Talk:Dub music

Dub poetry
Is dub poetry a big enough topic to have it's own page, or would a discussion fit better here? Zeimusu 14:08, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC)

Behold the a-answer Htaccess

New Zealand
Surprised not to see New Zealand featured in this article. Dub and reggae is huge part of their culture.

Electronic music
I've never seen dub as "electronic music" - it's usually some combination of drums, bass, guitar, piano, organ, horns and vocals. Wikipedia's article on Electronic music (which includes a section on dub which I similarly don't think belongs there) begins, "Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments and circuitry-based music technology." Give or take the occasional presence of synthesizers in some reggae and dub records from circa 1974, dub doesn't usually contain electronic musical instruments, let alone digital ones, which didn't arrive in reggae until the 1980s. So presumably the definition of dub as electronic music is based on the third element in that sentence, circuitry-based music technology. Which covers a huge multitude of sins but in this context presumably refers to the use of reverb, echo, mixing desk channels, overdubbed sound effects etc. But ALL these elements are used to a greater or lesser extent in other, non-dub reggae recordings, and much other music that is not "electronic", just less ostentatiously than in dub. Even though I happily accept the description of the likes of Lee Perry and others "using the recording studio as an instrument", it's only a matter of degree. So where do you draw the line regarding when wild use of the mixer and on-board effects makes a music electronic? Surely by this definition, anything recorded through a mixing desk is electronic music. And that's before we get into the circuitry in instrument amplifiers ...

For me, electronic music starts with electronically generated sounds - i.e. synthesized, whether analog or digital. Dub (at least before reggae started going digital) is electric music, certainly, but not electronic. I'm not going to remove this reference but unless someone can come up with a good argument for what makes a dub version electronic while the vocal cut of the same tune on the A-side, recorded and mixed in the same studio, isn't, it really ought to go.Freewheeling frankie (talk) 17:11, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

No takers? If no one can give a well-argued reason why "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown" by Augustus Pablo is electronic music when "Baby I Love You So" by Jacob Miller isn't, the description of dub as "electronic music" should be removed from this article (and by extension the section on dub in the article on electronic music should be removed also) because it makes no sense to me. The two tracks I mention - dub and vocal mixes of the same recording - feature the same instrumentation and vocalist and were mixed in the same studio on the same equipment by the same engineer, the only distinction is the style of mixing, and I don't see how a "style of mixing" can make a recording electronic. Either both of them are electronic - and by extension nearly all popular music is because it's passed through a mixing desk - or neither is. There isn't an electronic instrument anywhere near it. The only electronic equipment used is the mixing desk, which is used on both versions. Note that I am not saying that NO dub is electronic, merely that dub as a genre is not electronic by definition.Freewheeling frankie (talk) 18:18, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Evolution of dub as a subgenre (1970s)
I've just re-written a short paragraph in this section about the album "The Undertaker" by Derrick Harriott & The Crystalites. The previous wording asserted that it was the first "strictly instrumental reggae album". This isn't true - at the very least the Upsetters entirely instrumental (give or take spoken intros) "Return Of Django" album came out several months earlier in late 1969 and may not be the only one to do so, or even the first itself; I changed the wording to reflect this. However, I wonder if the person that added this para included "The Undertaker" because it was the first album of instrumental versions of already existing rhythms, which would very much justify its mention here, but didn't make it clear; this certainly doesn't apply to "Return Of Django" where most of the tracks were originally recorded as organ instrumentals. If anyone is more knowledgeable than me about the Crystalites album and whether it is indeed the first instrumental reggae album to feature rhythms previously used for vocal tracks, please re-write this section accordingly and reference if possible.

It might also be worth citing some of the more notable early version sides that pointed the way towards full-blown dub but only came out on single B-sides in this section, such as Lee Perry's "The Tackro" (credited to 1st, 2nd & 3rd Generation Upsetters), a stripped-down drums and bass remix of his vocal version of "Yakety Yak" with echo effects and Perry's distinctive vocalese that came out as early as late 1969 - I can only find blog mentions that reference this but hopefully someone knows better sources. Restricting mentions to albums isn't enough because they only reflected innovations that had already taken place on single B-sides.Freewheeling frankie (talk) 17:54, 10 April 2021 (UTC)