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How to make Dubstep?

How to make Dubstep?
How would you go about it?

Flick the spring on a doorstop. Record it. Fuck it up with fx. Mix it with a slow beat.

get solid percussion samples.

for bassline: use saw wave, use downsampling on saw wave, use overdrive and saturation on that, limit the sample, and then sidechain

oh ya, don't forgot to look on youtube for completely random and stupid vocal cuts. it's not dubstep unless there are at least seven random, stupid vocals in a track

There's no way any of us could just tell you how to make dubstep.

That doesn't excuse the ignorant shit you've received for answers, though.

I just find it amusing that nobody who bashes dubstep on this website has any idea how to produce it.

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid ignorant shit

Re: How to make Dubstep?

quote:

Originally posted by atxbigballer1 How to make Dubstep? How would you go about it?

Well for that bass, i'd get some big saw, add some distortion, phaserz, flangers maybe Vcoder.
Assign a lfo to volume, record/bounce it at say lfo at 1/4 beat, then 1/8, 1/16.

Chop and arrange.

I'd imagine theres alot of tuts on Youtube about this.

I know that if you want to have an "aWsOmE" bass line you have to eat beans and drink milk, and make sure you have a mic to record when the magic happens.

bpm should be 140 , and it looks like bass & synths overuse a gater. There must be plenty of tutorials never tried dubstep.

Sonic Academy has a full-length tutorial on this exact question.

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid There's no way any of us could just tell you how to make dubstep. That doesn't excuse the ignorant shit you've received for answers, though. I just find it amusing that nobody who bashes dubstep on this website has any idea how to produce it.

There are a ton of tutorials on it.

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid I just find it amusing that nobody who bashes dubstep on this website has any idea how to produce it.

I just explained how to make the bassline sound and then proceeded to insult dubstep. Learn how to read. lol

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid I just find it amusing that nobody who bashes dubstep on this website has any idea how to produce it.

Uh, no. If you're talking about the brostep version of dubstep, chances are I don't know some nuance pertinent to it but please, don't insult anyone's intelligence because they dislike that horrid bullshit masquerading as musical innovation.






Music isn't that simple and brostep just ain't that fucking complex!

This is how dubstep(and all its family) sounds for me

quote:

Originally posted by jayxthekoolest I just explained how to make the bassline sound and then proceeded to insult dubstep. Learn how to read. lol

No you didn't. You explained how to make a saw bass. There isn't really a "bass sound" for dubstep, the only real thing that characterizes a usual dubstep bass is the LFO wobble on the cutoff and you didn't even mention that.

quote:

Originally posted by EddieZilker Uh, no. If you're talking about the brostep version of dubstep, chances are I don't know some nuance pertinent to it but please, don't insult anyone's intelligence because they dislike that horrid bullshit masquerading as musical innovation.

Uh, no. I didn't insult your intelligence. You could be the next fucking Jesus Christ when it comes to trance music has have no idea how to produce dubstep. You're smarter than that, Eddie. Dubstep not horrid bullshit just because you don't like it. I don't prance around you insulting trance music or deep house, because I have the capacity to understand that people like that kind of music. Clearly dubstep is doing well. Yes, it's abrasive, but it's the dance music equivalent of heavy metal, what the hell do you expect?

Calling it "brostep" is such pretentious shit. My taste in music doesn't imply anything about my personality, and frankly the trance music scene is filled with just as many "bros" if not more- trance shows have their shirtless douchebags with blow-outs too.

What you define as musical innovation doesn't mean anything. Innovation is a new idea, it's change - that's what dubstep is. Whether or not you like it is completely irrelevant.

quote:

Music isn't that simple and brostep just ain't that fucking complex!

Then let's hear some. I remember DJ Robby Rox ranting on and on about how "easy" dubstep and electro house is to make and how he was just going to start making it to show us up and he never amounted to it. If you're willing to insult my production skills because you think the music I produce "ain't that fucking complex" then I'd like to see your attempt at it.

yeah lets hear it

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid No you didn't. You explained how to make a saw bass. There isn't really a "bass sound" for dubstep, the only real thing that characterizes a usual dubstep bass is the LFO wobble on the cutoff and you didn't even mention that.

sorry i didn't mention the flo. honestly, that's so obvious that i didn't bother mentioning it. also, not everything is necessarily lfoed.

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid No you didn't. You explained how to make a saw bass. There isn't really a "bass sound" for dubstep, the only real thing that characterizes a usual dubstep bass is the LFO wobble on the cutoff and you didn't even mention that. Uh, no. I didn't insult your intelligence. You could be the next fucking Jesus Christ when it comes to trance music has have no idea how to produce dubstep. You're smarter than that, Eddie. Dubstep not horrid bullshit just because you don't like it. I don't prance around you insulting trance music or deep house, because I have the capacity to understand that people like that kind of music. Clearly dubstep is doing well. Yes, it's abrasive, but it's the dance music equivalent of heavy metal, what the hell do you expect? Calling it "brostep" is such pretentious shit. My taste in music doesn't imply anything about my personality, and frankly the trance music scene is filled with just as many "bros" if not more- trance shows have their shirtless douchebags with blow-outs too. What you define as musical innovation doesn't mean anything. Innovation is a new idea, it's change - that's what dubstep is. Whether or not you like it is completely irrelevant. Then let's hear some. I remember DJ Robby Rox ranting on and on about how "easy" dubstep and electro house is to make and how he was just going to start making it to show us up and he never amounted to it. If you're willing to insult my production skills because you think the music I produce "ain't that fucking complex" then I'd like to see your attempt at it.

I'm attacking the conceit, Sean, that you tried to inflict on the "haters" o' brostep. It's music, at a base level, made on a computer. Some proposal that we're not making it because it is beyond the scope of anyone's ability is asinine. You seem to have earned some kudos from the hardest critic here but just because you've made a brostep WIP that sounds better than most completed brostep singles, doesn't make the genre, itself, any less tedious. I'm definitely not going to take a giant shit in my bedroom while I plod away, making music that I can't possibly fucking stand, just to prove you wrong.

Brostep, in its current form, rivals the old-skool TB303 driven acid, so prevalent in the early nineties. It's prevalent LFO alterations mirror the cyclonic 303 arpeggios, contributing only a stale and rudimentary energy to their respective tracks. Beyond that, however, they are nothing short of an attack on conventional sensibilities. You can decry the "old" way of doing things and how stale and derivative other genres have become, save for rare gems that shine in seas of Beatport funded inequity, but the simple fact is that, like Jungle, Hard House, and Happy Hardcore, brostep is a genre celebrated by contemptuous, angry, disillusioned youth with very little in the way of taste and very little tolerance for anything more intellectually challenging than simple aggression. Acid, Jungle, Hard House, and Happy Hardcore were all short-lived fads that have sunk back into obscurity. Their remnants can be heard in Electro; the progeny of the best of the beast in its petulant ancestry.

They comprise over twenty years of testosterone driven soundtracks for late nights in straight-bar hell-holes and brostep is the latest version of crap made for the sake of being so crappy. With hooks as subtle as roofie-laced kamikaze's and mixes pushier than acquaintance rape, this fetishistic, trifling, tedious, temper-tantrum in musical form, has all the nuance of a tire-fire masking the smell of a slaughter house. If I attempted to make it, the temptation would be to make it better and the only conceivable way of making it better is to make something that isn't brostep. It is literally as simple as that.




There may be architects who take delight in designing shit-houses but not one of them will tell those who aspire but build the next Guggenheim that they should refrain from criticizing something that's actually meant to be shit on.

you cant just "make" dubstep

quote:

Originally posted by EddieZilker I'm attacking the conceit, Sean, that you tried to inflict on the "haters" o' brostep. It's music, at a base level, made on a computer. Some proposal that we're not making it because it is beyond the scope of anyone's ability is asinine. You seem to have earned some kudos from the hardest critic here but just because you've made a brostep WIP that sounds better than most completed brostep singles, doesn't make the genre, itself, any less tedious. I'm definitely not going to take a giant shit in my bedroom while I plod away, making music that I can't possibly fucking stand, just to prove you wrong. Brostep, in its current form, rivals the old-skool TB303 driven acid, so prevalent in the early nineties. It's prevalent LFO alterations mirror the cyclonic 303 arpeggios, contributing only a stale and rudimentary energy to their respective tracks. Beyond that, however, they are nothing short of an attack on conventional sensibilities. You can decry the "old" way of doing things and how stale and derivative other genres have become, save for rare gems that shine in seas of Beatport funded inequity, but the simple fact is that, like Jungle, Hard House, and Happy Hardcore, brostep is a genre celebrated by contemptuous, angry, disillusioned youth with very little in the way of taste and very little tolerance for anything more intellectually challenging than simple aggression. Acid, Jungle, Hard House, and Happy Hardcore were all short-lived fads that have sunk back into obscurity. Their remnants can be heard in Electro; the progeny of the best of the beast in its petulant ancestry. They comprise over twenty years of testosterone driven soundtracks for late nights in straight-bar hell-holes and brostep is the latest version of crap made for the sake of being so crappy. With hooks as subtle as roofie-laced kamikaze's and mixes pushier than acquaintance rape, this fetishistic, trifling, tedious, temper-tantrum in musical form, has all the nuance of a tire-fire masking the smell of a slaughter house. If I attempted to make it, the temptation would be to make it better and the only conceivable way of making it better is to make something that isn't brostep. It is literally as simple as that. There may be architects who take delight in designing shit-houses but not one of them will tell those who aspire but build the next Guggenheim that they should refrain from criticizing something that's actually meant to be shit on.

Dubstep is FAR more similar to Drum & Bass. I bet the trance kids said the same thing about Drum & Bass when the Prodigy were in their heyday and it's still alive and well. It's got the same aggressive textures as dubstep. Modern dubstep takes influences from drum & bass, the sub bass from dub and the 2 step from... well, 2 step.

Look, this argument is pointless because we both know damn well neither of us will sway on our opinions of the music itself, but don't be disrespectful. I didn't say people who were insulting dubstep were bad producers, I said they have no clue how to make dubstep. If you're calling it "easy to make" you've clearly never done it and have no idea what you're rambling on about.

The fact that you're implying that somehow other genres of EDM are more "intellectually stimulating" is hilarious to me. What the fuck does that even mean? Trance music, deep house, whatever, as much as you keep telling yourself it's "high class fucking music" it's NOT. Its DANCE MUSIC. Stop having a false sense of moral superiority because you like your chords low passed and your music low-key.

quote:

There may be architects who take delight in designing shit-houses but not one of them will tell those who aspire but build the next Guggenheim that they should refrain from criticizing something that's actually meant to be shit on.

Why are you being such a ****? You're normally pretty awesome, but I don't take kindly to being insulted. So what, I'm not a good producer because I build "shit houses" but the rest of the producers on here (because they make a genre you happen to have an affinity for) are trying to build the Guggenheim?

You know damn well I can produce other genres of EDM, I do, but I LOVE producing dubstep and electro house and I *choose* to, I don't resort to it because it's fucking "easy." It's not! Plenty of these dubstep producers who you seem to think are talentless could out produce ANY PERSON on this forum.

For fuck's sake, look at Feed Me/Spor! The same guy who produced this:



And this:



Makes the crazy dubstep you love to hate:






There's more than one emotion, not everything has to be sad or euphoric. We're human fucking beings and we feel aggression just as much as happiness and sadness. Dubstep and electro house appeal to that and that's not a bad thing.

Do you think heavy metal is a "shit house" just because prog rock exists?

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid There's more than one emotion, not everything has to be sad or euphoric. We're human fucking beings and we feel aggression just as much as happiness and sadness.

I don't think I have been happy in like 5 years

Eh, I don't think there are any easy ways out in production. All the genres have a learning curve.

I enjoy a good dubstep track every now and again and think it is a great tool in an overall DJ set, just not track after track of it.

Also, I think genre bashing on any more of a minor scale is pointless and a waste of time. I don't interact much with dubstep but it isn't hurting me. Nobody has like assaulted me with dubstep, they haven't tied me down put headphones on me and blasted Skrillex while I protested.

Dubstep for trance whores:

quote:

Originally posted by Seandroid ...

I'm not trying to defend trance, house, reggae, R&B, D&B, or any other genre of music which may or may not compete against it. Simply put, I am arguing that brostep is horrible music in much the same way I would argue that locusts make horrible house-pets or Suharto was a horrible Indonesian. The fact that making stark assessments about quality implies comparisons to that which is better does not make your argument that brostep isn't trance more relevant to the discussion. I'm not even close to entertaining the position that trance is better than brostep. I'm sure I could if I wanted to but I hardly need to in order to prove that brostep is, in fact, garbage.

I'm definitely not arguing for some specific emotion any specific form of music should convey. The three stereotypical emotions most EDM is associated with are horny, angry, and sad; something akin to the red, green, and blue of electronic music's spectrum. Mix the right amount of horny with the right amount of sad, and viola! ~ Tiesto's version of "Adagio for Strings" or some other trite non-sense passing itself off as an emotionally cathartic movement for the masses, stunned in awe of its modernized, Hooked on Classics sensibility.

EDIT in parenthesis: Your (first two) examples stay well away from the constantly face-melting PA screamers and, apart from minor wobble-bass unified with more substantially musical elements, have little to do with brostep. The fact is that when the term, dubstep, is used, 90% of the time, the most common association people are making (fucking thank you, once again, Bitchport!) is with brostep - hence why I have used to term, brostep consistently throughout my posts. Most ardent defenders of the more artsy, nuanced, and genuine Dubstep genre have abandoned referring to songs made by the genre's pioneering artists as Dubstep because, as brostep labels sought to exploit the niche foothold for marketing purposes, the word Dubstep has taken on a new meaning that, albeit perverse, is still linguistically current.

When I'm clearly arguing about straight-up hard-liquor (nothing against hard alcohol - I used to love the stuff, myself), don't tell me you've been talking on behalf of strawberry daiquiris, all along. In short, like many discussions concerning music, this argument is now about definitions and one that I was trying to avoid. You've stepped into dithering territory, however, so let me clarify what happened, for you:

1. You've made a song which you attribute to the genre of Dubstep.

2. That song, regardless of its technical proficiency, is currently rife with tropes commonly associated with the red-headed step-child of Dubstep, brostep.

3. The OP started this thread inquiring about Dubstep.

4. Inevitably (inevitably because it always happens), someone complained that Dubstep sucks, meaning to refer to brostep.

5. You complained, "There's no way any of us could just tell you how to make dubstep. That doesn't excuse the ignorant shit you've received for answers, though. I just find it amusing that nobody who bashes dubstep on this website has any idea how to produce it."

6. I replied to your post, "Uh, no. If you're talking about the brostep version of dubstep, chances are I don't know some nuance pertinent to it but please, don't insult anyone's intelligence because they dislike that horrid bullshit masquerading as musical innovation." I made it very clear, the music to which I was referring to.

7. You replied, arguing that I was simplistically discounting a genre and pejoratively regarding it as "brostep". It should have been clear, I was doing neither and I very clearly described the music I was referring to, in my next post. To make it clearer for you, the word, brostep is being used to make the necessary semantic distinction to be having this conversation, in the first place. Hence, I used the word, brostep as an adjective applicable to the word, version that further indicated a subtype of Dubstep under discussion, that is actually, commonly, and rightfully referred to as brostep. While the word, dubstep is so compromised that it is essentially meaningless, there-by causing the "misunderstanding" all of your arguments are based on, brostep should have a very clear meaning. Skrillex - 100% brostep. Your recent WIP - 100% brostep. The songs you've most recently posted as examples: 10-15% brostep! Whatever music you call Dubstep does not change the fact that when most people in this forum are referring to Dubstep, they are semantically referring to the rage-fueled bullshit that Skrillex pioneered and many more producers have ineptly tried to emulate. They are not referring to any of the songs you've posted in defense of Dubstep.

8. Result: Semantic cluster-fuck.

And you have the balls to say I'm being a cunt?

EDIT on reflection of your last example:

I don't particularly like that one and think it is more "bro" oriented. Not taking away from his technical proficiency or mixing sensibilities, that I think are above par. It's just the music is so ridiculously emo and the vocal, so rife with pitiable self-indulgence, that it's hard to appreciate it for being anything other than adolescent. Honestly, reminds me of Dragonforce:



Technically genius, sophisticated, and even innovative but both songs lack maturity in that their lyrics are nothing short of deluded fantasy. Half of Dragonfarce's songs have to do with enacting some form of aggression and Feed Me does little more than aggrandize the passive-aggressive's yearning for independence from their perceived oppressors (a teen-aged emancipation from parents/authority). The common theme is anger, for the sake of being angry; aggression mistaken for potency. In reality both are cherished by those who perceive themselves as impotent yet long for positions less compromised than that of a rebellious male teen.

Lots of technical skill. Lots of angry. Lots of horny. No common-sense. No soul.

Virtuosity doesn't make it any less obvious. If anything, it masks irksome simplicity while aggrandizing adolescent themes. Like designs etched or folded into the blade of a sword, it looks nice, but it doesn't make the sword any less of a sword; which is why I'm criticizing it, in the first place - for being a sword.

Sean you're a smart and talented guy, but make an ass out of yourself defending these meaningless genres. It's not like music gets butt-hurt if someone says it sounds like shit. Even if you'll eventually make someone say dubstep isn't stupid shit, they're not gonna share your taste and you'll only agree to disagree, what you should've been doing in the first place before all that nonsense got started.

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