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How To Mix It Up Dub Style
Lee Perry, right? A stoner genius hunched over a giant 1960's mixing desk, concocting a dizzy swirl of reggae loops and effects? If you wanna mix it up inna rub-a-dub style, you don't need a huge mixing console and an even larger bag of herb. You can do it at home, now pass over the chalice and read on!!
Well, that's the stereotype. But you don't need 24 channels of vintage hardware to get involved; you can take some of theses techniques for your own beats and use them to create great dub effects and styles to bring extra flavour to your productions. There are plenty of reasons why you might want to do this - whether to give new life to your arrangements or to use a whole new branch of effects to lift your tracks. So let's go in on a mixing style so popular it spawned a whole culture...
Dub mixing can really be broken down into two main aspects; there's the arrangement, and then the treating of individual sounds. If you listen to some classic dub reggae you'll notice immediately that it's a very sparse arrangement; dominated by the bass groove, the drums, and the producer's choice of embellishments over the top. These embellishments make up the other part of dub mixing; they'll be heavily effected snippets of vocal, piano, guitar and so on, that use the mixing desk like another instrument.
How does all this help you? Well, you can look at the way the bass-led arrangements are used for inspiration on your own tracks - garage and dubstep have been doing so in fine style for several years. But more importantly, it's all about the effects. Get creative with these and you can summon enough musical interest to carry a whole track...
Delay is one of the most common effects. You can put it on anything but try adding an auxiliary send from your drum buss, or one of your melody lines. Then send a signal to the delay and see how the effect floats into the track. To make it more interesting, set the delay time so that it doesn't exactly sync with the tempo of your track, and filter out the tops and low frequencies from the delay return to give a more authentic tape vibe. If you turn the delay feedback up, you'll quickly create a wall of delayed distortion - turn the 'send' down so you're just left with the effect, then you can turn the delay fader down so that it fades away gently.
Try also sending the delay return back into the input of the delay to create a feedback loop - this is very easy with a modern DAW; in Logic you can simply take a send from Buss 1 and send to Buss 1 - again, this will rapidly create a wall of feedback and so you'll need to be careful with the send levels! It may be worth putting a limiter into the chain so that you don't overload anything (our ears in particular). If you then mute the source channel you'll again have a crazy delay effect replacing the original sound, while nudging the delay time will also alter the pitch and speed of the delayed signal.
Reverb is the other big dub effect, and the basic idea is similar in principle; set up an occasional send to an effected buss. This is particularly effective on snare drums or vocal hits; send it for just one beat, and you'll hear the snare which was up close and present, suddenly zoom off into space. Alternatively, send it for a longer time and experiment with the pre-delay time on your reverb to create a rhythmic, pulsing sound.
You can then get busy putting new effects on the effect returns. Put a delay on a reverb return to make an even bigger and more spacious effect, and try phasers and flangers on the reverb while you're at it. Anything is fair game - whatever you can think of to make the effects even more crazy. At this point you'll start to see why dub arrangements need to be so sparse; effects can get so huge you need room for them in the mix, and they would clash badly with a full complement of vocals, melodic elements and harmonies. In the same way, it should also be apparent why you'd only be sending a short snippet of sound to the effects busses - it can quickly build and dominate the whole track.
The comment about using the mixer like a musical instrument may also make more sense now; with so many variables, sends, returns and feedback loops, you need to keep close control on what you're sending to where. It takes practise, and is not really possible in real-time with just a mouse, so most DAW users will make use of automation instead.
A much more fun way, however, is to assign the important parameters on a good midi controller, so you can let the track play through and record your controller movements as you jam out an effects track over the top. This will take a little while to get the hang of, but it's a lot of fun and will help you see the dub mixing process as more musical than just banging a load of effects on a drum track!
As we can see, dub mixing is something that can look complex to begin with, but it offers you a whole new way of looking at arrangements and a new sonic palette where effects are concerned too. So there's no reason not to get involved, start making some crazy effects chains, and seeing where it can take you!
Well, that's the stereotype. But you don't need 24 channels of vintage hardware to get involved; you can take some of theses techniques for your own beats and use them to create great dub effects and styles to bring extra flavour to your productions. There are plenty of reasons why you might want to do this - whether to give new life to your arrangements or to use a whole new branch of effects to lift your tracks. So let's go in on a mixing style so popular it spawned a whole culture...What is Dub?
Dub mixing can really be broken down into two main aspects; there's the arrangement, and then the treating of individual sounds. If you listen to some classic dub reggae you'll notice immediately that it's a very sparse arrangement; dominated by the bass groove, the drums, and the producer's choice of embellishments over the top. These embellishments make up the other part of dub mixing; they'll be heavily effected snippets of vocal, piano, guitar and so on, that use the mixing desk like another instrument.
How does all this help you? Well, you can look at the way the bass-led arrangements are used for inspiration on your own tracks - garage and dubstep have been doing so in fine style for several years. But more importantly, it's all about the effects. Get creative with these and you can summon enough musical interest to carry a whole track...
Delay!
Delay is one of the most common effects. You can put it on anything but try adding an auxiliary send from your drum buss, or one of your melody lines. Then send a signal to the delay and see how the effect floats into the track. To make it more interesting, set the delay time so that it doesn't exactly sync with the tempo of your track, and filter out the tops and low frequencies from the delay return to give a more authentic tape vibe. If you turn the delay feedback up, you'll quickly create a wall of delayed distortion - turn the 'send' down so you're just left with the effect, then you can turn the delay fader down so that it fades away gently.
Try also sending the delay return back into the input of the delay to create a feedback loop - this is very easy with a modern DAW; in Logic you can simply take a send from Buss 1 and send to Buss 1 - again, this will rapidly create a wall of feedback and so you'll need to be careful with the send levels! It may be worth putting a limiter into the chain so that you don't overload anything (our ears in particular). If you then mute the source channel you'll again have a crazy delay effect replacing the original sound, while nudging the delay time will also alter the pitch and speed of the delayed signal.
Reverb
Reverb is the other big dub effect, and the basic idea is similar in principle; set up an occasional send to an effected buss. This is particularly effective on snare drums or vocal hits; send it for just one beat, and you'll hear the snare which was up close and present, suddenly zoom off into space. Alternatively, send it for a longer time and experiment with the pre-delay time on your reverb to create a rhythmic, pulsing sound.
Stack Up The FX!
You can then get busy putting new effects on the effect returns. Put a delay on a reverb return to make an even bigger and more spacious effect, and try phasers and flangers on the reverb while you're at it. Anything is fair game - whatever you can think of to make the effects even more crazy. At this point you'll start to see why dub arrangements need to be so sparse; effects can get so huge you need room for them in the mix, and they would clash badly with a full complement of vocals, melodic elements and harmonies. In the same way, it should also be apparent why you'd only be sending a short snippet of sound to the effects busses - it can quickly build and dominate the whole track.
Time to Get Hands On
The comment about using the mixer like a musical instrument may also make more sense now; with so many variables, sends, returns and feedback loops, you need to keep close control on what you're sending to where. It takes practise, and is not really possible in real-time with just a mouse, so most DAW users will make use of automation instead.
A much more fun way, however, is to assign the important parameters on a good midi controller, so you can let the track play through and record your controller movements as you jam out an effects track over the top. This will take a little while to get the hang of, but it's a lot of fun and will help you see the dub mixing process as more musical than just banging a load of effects on a drum track!
As we can see, dub mixing is something that can look complex to begin with, but it offers you a whole new way of looking at arrangements and a new sonic palette where effects are concerned too. So there's no reason not to get involved, start making some crazy effects chains, and seeing where it can take you!