Sunday 29 April 2012

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.

8 comments:

  1. I dunno. seems you can look at it as reducing the perceived usefullness of a synth as well - if all a kid knows and has learned is the wobble, and said kid doesn't bother to learn any more, then all that kid is ever going to respond to and / or make with a synth is a wobble. It's one teeny tiny little slice of the sound design pie, and I feel like all the attention it gets is out of balance. It'd be like if all anyone talked about with respect to film fx was particle shading on smoke trails.

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  2. (no clue if particle shading on smoke trails is actually a thing)

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  3. I guess that's true but you can't generally make a track out of ONLY the wobble. You still need more standard stabs and the like which should teach basic envelope usage, and fat pads which teach more advanced envelope usage and the usage of different oscillators or detuning them to create the meaty dance sound.

    If you take standard dubstep and stick it against standard house then there tends to be more going on in the sound stage side, even if not on the production side.

    If you stuck to say.. standard house then you might just end up with knowing how to detune oscillators and how to use an envelope for dynamics and filter cutoffs.

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  4. Now, if kids were learning the fine art both of wobbles and house oontzes, that would get us somewhere

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  5. Mr. Moroder was syncing LFO to tempo for a very long time. The technique isn't new, it's the application. I agree that the wobble can be replaced by some other way to make a polyrhythmic texture comes along, so if you (any readers) are sick of the wobble, think about how you use your techniques and try applying them in different ways.

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  6. Routing in DAWs is so efficient these days. Modding via other audio sources has crazy potential when you take it far, syncing different parameters of one sound to each follow different sources like the BD, SD, and HH. I don't see much use for LFOs beyond the simplest sweeps when you can copy/paste envelopes and get it just right.

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  7. but i wanted to learn to make filthy fookin dubstep brah :(

    I think the whole FM wobble thing is going to seriously date music. 10 years from now, maybe even sooner there will be a whole :eyesroll: kind of response to it, your example of the orchestra hit is a great analogy. Its a great tool but the overuse of it is whats watering it down.

    The opening track on my record has a heavy dubstep element (wobble included) as does another tune on my record. A whole 2 of 11 tracks have those elements and 90% of the reviews tag "at the end of it all" as a dubstep record. pigeon holed.

    I seriously debated whether i should open up with "dubstep" tune or not, but decided that in the context of the album it made the most sense. I feel fairly certain that for some people that opening track will be a deal killer, not interested, but for me it summed up the feel of the record in a nutshell (and the emo piano sealed the deal).

    Funny thing though, I find that most people who "hate dubstep" actually just hate dubstep FANS. Interesting read Keef, keep it up.

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  8. Occasionally I hear a song that I begin to think has potential,

    Then that goddamn wobble starts.

    It's like the 'troll face' just showed up in the middle of a track..

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