Dub: From Acetate to Digital Dub as a musical concept vacillates among various definitions. The term itself exposes the conundrum upon which Bhabha and Hardt & Negri contest the margins of culture. Dub is often linked to the term version; it is also cited in relation to Reggae B-sides which at times were seen as instrumentals, but in the end, while dub vacillates among these terms, borrowing and informing them, a dub recording has come to be understood as a thing of its own. Dub got its name from the process of making acetate test plates. Recording engineers, before digital technology, created master disks plates known as test dubs as a necessary part of the process to master a recording. These plates basically were produced to test the levels of tracks, fading them in and out.8 As dancehall culture evolved in Kingston these plates became important for selectors (the equivalent of the Disc Jockey in pop culture today). And as previously mentioned, it was either, or perhaps both, King Tubby and Ruddy Redwood (by observing his engineer Byron Smith) who came to focus on the actual manipulation of sounds, including vocals as an art form of its own in terms of post-production.
Dub has a close relationship to versions also known as instrumentals, and commonly called B-Sides. What complicates their relationship is that dub recordings were not necessarily instrumental versions of a song, but alternate versions that would have some variation, overemphasizing the bass. Versions in many ways were one of Kingston?s interpretations of Remix as discourse, but which does not completely fit the concept of remixing as it is understood today. A version could be a combination of a cover, a variation of a song, or at times be a re-mix of original recordings along with new tracks on top. A song could have hundreds of versions. For example, Dick Hebdige explains that Wayne Smith?s ?Under mi Sleng Teeng? around October 1985 was estimated to have around 239 versions.9 These were variations that included adding instruments or adjusting levels on pre-recorded tracks, as well as what normally would be called covers. The concept of version becomes blurry very quickly and begins to cross over to the concept of the instrumental and eventually dub, all which came to be included in the genre of B-sides. Here is a the mythical story of how Redwood came to realize the potential of dub: According to Ruddy Redwood, owner of Ruddy?s Supreme, one day he was in Duke Reid?s studio when he heard the engineer Byron Smith play a tune by the vocal group the Paragons, except that Smith inadvertently forgot to bring up the vocal track in the mix, so that all that could be heard over the studio monitors was the instrumental track. [?] When he [Redwood] played the disc in the dancehall it caused a sensation, and immediately Ruddy cut his own versions?initially called ?instrumentals.?[?] He also got guitarist Lynn Taitt to play on many of them, thus consolidating their exclusivity.10 Here we notice a few key elements at play, first the text mentions instrumentals which were B-side recordings of original songs. And also, we notice that Redwood would add to his B-sides other elements like a guitar to make the alternate compositions interesting on their own, and in this way the instrumentals were also versions. Dub, then, carries the trace of these concepts. Only it emphasizes the manipulation of the sound in post-production. In this sense, Dub has a direct relationship with remixes of today. Dub compositions privilege the tracks as the starting point of creativity, as an activity of post-production. When Tubby was in the studio tweaking by ?accident? the knobs of the soundboard, as the story goes, he was by himself (whether he was the first to do this or not, he was definitely one of the first and certainly the best known). He was having a creative dialogue with the machines and the tapes. What he and others like him were doing was certainly informed by the practice of creating versions as described above. Certainly some would argue that to claim what a B-side was or is, whether an instrumental, a version or a dub in the end may be up for argument, because it becomes obvious just in the brief history outlined that these terms were intimately intertwined. My argument is that dub, as a musical genre, however, rose above the other concepts because of the creative possibility that it provided, as well as the practical efficiency it gave to the sound engineer. These elements are quite relevant in ?do it yourself? (DIY) culture today. The creative drive behind dub was successful and has become assimilated into what is known as remix culture for two reasons: one, it allows the individual to thrive alone in his studio with proper sound equipment, to then quickly disseminate the composition in the community, and often allow others to create other versions of the composition. Dub was the first activity in electronic music and Remix Culture to make the most of individual input in large part dependent on technologies of post-production, while also making it efficiently available to others for further development, and input, when the time was appropriate.11 To further elaborate, the engineer did not need anyone, just the recorded tracks. No one else, like a performer who would normally want to have retakes, had to be around. It was only the creativity of the engineer that was primarily at play in dub. And if someone came in to record at a later point, then, that person had to listen to the producer of the track and live up to the expectations of what was already recorded. This further reasserted the enslavement of the performer to the machine: the rupture that musicians had been coping with since the conception of the phonograph.12 A pivotal element that would become more evident as dub culture grew is the lowering cost of producing your own music, which today is available to anyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet. Accesability, then, has enabled dub to become an influence in just about all facets of electronic music. Currently, anyone can dabble with some form of creative production whether it is music or visual manipulation with tools often developed in open source communities. Dub marked a moment when the producer and/or music engineer overtly became not only a musician but a conceptual artist focused on selectivity. This is the legacy of Lee ?Scratch? Perry, who wore many hats including, gofer, promoter, engineer, producer, and performer.13 Dub created a space where individuals who enjoyed playing live with the soundboard could conceive doing it in front of a crowd, just like they would do it alone in the studio. This is the concept behind some performances by Mad Professor, a pioneer of dub in England, who tours and performs with his actual studio on stage.14 Subversion and the Threshold Based on what has been noted, it can be argued that a dub recording is not an instrumental, nor a version, but both and neither at the same time. It vacillates, dabbles, and questions its definition as well as those of version and instrumental. The pioneers of this genre actually experimented with tweaking pre-recorded material. In this sense dub explored elements later found in the Selective Remix, as I?ve defined elsewhere: [The Selective Remix] consists of adding or subtracting material from the original song. This is the type of remix which has turned DJs into popular producers in the music mainstream. One of the most successful selective remixes is Eric B. & Rakim?s ?Paid in Full,? remixed by Coldcut in 1987. For this song Coldcut produced two remixes; the most popular version not only extended the original recording, following the tradition of the club mix, but it also subtracted some sections as well as added new sounds, while always maintaining the ?essence? of the song intact.15 With the concept of selection as the foundation of its creativity, dub is different from the concept of an instrumental in that unlike an instrumental, a dub composition will have traces of vocals, many times half a sentence that gets lost in a reverb that resonates for several bars. Dub compositions do not allow the listener to get lost in complete abstraction. It over emphasizes the bass, and brings forward all other instruments, freeing the drums for experimentation (something that would become the focus in rhythm science, particularly Drum ?n? Bass), and then turns the vocals into riffs that come in and out, similar to horns in actual songs. The riffs complement the exploration of the more abstract elements in the composition. A dub composition rides the threshold, that liminal space that Bhabha and Hardt & Negri contest. Dub finds itself in-between complete abstraction which would be found in pure instrumentation, and the more concrete narratives found in lyrics. Dub deliberately subverts speech, presents it muffled, thus pointing to the power of spoken word as a form of representation. It negates speech, unexpectedly making it much more powerful, by showing its limited role within an almost instrumental composition. Dub privileges the bass line and guitar riffs, but without the lyrics coming in and out in similar fashion to a horn section, the song would simply fall apart; the average person would be prone to finding it boring.16 Dub becomes a simulacrum, a cave, where one sees the shadows of the story upfront, but always undefined. One senses the narrative, but this one never completely appears. If one knows the original tune, then one can project the lyrics, and have an allegorical experience; if not, then, one may try to figure out what the actual lyrics may say. This is the case with songs like ?Moses Dub? by the Revolutionaries, or ?Satta Dread Dub? by Aggrovators and Kin Philip. They begin with instrumental intros, guitars on top of the over-emphasized bass line, and then a break follows with a reverb of the last note played on the instruments; and then the lyrics come in. The beginning of a phrase, here, then gets lost, then a reverb, and out again, all instruments drop except for the bass, then a reverb and from the back the lyrics come on top to then get lost in an echo, and so on. This approach varies immensely and there are too many other groups to name, but as is common knowledge to all Jamaican music lovers, other acts like Prince Jammy and Perry?s Upsetters made the most of these few studio effects.17 This in-betweeness, this inability to completely be a version or an instrumental, while also comfortably relying on both for cultural dissemination, is what has allowed dub to have great expressive power. It has also turned it into an appealing model for music genres that have followed it. Like dub those other movements did not develop in the center, but in the threshold in that liminal cultural space, the periphery where things can be redefined; that space around which Bhabha and Hardt & Negri contest their positions. Traces of dub are quite common and taken for granted when a DJ tweaks knobs and levels to create sound effects on the fly. This excites the dancers on the floor, and it is a direct act coming from the early studio days of dub experimentation, when artists like Perry and Tubby would tweak again and again the same tracks. Plastikman, Juan Atkins, Timo Maas, Paul Oakenfold among many other contemporary DJ stars use the DJ mixing board following principles first explored alone in a studio, in Kingston. Today, the tweaking of knobs is part of lucrative spectacles developed around DJ Culture to fill up arenas. |
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