbing (recording sounds over each other to make it sound like they are all playing at once, but are in fact just different tracks layered over each other). Over-dubbed two-step was shortened to dubstep, and it remained a cult genre until after the year 2005, when artists like Skrillex and Bassnectar became popular through YouTube.
Dubstep rhythms are usually syncopated, meaning the emphasis is on the offbeat. The tempo is nearly always in the range of 138–142 beats per minute, with a clap or snare usually inserted every third beat in a bar. In its early stages, dubstep was often more percussive, with more influences from two-step drum patterns. A lot of producers were also experimenting with tribal drum samples, influenced by jungle-dance music produced in Africa which was also quite popular with the adolescents of South London.
One characteristic of certain types of dubstep is the wobble bass, often referred to as the “wub”, where an extended bass note is manipulated rhythmically. This style of bass is typically produced by a low-frequency oscillator (a machine built from scraps of old speakers rigged to an electric charge through a DJ’s sound board) being