Thursday, June 12, 2008

Wild Search for a Definition of Dub

This is something you could easily have done yourself, but why don't you just sit back and relax and I save you a few mouse clicks...

This doesn't help much at all
It says somewhere that the Beatles were knighted...benighted more like...

This is more like it

The often wacky and out-of-whack wikipedia.org meets our approval for the most part in their succinct definition:

Dub is a form of music which evolved out of reggae in the late 1960s. The dub sound consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, emphasizing the drum and bass frequencies or 'riddim', adding extensive echo and reverb effects, and dubbing occasional snippets of lyrics from the original version.

The entry elaborates further, quite accurately, and then goes on to say:
'Dub' has become a term for almost any musical piece that "Utilizes the remixing of prerecorded sound as a mode of artistic expression." Taking the separate entities of a musical track and remixing them into a completely new selection has become a popular process, and can be found in a variety of genres ranging anywhere from hip-hop remixes and mash-ups to metal. Many listeners do not sense the Jamaican roots, and are unaware that this technique started with Jamaican rocksteady and reggae.
And in that paragraph lies the current dub dilemma as I perceive it. Is Dub just a studio technique or a musical genre (including the elements of particular rhythms and playing styles)? Answer me that? Let's see if this issue is addressed anywhere else...
I'll add to this if the mood takes me, but this is enough for now...

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