# How to Make Dubstep I Find Tolerable



## kamunt (Jun 5, 2012)

*How to Make Dubstep Tolerable*

Anyone who knows me knows that I pretty much despise dubstep. Hell, it's in my "name" section on my FA. And I wrote a rather negative review of Korn's dubstep album (also on my FA). But I'm here today to say that, while I dislike dubstep, it IS possible to make dubstep that I not only find tolerable, but even _enjoyable_. Obviously, this is all subjective, but my background as a (electronic) musician has kind of helped me out with these choices. I'll link to all the songs on Youtube so I don't lag this page down, as well as give a dubiously brief explanation as to why I actually like the linked song. I'll give five total. You are all free to disagree with me, and I promise I'm not trying to troll anyone. Also, *tl;dr warning*. Just listen to the songs if you want, I just want to explain myself.

Part 1: Mt. Eden feat. MC Woody - "What's Below"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxGttuUaaUw

I was hooked from the opening. The sweeping synths immediately appealed to my love of atmospheric music. Then the vocals came in and added to the very tense feeling that the song created. (Having the lyrics helped.) Then the synth comes in, the moment I feared...but then something happened. Specifically, nothing happened. The atmospheric feel of the song didn't suddenly shift, dropping everything that had built up in favor of wubs and wobs. The bass synth serves as a counterpoint to the pad, creating chaos while still miraculously fitting the feel that the song had already set up. This was the very first dubstep song that I found I liked. I don't remember who linked me to these, but the next two were linked by the same person. I still have to thank whoever linked me these, because these songs appeal to my everything.

Part 2: Fenech-Soler - "Lies (Doctor P Remix)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lF-nYZh_sM

The poppy feeling of the intro was rather infections, with the arpeggiating(sp?) synth and other sounds giving a very positive feel to the song. I was again rather fearful of the inevitable "drop", but to my very pleasant surprise, what I heard...ended up hardly being dubstep at all. Instead, it's surprisingly musical and synth-driven half-time electro house or something. The bass is just a regular bassline, with no wubs or wobs to be found. While I had no problem with said wubwobs in the previous song, this song completely tossed them out in favor of creating an energetic and wall-of-sound-esque production. It's like if happy hardcore were slowed down to a crawl, happy hardcore being a very fruity guilty pleasure of mine.

Part 3: Dubba Jonny - "All In"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujmeEfnLfoQ

This one even comes complete with a music video! Europe, go figure. The energetic house intro had me bouncing in my seat, and thanks to the previous two songs, I had my hopes up. Then the drop came in...and my hopes died. A little bit. The percussion was very active, with cymbal crashes all over the place to simulate an actual drum kit. Then the vocals dove back in, along with the piano, modulating the percussion. The song kept changing, changing and flowing, even going back to normal-time while keeping the bass synth around, and even adding new synths before slowing back down to half-time. That's what makes this song so great to me, despite the wobbles--it's how the song moves. It goes places, it moves and never settles for one tempo, and instead of sounding confused, the song knows exactly what it's doing and keeps the listener on their toes while never once dropping the energy. This song is probably the oddest of all the songs I'll list here because of just how it's structured.

The next two songs I found on my own through some source or another.

Part 4: Korn feat. 12th Planet - "Way Too Far"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6eK6M2fQdA

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I reviewed this album and gave it a bad review, but that's not to say that there aren't songs off the album that are actually good. Shockingly, even Korn, in their terribly decayed state, can pull out something awesome every now and then. I don't know if this is their fault or the fault of 12th Planet (and apparently Flinch and Downlink), but this song just...blows me away. Again pretty much dropping the wubs altogether, this uses the heavy metal-like percussion to its advantage while Jonathon Davis croons and growls over it all, complimented by guitars, and then actually creating atmosphere with the chorus. It's melodic, it's moving, and even the not particularly groundbreaking lyrics somehow have more gravitas to them as a result. And I can't even understand the growled lyrics in the bridges, but it sounds _awesome_. Then the break happens, bringing in the wubs, but so much more than that--it modulates _everything_. The beat goes nuts, the synth goes nuts, sliced up and all over the place. The song does more than just sound cool--it paints an image. I can see in my mind, the singer going nuts, taking everything way too far just like in the chorus. Raging, breaking things and having an emotional outburst. Then, just as suddenly as it begins, it all fades away, leaving only the haunting "ooh"s, to show the aftermath of it all--the vocalist looking at what he's done, and just how his actions have affected his life and the lives of those around him. All that without any words. Everything about this song hits its target with me. If only the rest of the album could've followed this song's example, Korn could've truly shown just how amazing a mash-up of two genres can be.

Last but certainly not least, and my personal favorite.

Part 5: Raveyards - "Remember"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7xjJm8bUEA

Another music video, which in my eyes is exactly as impressive as the song it accompanies. Please, take the three-and-a-half minutes necessary to listen to this song, if you listen to none of the others. I can't even call this dubstep. It's something...completely different. All it really has in common with other dubstep songs is the slow tempo and grungy synths. Everything else...it's like they've created an entirely new genre, which I've tentatively titled progressive dubstep, or "progstep", if you will.  The best way I can describe this song is if Skrillex grew up on the Backstreet Boys, had an illegitimate child with Aphex Twin and then lost all custody rights. ...The analogy made sense to me at the time. There are vocals, but completely different from the vocals in all the other songs I've linked. They're almost...taunting, in a way, with a very disturbing tone to the lyrics. "No one knows and now I've found you / You can scream 'There's nothing here'". The song, much like "All In", has a direction to it, tense throughout the entire first two-and-a-half minutes of it, the grungy, noisy synth adding to the chaos, and the melodic breaks between verses building even more tension for the choruses. Then the second chorus ends, and everything hushes...and slowly builds up...then explodes into an intense, chaotic, driving, unstoppable force of sound. It commands my attention, forcing me to pay attention and pick up every sound you are assaulted with. Like I said, I've never heard anything like this before, and never before have I heard a song so slow have so much gravitas to it. After playing the video about nine more times, I immediately bought the MP3 from Amazon. Did I mention I love this song?

So, yeah. I'm hoping I'm not alone on an island here. You all are welcome to disagree with me, but it's still these five songs specifically that have given me hope for the still-evolving genre of dubstep. It's changed a lot in the two-ish decades it's been around, that's for sure, and songs like these show that it's continuing to change as people push the envelope and break the boundaries of genres and conventional musical structures to create truly unique sounds that hopefully other artists in the genre(s) will start to follow suit (and hopefully with success). Sorry for the tl;dr. I can appreciate the typical wubstep/brostep for what it is--LCD-grade dance music. But what is much more satisfying to me is music that has real musicality to it, not just music made with the intent for people to dance to. Not that I don't love certain genres of dance music, don't get me wrong, I'm not _that_ pretentious. 

(Bonus links: For an example on how I believe you should _not_ make dubstep, see Deadmau5's "Raise Your Weapon" and this "remix" of "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap. The former because it entirely doesn't understand how to create a shift in mood or use a breakdown effectively, and the latter because it's exploitative and downright lazy.)


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## Batty Krueger (Jun 5, 2012)

Whew no skrillex or flux pavilion.  Check out some darkstep by Dthjnk


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## kamunt (Jun 5, 2012)

Well, yeah. Skrillex is basically my least-favorite artist in...well in general. LMFAO is more enjoyable to me than Mr. Sonny Moore is. But that's just me, and like I said, anyone is more than welcome to like what they like. And I think Flux Pavilion is overrated, personally. But then again, I think Daft Punk is overrated, too, but I think that has more to do with overexposure than anything about their music.


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## Batty Krueger (Jun 5, 2012)

Omg lmfao,  I have to hear that shit all day at work.  Among various other crap music.  At least lmfaos song are silly and just for fun.


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## Randolph (Jun 6, 2012)

I'm just glad you actually know what dubstep is, and didn't assume it was all just wubs and drops.


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## kamunt (Jun 6, 2012)

I think LMFAO is still pretty damaging to pop music, but they aren't Soulja Boy or Wiz Khalifa's levels of badness yet. And hey, there was an LMFAO remix WITH a drop in it that made me both like my first drop and my first LMFAO song. Check it.

As for knowing what dubstep is, well, it's my job as a hipster wannabe to know as much as I can about music I can't stand. I'm still working on Dirty South hip-hop. It just shocks me how many fans of dubstep had no idea that dubstep came before Skrillex, and sounded remarkably different, having far more in common with actual dub music than what it is now. The frequency ranges of your typical brostep song are typically in the mid-low range, closer to a metal guitar than the typical old-school low-end bass frequencies. Not that there's anything wrong with that intrinsically, but it's how modern dubstep artists use their synths to take control of the song, making it the central focus that makes it unappealing to me. Fidget house (or whatever) is often the same way with me. When the bass synth was an actual _bass synth_ back in the day, the sparseness of its frequency range meant that basically there had to be other sounds going on or else the song would sound totally empty. Raising the frequency range has made it somehow more acceptable to be lazy in terms of production.

Sorry, I'm getting too rant-y. I don't know everything about dubstep still, so I'm sure the more I type about it, the more I'm going to end up with my foot in my mouth.


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## BRN (Jun 6, 2012)

It's surprisingly easy to make dubsteb tolerable - you just add Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[yt]N8DVJlRJYj8[/yt]


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## kamunt (Jun 6, 2012)

Not gonna lie, I was honestly expecting something to the tune of this with a drop and Ahnold samples all throughout:
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## Leafblower29 (Jun 8, 2012)

I'd hate to say it OP, but I think the kind of dubstep you like is generic.


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## Oly (Jun 9, 2012)

skrillex is dirty shuffled electro house. :U

dubstep should sorta be dubby... and 2steppy... not shuffled house beats with screaming mids over top of it.

skrillex also has a handfull of patches that he probably didn't even make himself that he uses in every single song.
I don't like deadmau5 very much but at least he can actually produce shit, he can make his own shit from scratch, I think if skrillo had to do that he'd probably... not do so well.

as far as pop music, I jsut put some Cex or At The Drive In on and chill out. Ain't be hatin'.


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## Captain Howdy (Jun 9, 2012)

So at least we can all agree that as long as modern dubstep doesn't have its defining feature (i.e. dial-up modem breakdowns with wub-warbling bass), then it might be passable as music.


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## ElectricBlue1989 (Jun 10, 2012)

kamunt said:


> I think LMFAO is still pretty damaging to pop music, but they aren't Soulja Boy or Wiz Khalifa's levels of badness yet. And hey, there was an LMFAO remix WITH a drop in it that made me both like my first drop and my first LMFAO song. Check it.
> 
> As for knowing what dubstep is, well, it's my job as a hipster wannabe to know as much as I can about music I can't stand. I'm still working on Dirty South hip-hop. It just shocks me how many fans of dubstep had no idea that dubstep came before Skrillex, and sounded remarkably different, having far more in common with actual dub music than what it is now. The frequency ranges of your typical brostep song are typically in the mid-low range, closer to a metal guitar than the typical old-school low-end bass frequencies. Not that there's anything wrong with that intrinsically, but it's how modern dubstep artists use their synths to take control of the song, making it the central focus that makes it unappealing to me. Fidget house (or whatever) is often the same way with me. When the bass synth was an actual _bass synth_ back in the day, the sparseness of its frequency range meant that basically there had to be other sounds going on or else the song would sound totally empty. Raising the frequency range has made it somehow more acceptable to be lazy in terms of production.
> 
> Sorry, I'm getting too rant-y. I don't know everything about dubstep still, so I'm sure the more I type about it, the more I'm going to end up with my foot in my mouth.



Could you post examples of this "early-dubstep", please? I want to know more.



Oly said:


> skrillex also has a handfull of patches that he probably didn't even make himself that he uses in every single song.
> I don't like deadmau5 very much but at least he can actually produce  shit, he can make his own shit from scratch, I think if skrillo had to  do that he'd probably... not do so well.



What are these patches you speak of? Is it like that screaming "Oh My God!" girl that ruins the song and annoys the hell out of me? Or is it something much more subtle that only diehard electronic dance music fanatics can notice?


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## Oly (Jun 11, 2012)

Sorry, I forget that other people don't always know all the music production lingo.

A patch is essentially a set of settings for a synthesizer. So when you make a sound on a synth and save it, you've created a patch, and you can load it back up and get the same sound in seconds instead of having to set every knob and switch to where it was manually(like on old-school all analogue synthesizers, modular synths, that sort of thing.)
the 'oh my god' girl would be a sample, a sample being a piece of audio that is saved as a file and then loaded into a sampler to be played back and manipulated.

basically when I say he uses just a handful of patches, I'm saying he uses the same sounds in every songs. Same lead sound, same bass sound, same drum samples and oh-my-god-girl samples... Basically he's not only not creative, he's technically not very proficient.


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## kamunt (Jun 11, 2012)

Leafblower29 said:


> I'd hate to say it OP, but I think the kind of dubstep you like is generic.



The last two songs are pretty unique in my opinion, but neither of them are really dubstep (or brostep) in the modern sense. That's fine if you think that, I really dislike dubstep to begin with, anyway.



Oly said:


> skrillex is dirty shuffled electro house. :U
> 
> dubstep should sorta be dubby... and 2steppy... not shuffled house beats with screaming mids over top of it.
> 
> ...



Yes, all of this. ^^^ It was pretty painful writing my review of Korn's dubstep album and hearing the _same exact synth_ on all three songs Skrillex was featured on. And I heard about how Skrillex might've just stolen a few presets he got from his tenure with Mau5trap. And he's gotten away with _three Grammys_ as a result. Wouldn't surprise me. It's funny, I like Deadmau5's music just fine but can't stand him as a human being, and it's the exact opposite with Skrillex. Funny, that. Except not.



Lastdirewolf said:


> So at least we can all agree that as long as modern dubstep doesn't have its defining feature (i.e. dial-up modem breakdowns with wub-warbling bass), then it might be passable as music.



Very much agreed.


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## ElectricBlue1989 (Jun 11, 2012)

Oly said:


> Sorry, I forget that other people don't always know all the music production lingo.
> 
> A patch is essentially a set of settings for a synthesizer. So when you make a sound on a synth and save it, you've created a patch, and you can load it back up and get the same sound in seconds instead of having to set every knob and switch to where it was manually(like on old-school all analogue synthesizers, modular synths, that sort of thing.)
> the 'oh my god' girl would be a sample, a sample being a piece of audio that is saved as a file and then loaded into a sampler to be played back and manipulated.
> ...



Thank you for clarifying. This makes me appreciate analogue equipment and their users even more. ^^ 



kamunt said:


> Yes, all of this. ^^^ It was pretty painful writing my review of Korn's dubstep album and hearing the _same exact synth_  on all three songs Skrillex was featured on. And I heard about how  Skrillex might've just stolen a few presets he got from his tenure with  Mau5trap. And he's gotten away with _three Grammys_ as a result.  Wouldn't surprise me. It's funny, I like Deadmau5's music just fine but  can't stand him as a human being, and it's the exact opposite with  Skrillex. Funny, that. Except not.



People _still_ take Grammys seriously? ;D


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## kamunt (Jun 11, 2012)

ElectricBlue1989 said:


> People _still_ take Grammys seriously? ;D



Fair enuff! At least they gave Adele credit where credit was due. (And Justin Bieber _didn't_ win Best New Artist last year. No offense to J.B., he's fine to me, but he's not _that_ good.)



ElectricBlue1989 said:


> Could you post examples of this "early-dubstep", please? I want to know more.



I'm actually having trouble finding samples of it now. The best I can give you right now is that link you to the Wikipedia article on dubstep, which has a few song clips and names some artists. (As expected, us Yanks ruined something cool that the Redcoats had come up with.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep


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