dub mixing techniques

Soma · Post by **Soma** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:40 pm

The biggest mistake I make and most beginners too is not leaving enough room to appreciate the long effects.

If you slam a long delay on something, take as much else out as possible. A good way to do this is to use the ping-pong or filter delay or a eq3 after a simple delay to limit the frequency of the tails and put an EQ3 on a group that all the dry tracks go to. then you can quickly eq out the tracks to make room while the effect is "in the space".

Space space space. Leave lots of space. Classically it's as much about subtraction as it is about delays and reverbs.

alin55 · Post by **alin55** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:57 pm

spend some time listening to some of the people at reggaedubwise

Meef hangs out there but also check out earlyworm, jah billah, el bib, the manor, yabass, manudub, irish moss and a load of other dubheads from around the world who are posting some really cool stuff.
all styles served up from roots dub to fucked up electronic steppers. all tunes streamable and most available for download. just work your way thru the top 10 and you'll see what I mean. Its a virtual university of dub............

- There's a forum there too where people will be only too glad to help out with production advice and tips. Just ask.
cheers
ali

Fernando Sancho · Post by **Fernando Sancho** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:22 pm

If anyones's interested...
I just posted a new mix called "uptown excursion" here:
http://dubvortex.podomatic.com/
It's a few different versions of the title track from "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown". It goes like this....
1. Jacob Miller-Baby I Love You So (the original version that the dub was based on)
2.Augustus Pablo-King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
3.Linval Thompson-Whip Them King
4.The Tino Corp Version

I did some delay and phaser stuff in it too.

and of course my regular podcast at:
http://dub.podomatic.com
...featuring all the finest dubs and versions from 1972-1985...
including a 1 hour and 25 minute Scientist mix (the Science of Scientist)
and a nearly 2-hour long Augustus Pablo mix (GIANT Augustus Pablo mix)

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:26 pm

we have a dub tutorial in lovely HD right here:
http://vimeo.com/860391

kingrad · Post by **kingrad** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:13 pm

I like the keep things sparse tip. When the man like Prince Fari boom "15 ROUNDS OF BOXING" you need going to need plenty of room

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:29 pm

Machinate wrote:we have a dub tutorial in lovely HD right here:
http://vimeo.com/860391

@ 2:55 - call me thick, but I never knew you could transpose/move around selected notes using the arrow keys like that... that was driving me nuts! Cheers Machinate

blakbeltjonez · Post by **blakbeltjonez** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:02 am

kingrad wrote:. A really nice effect was how even when the tracks were dropped out parts of them would bleed into the other tracks and you could just hear what was dropped out slightly with bvery low fidelity. I am not sure how to recreate that on a computer though but would love to know.

that is the classic Scientist signature when he was at Channel One studios..... the bleed from other instruments (on an open mic on a track with nothing going on - sessions were recorded all at once) sent through a reverb/echo.... or the talkback/off-mic intro into a 1 bar drum fill....

that would be kind of labor intensive to do authentically without a band recorded all at once - but you could take a microphone and place it way across a room, or in another room and re-record a rough mix of the part you want to be the "bleed". i did that once for a project i was working on and it worked reasonably well.

blakbeltjonez · Post by **blakbeltjonez** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:35 am

the other good classic old dub trick is to take the output of an echo that would ordinarily be sent to an FX return and bring it back on it's own channel on the mixer. this way, you can take a single repeat echo and have it interact with itself if you send the echo return back into the same effect send. it'll work with a reverb as well, but echo is the go-to effect.... even better would be a tape echo of some sort that gives you that nice tape saturation and degradation.

so, you can get more feedback if you turn up the echo send, AND, more importantly, you can use the channel EQ to get a much wider variety of sounds....... kind of a way of getting a Tubby's type of sound if you twiddle the EQ as you go along, since that's how he and his engineers did it (a very young Scientist worked for King Tubby's for a while, Jammy was responsible for most of KT's late 70's/early 80's mixing).

the EQ works as a frequency selective feedback for the echo, and you can waste all kinds of time tweaking the EQ as you throw different things through it....loads of fun!

"King Meets Rockers Uptown" and the other early stuff utilized an awful lot of the high pass filter that was on Tubby's console - a custom-built 16 channel/4 buss MCI console that was bought from Dynamic Studios with the help of Bunny Lee for Tubby (Bunny Lee was a friend and probably his biggest client). the "phasing" that you hear on many "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown" tracks is actually manual tweaking of the filter. it was a very popular effect and producers would specifically ask Tubby to use the effect on his mixes.

Meef Chaloin · Post by **Meef Chaloin** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:54 am

what id like to know is how tubby got that liquid sounding eq

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:58 am

^^^Nice description Mr Jones!

That's what I'm doing inside Live using hardware controllers.

Another chance to pimp my video (with dubbing bits) in glorious YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1siG6_Pd-Mg

blakbeltjonez · Post by **blakbeltjonez** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:31 am

Meef Chaloin wrote:what id like to know is how tubby got that liquid sounding eq

that would be the console, and probably the high pass filter... it went up to some ridiculous frequency like 7K...there were actually 2 filter types, i think.. one was a stepped switch one (on the inputs, or buss, maybe?), you can hear that a lot on the records, and the other one was adjustable with a pot.

it was custom built in the 60's for Dynamic Studios in Kingston by Jeep Harned's MCI in Ft. Lauderdale - unlike later MCI consoles, it was all discrete components and hand wired. (MCI also built the famous console that was in Criteria Studios in Miami at around the same time, responsible for many hits by The Bee Gees, Derek & The Dominos, Eric Clapton, and tons of others throughout the 70's and probably into the 80's).

here's a picture of a similar console made for King Studios in the mid 60's (James Brown's studio)

http://www.mcirecording.com/gallery.php ... =1&page=20

and here is a YouTube video of King Tubby's studio with the man like Jammy at the helm........ the console is indeed the very same ancient MCI that came out of Dynamic and went on to do "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown" and many, many other classic records. probably the same MCI tape deck too! Jammy has a different mixing style than Tubby's EQ tweaking, but it is rocking nonetheless...

standing in the back observing quietly is a young Scientist and some dread, and later on in the clip, the venerable A-1 uberproducer Bunny "Striker" Lee gets down and goes into epileptic mad skank mode!!! fucking hilarious....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDtlFmi ... re=related

it's probably a good thing they don't show the outside, Tubby's at that time was located in one of the worst areas of the Waterhouse neighborhood of west Kingston - many a mixing session was apparantly halted to take cover from rival JLP/PNP gang shootouts in the area. that was a brave film crew...

as a side note, i believe Tubb's old console now resides in the Experience museum in Seattle ..... any dub fans out that way had a look at it?

john gordon · Post by **john gordon** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:13 pm

oblique strategies · Post by **oblique strategies** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:16 pm

blakbeltjonez wrote: ...and later on in the clip, the venerable A-1 uberproducer Bunny "Striker" Lee gets down and goes into epileptic mad skank mode!!! fucking hilarious....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDtlFmi ... re=related

Great info, roots history ta ras! You remind me of my friend Mark Gorney, he's also a true reggae historian, he can even tell you what temperature it was when certain hits were recorded!

Bunny Lee had me rolling on the floor with his mad dance! Amazing!

And what appears out of the left-frame at the end is just too funny -the perfect capper!

oblique strategies · Post by **oblique strategies** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:20 pm

blakbeltjonez wrote:
there were actually 2 filter types, i think.. one was a stepped switch one (on the inputs, or buss, maybe?), you can hear that a lot on the records...

Ah yes, the stepped switch EQ. Very good call.

I'm going to have to hunt one down, a nice, vintage hardware one.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:26 pm

good luck with that - you may have to rip it out of a big vintage mixer, though!