INFINITY DUB SELECTION: PRINCE JAMMY / KING TUBBY / SCIENTIST

Details

Description

Dub is a musical style that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is commonly considered a subgenre of reggae, though it has developed to extend beyond that style.[1] Generally, dub consists of remixes of existing recordings[2] created by significantly manipulating the original, usually through the removal of vocal parts, emphasis of the rhythm section (the stripped-down drum-and-bass track is sometimes referred to as a riddim), the application of studio effects such as echo and reverb, and the occasional dubbing of vocal or instrumental snippets from the original version or other works.[3]

Dub was pioneered by recording engineers and producers such as Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, Hopeton "Scientist" Brown, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Errol Thompson and others[1] beginning in the late 1960s. Augustus Pablo, who collaborated with many of these producers, is credited with bringing the distinct-sounding melodica to dub, and is also among the pioneers and creators of the genre. Similar experiments with recordings at the mixing desk outside the dancehall scene were also done by producers Clive Chin and Herman Chin Loy.[4] These producers, especially Ruddock and Perry, looked upon the mixing console as an instrument, manipulating tracks to come up with something new and different. The Roland Space Echo was widely used by dub producers in the 1970s to produce echo and delay effects.[5]

Dub has influenced many genres of music, including rock, most significantly the subgenre of post-punk and other kinds of punk,[6] pop,[7] hip hop,[6] post-disco, and later house,[8] techno,[8] ambient,[8] electronic dance music,[9] and trip hop.[8] Dub was a basis for the genres of jungle and drum and bass, as well as a major influence on dubstep, with its orientation around bass and utilization of audio effects.[10][11][12] Traditional dub has survived, and some of the originators such as Mad Professor continue to produce new material.

Name
The use of the word dub in a recording context originated in the late 1920s with the advent of "talking pictures" and referred to adding a soundtrack to a film; it is an informal abbreviation of the word double. Over the next 40 years or so the term found its way into audio recording in general, often in the context of making a copy of a recording on another tape or disc.

It was in this sense that the term was first used in the Jamaican recording industry: new recordings were often initially copied onto one-off acetate discs, known colloquially as soft wax[13] or dub and later as dubplates, for exclusive use by sound system operators; playing a song as an exclusive recording on a sound system was a good way for a producer to test the potential popularity of a recording before committing to the pressing of hundreds or thousands of copies of singles for retail sale. Initially, these acetates would simply be the standard recording of a song that was yet to be released on a single; around 1968–69, however, they started to be exclusive mixes with some or all of the vocal mixed out. Producer Bunny Lee notes:[citation needed]

Yeah... it was really VERSION those days – it wasn't dub yet beca' it was jus' the riddim. One day an incident: Ruddy's (sound system operator Ruddy Redwood) was cutting dub, an when it start, Smithy (recording engineer Byron Smith) look like 'im start bring on the voice and Ruddy's say: no, mek it run and 'im take the whole backing track off it. 'Im say, alright, run it again, and put in the voice. 'Im didn't do no more like that yet.
After describing how Redwood then had his deejay first play the vocal version and then the instrumental version at a dance, and how popular this novelty was, Lee continued:

The next day now, 'im start it and just bring in the riddim. Or... down in the tune, bring a little voice and drop it out again... yes. Ruddy use to handle that part himself, drop in the voice and drop it out. All Smithy do was cut the dub...[13]
Jamaican soundsystems had always sought exclusive recordings from their origins in the late 1940s. However, when they played American rhythm & blues records through the 1950s, these were simply records that rival sound system operators didn't have and couldn't identify. This progressed from the late 1950s onwards via having local musicians record a song exclusively for play on a particular sound system to having exclusive mixes of a song on acetate, which became possible with the arrival of multi-track recording in Jamaica. From the concept of a version with some or all of the vocal mixed out dubbed to acetate, the novelty-hungry sound system scene rapidly drove the evolution of increasingly creative mixes in the first few years of the 1970s. Within a few years the term dub became attached to these regardless of whether they were on an exclusive acetate or "dubplate". As the use of the term widened and evolved, Bob Marley and the Wailers used the order "dub this one!" in live concerts to mean, "BASS HEADS"