Dubsteb Wobble - Good or bad.

I've come to this page to find out how to make a Dubstep Wobble

Ah.. That wasn't what.... oh well...

Ok, I'll start this thing with a basic recipe sheet of how to make it. There are a million youtube tutorials with details so I'll just throw out the basics and you can grab the rest yourselves...

The first thing to remember is that the Dubstep/Brosteb bass is generally made up out of two different synth noises, the one that makes the weird blart noises, generally with most of the bass taken out and another one that just does the bass end, usually mildly overdriven.

I'll concentrate on the weird one.

Basically use an LFO that's synced to tempo to modulate parameters such as filter cutoff frequency, osc position, FM amount, stuff like that and you alter the speed by changing the ratio it's sync'd up at.

It really is that simple...

Ok, Keef so what are you actually here to say?

Now that's over let's talk about the wobble, its effect and its potential longievity.


The dubstep wobble, is it here to stay?
It's always hard to tell whether a sound will survive into the next musical phase or not. Back in 1989 two of the most prevalent sounds in dance music were the 303 and the Orchestra Hit. It's fairly obvious with hindsight which would survive as the 303 was a truly flexible classic, but instantly recognisable whereas the other was using a stab of an orchestra to showcase of the fact that sampler technology existed to the point where they could have the power of an orchestra for a second or two.

Sampler technology has moved on but the simplicity and unique bite of the 303 is still as valid as ever.

Here's my prediction. It will fall out of favour but will occasionally rear it's head in dance music until another, better method of polyrhythmic texturing appears.

WTF is polyrhythmic texturing?

In short, it's a really good way of expressing rhythms and contrarhythms through the medium of texture rather than standard dynamics. It's another tool to your belt, and why the hell not use it.

In my humble opinion it's as the wobble has made it's way into standard techno that it's found its true home. For me, currently, the likes of Feed Me and Zedd and yes.. Skrillex are showing that "the wobble" is more versatile than people think. Sadly, of course there are people who then like to call this dubstep because as far as they're concerned everything that contains the wobble is Dubstep.

And there we have the one thing that may well kill this tool. The disappointing desire to label everything that uses it as dubstep.

That may indeed be the real reason this sound dies.

So what has the synth world learned from this?
Well, the more advanced people have probably learned very little. However it has managed to showcase the LFO, previously considered the little ginger kid of synth modules .

I think for a lot of synth programmers obsessed with envelopes, FM and new forms of synthesis it has shown them the power and flexibiity of the humble LFO module, flexibility that maybe, they weren't aware of previously.

Also Dubstep is the first genre born at a time when people could well have been learning synths since they were very small. After all the VSTi appeared in 1999 which is 13 years ago, a 17 year old kid could have been playing with softsynths since they were 4 without putting their chocolate covered mitts on any of Dad's expensive hardware and causing him to scream in horror at them.

For the pedants among you, yes.. dubstep is 6/7 years old but the rule still applies, a 17 year old kid could have been working with complex synths since he was 10.

So anyway, it's hardly surprising that one of the first genres that appears with this generation is one that requires a certain amount of virtuosity with softsynths.

And that required virtuosity means that if people want to break into this genre they need to up their game. Therefore there are a lot more people that know a lot more about how synths work now, if only because they followed a youtube tutorial on how to make a brostep growl.

I think also, a lot of people who knew their synths well had got stuck in their ways, thinking they'd done everything that could be done with standard subtractive synthesis. Then they heard this stuff and went "What the fuck? I never thought of doing that!". It opened their eyes to the capabilities of the equipment they already had and hopefully to more possibilities.

So, to boil it down I think it's made people look at their synths differently, ignited the desire to learn more and increased the general virtuosity of synth programmers.

And in my eyes that can't be bad.

Intro

So, this is a new blog I'm starting. The idea is that this is where I talk about my music, share techniques and new innovations that have interested me.

So I guess I'll say that the next full project you're likely to see from me is oddly a more techno/complextro based project called OCDC on Subspec records.

However I haven't finished it yet so....