Written by Peter Doyle (2004) Popular Music, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 31-49.
Cambridge University Press. Useful Quotes;
Doyle (2004)
discusses that fact that echoes have a mystical quality then analyses various
recordings from the period of 1920 through to the 1950’s looking at the use of
spatial effects.
“Reverberation
does much to define what we perceive as timbre, volume and sound colouration,
and largely determines our perceptions of directionality and nearness.” (Doyle
2004 pg.3)
“Recordings
became capable of picking up room ambience, of carrying, in other words,
significant sonic information about the spaces in which they were made. Of this
last point, Gelatt says:... the 'atmosphere' surrounding music in the concert
hall could now be simulated on records. Musicians were no longer forced to work
... directly before a recording horn but could play in spacious studios with
proper reverberation characteristics.”
(Gelatt 1977, p . 223)
“Increasingly
during the late 1940s and early 1950s, some producers and musicians began to
use echo effects to render unfixed, or (at least in part) anti-linear, self-consciously
weird and/or futuristic spaces. And certain of the older style pictorially
anchored spatial recordings during this period began to display an increasingly
exaggerated pictorial field, as echo and reverb effects changed (in some cases
at least) from being a covertly used producer's technique to an increasingly
emphasised, featured gimmick.” (Doyle 2004 pg.9)
“Les Paul
arguably did more than any other single operator in the recording industry to
break the 'authenticity nexus' between the actual performance and the final
recorded product, and some of his most arresting devices involved deliberate spatial
plays.” (Doyle 2004 pg.10)
In order to investigate how the spatial effects used in dub
have influenced other genre first we must define what effects are used to
create the illusion of space and how they have been used in dub.
Reverberation is the most commonly used effect used to
create space. Izhaki (2012 pg.405) describes reverb in the following way,
“In nature, reverb is observed mostly within enclosed spaces, such as
rooms. Reverbs are easier to understand if we imagine an impulse sound, like a
hand clap, emitted from a sound source in an empty room. Such a sound will
propagate in a spherical fashion and for simplicity we should regard it as
travelling in all directions. The emitted sound will travel in a direct path to
a listener (or a microphone) followed by reflections that bounced from the
walls, floor and ceiling. These will be gradually followed by denser
reflections that have bounced many times from many surfaces. As sound both
diminishes when travelling through air and being absorbed by surface materials,
the reflections will slowly decay in amplitude. Reverb is the collective name
given to the sound created by bounced reflections from room boundaries (which
we consider to be the main reverb contributors, although in a room there might
be many surfaces). In mixing, we use reverb emulators, either hardware units or
software plugins, to simulate this natural phenomenon.”
“Each time a waveform reflects
some energy is absorbed by the surface and each time a waveform is diffused the
energy is divided among the reflections and so over time the amplitude of
reverberation decays until it is inaudible. As sound takes time to travel
around a room (344meters per second at room temperature) each reflection
arrives at the listener later than the last reflection and so the reverberation
is audible for a longer period of time than the direct original sound. Diagram
1 below shows the decay of reverberation overtime.” (http://www.magicmess.co.uk/electronics/spring.php)
The amount of reverb in
a space is dependent on the volume of the room but also the rate at which sound
is absorbed by walls and other surfaces.
Wallace Sabine did some
pioneering research in this area and came up with a formula that relates the
quality of a room’s acoustic with the size of the room, and the amount of sound
absorption surfaces present.
His formula calculates
the reverberation time which is defined by the time taken (in seconds) for a
sound to drop by 60 decibels.
RT60 = 0.161(V/Sa)
V is the volume of the
room in cubic meters. This is divided by the total absorption of the room
expressed in Sabines which is calculated by the sum of all the surface areas in
the room multiplied by the absorption coefficients for each material.
A characteristic dub
reverb sound is the spring reverb. The spring reverb works by using the
physical movement of a spring to generate the reflections.
Spring Reverb Demo
Delay is another common
effect used to create space in audio recordings. Hodgson (2010 pg.124) states
“the simple delay line is the building block of all delay processing
techniques.” Then continues to describe how audio signals are fed into a delay
line where the signal is split and a copy is stored for a certain amount of
time before being passed to the output after the direct signal.
All delay units and
plug-in effects have 3 basic settings which are the Delay time or the amount of
time between the input signal and the copy arriving at the output. The mix
setting which adjusts the balance between the input signal and the delayed
copy. And the feedback which controls the amount of the delayed signal which is
routed back to the input. Hodgson (2010) states that recordists have created a
“staggeringly diverse array of musical techniques” by adjusting the 3
parameters listed above.
A common delay sound
used in dub is the tape delay. Case (2007 pg.224) states that
“Before the days of
digital audio, a common approach to creating delays was to use a spare analogue
tape machine as a generator...During mixdown the machine is constantly rolling
in record mode. The signal is sent from the console to the input of the tape
machine...That signal is recorded at the tape machine and milliseconds later is
played back...(the tape machine) remains in repro mode so the output is what it
sees at the playback head...The signal goes in gets printed onto tape the tape
makes its way from the record head to the playback head (taking time to do so)
and finally the signal is played back off tape and returned to the console. The
result is tape delay.”
Analogue tape delay also
adds tape saturation and tape hiss, these sounds have also become a highly
sought after additional qualities of tape delay. Many hardware and software
emulators try to recreate these qualities of tape delay and one such emulator
used significantly in the production of dub is the Roland RE 201 Space Echo
which uses a magnetic tape loop to simulate tape delay.
Roland RE 201 Space Echo
Another aspect of the use of space is creative sound staging. Moylan
(2008) states "The sound stage is the singular area occupied by all of the sound
sources of the music, as an aggregate or group.
It has an apparent physical size of width and depth that are defined at
the level of the individual sound source: (1) the dimension of width is defined
by the furthest right and left sound (lateral localization) and (2) the
dimension of depth is defined by the most distant sound source and the closest
sound source."
Zagorski-Thomas (2010) takes this idea of the sound stage further to
functional staging “Functional staging is a concept building on the idea of
phonographic staging developed by William Moylan and Serge Lacasse and related
to Allan Moore’s ‘sound-box’. The staging of sounds in the record production
process is considered to be functional if the reason for their particular
placement or treatment is related to the practicalities of audience reception
rather than to aesthetics.” (Zagorski-Thomas 2010 pg.1)
“Functional staging relates to the size of the
perceived space and the perception of distance rather than lateral placement.” (Zagorski-Thomas 2010 pg.6) References and Bibliography
Case. A. (2007) Sound FX: Unlocking The Creative Potential
Of Recording Studio Effects
Hodgson. J. (2010) Understanding Records: A Field Guide to
Recording Practice. Continuum International Publishing, New York.
Izhaki. R. (2012) Mixing Audio: Concepts Practices and
Tools. 2nd Edition. Focal Press
Moylan. W. (2008) Considering Space in Music. (Accessed
21/09/12) http://www.artofrecordproduction.com/content/view/180/109/
Zagorski-Thomas. S. (2010). The stadium in your bedroom:
functional staging, authenticity and the audience led aesthetic in record
production. Popular Music, 29, pp 251-266.
Written by John Bush link here Useful Quotes "The
great sound system engineers of Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s
pioneered theinstrumental
remix and were the first to make the style popular. Using only primitive
recording and mixing equipment, the mixing engineer took a lead role in
defining the sound of the recording, using the mixing board as his instrument.”
(Bush) “Ruddy played a key role in the initial
development of dub, as he was the first to make a public performance of what
would become known as version - the instrumental mix of a song without the
vocals.” (Bush) “Scratch
later built his own studio, the legendary Black Ark, in 1974 in the Kingston
suburb of Washington Gardens. Under Perry’s guidance, the Black Ark became
known for its signature sound that was quite different from the other studios.
From 1974 to 1979, the Black Ark was a center of creativity in reggae music,
with Scratch continuing to experiment in version and dub styles. The Black Ark
sound was characteristically heavy yet uplifting at the same time.” (Bush) The
development of the genre dub took place when the engineer would take an
instrumental version of a track to the next level, using the effects such as
echo, reverb and delay to change the whole sound and texture of the riddim. “This
was the turning point in which dub emerged as a unique and characteristic
branch of music itself, and can be credited almost entirely to the
contributions of a mixing engineer known as King Tubby.” (Bush)
Tubby who was experienced in
electronics through his background in TV repairs customised his mixing desk at
his studio in the ghetto district Waterhouse in Kingston, adding faders which
allowed him to add or subtract the various elements of the tracks smoothly. He
also created his own effects units by modifying tape machines to create delays
and hitting spring reverb units which created the characteristic thunderclap
sound used in dub. “Tubby’s innovations behind the mixing board introduced to
Jamaica the idea of the mixing engineer playing a creative role in the music.”
(Bush) Prince
Jammy and Scientist who were trained by Tubby at his studio were the next
generation of dub engineers. “Prince Jammy, otherwise named Lloyd James, would
eventually go on to become one of the most successful producers during the
dancehall era that Jamaica was soon to enter.... Using Tubby’s equipment,
Jammy’s dubs would have the characteristic sound of Tubby’s studio, but in a
style of his own. Jammy’s dubs were often more stripped down than Tubby’s,
emphasizing the groove of the drum and bass, or the riddim.” (Bush)
This paper
discusses the construction of space with sound and the arrangement of elements
within that space, and compares the use of space in audio recording and film
sound.
“For
example, voices are treated differently in the two media, albeit they
cross-pollinate. A reverberant voice in the iconic Chess or Sun rock
‘n’ roll music style is not generally employed in cinema
and would not be read the same way. Reverberant voices tend to be used in film
voiceovers to represent inner thoughts or might be used to evoke an eerie,
uncanny or disembodied threat, or, if synchronised to picture, perhaps a
visiting alien or malevolent spirit rather than the teenage angst of the
spirited outsider or their chorus.” (Bates 2007 pg.1)
“In the
ancient world there were deep linkages between reverberant space and the sacred
or magical.” (Bates 2007 pg.2)
“And so, in
those early recordings, as Peter Doyle argues, the recordings “came imbued with
their own spatial codes; they constructed their own proscenium arch” (Doyle
2005:50) with the various placements of instruments and the content of the
music composition constructed to superimpose fictional “sound pictures” onto
the playback space- or at least that was the promise.” (Bates 2007 pg.4)
ABSTRACT Dub reggae is widely regarded as an early form of the remix. Dub artists modify previously recorded reggae songs by manipulating a song’s individual tracks with a mixing board and layering them in aural effects such as reverb and echo. These effects are fundamentally spatial in quality, giving the listener an impression of vast open space. This paper is an analysis of the techniques utilized in dub’s construction of sonic space as well as an investigation of the cultural meaning of those spaces. My analysis utilizes Josh Kun’s theories about “audiotopias” (temporary aural spaces created through music) in order to study how sonic spaces create “new maps” that allow an individual to analyze their current social predicament. These “new maps,” therefore, engender a “remapping” of reality, a reconstitutive process that parallels dub’s emphasis on modification and alteration. This paper also argues that dub’s audiotopias are implicitly natural, although they are constructed through modern recording technologies such as the echo chamber and the reverb unit. A final chapter applies these analytical techniques to one of dub’s most popular musical offspring, hip hop.1 Written by John Baker
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of American Studies. College of Arts and Sciences. University of South Florida. link here
Quote and annotations; “In order to study how sonic spaces create “new maps” that allow an
individual to analyze their current social predicament. These “new maps,”
therefore, engender a “remapping” of reality, a reconstitutive process that
parallels dub’s emphasis on modification and alteration.” (Baker 2009 pg.ii)
"In 1976, Melody Maker
published an article by music critic Richard Williams entitled “The Sound of
Surprise.” Williams’ essay was a short but prescient description of the
still-shockingly-new phenomenon of dub reggae. Williams prophetically noted
that “there are possibilities inherent in this aberrant form which could
perhaps resonate throughout other musics in the years to come” (145). (Williams
1976 quoted in Baker 2009 pg.5).
This statement demonstrates that from the beginnings
of early dub an interest was taken in its innovative production techniques and
how these techniques could possibly influence future music. EDM is a good
example of a genre that has taken influences from dub's use of space and
spatial effects and used it to create new sonic spaces, soundscapes or
audiotopias.
Baker
(2009 pg.27) describes Tubby's reverb technique in the following way "Tubby’s
percussive use of reverb “widens” the track, giving the listener an impression
of deep canyons and limitless plains."
"Doyle’s
assertion that natural reverberant spaces can possess sacred qualities has
particular implications for Jamaica’s Rastafarians, whose belief in the “ital”
(natural) stresses humanity’s spiritual connection to the earth." (Baker 2009
pg.23).
Dub
artists with a strong connection to the Rastafarian religion were looking to
create this connection with “the other” or to create something new and unheard
before which could give them the edge in a "sound clash" between two
competing sound systems.
Baker (2009) uses “Josh Kun’s
theories about “audiotopias” (temporary aural spaces created through music)” to
describe dub’s soundscapes created with the use of echo and reverb effects. “In
order to study how sonic spaces create “new maps” that allow an individual to
analyze their current social predicament. These “new maps,” therefore, engender
a “remapping” of reality, a reconstitutive process that parallels dub’s
emphasis on modification and alteration.” (Baker 2009 pg.ii). The use of
reverberation and delay effects along with creative mixing and soundstage
techniques combined an extra spatial dimension creating strange dub soundscapes
that had not been heard before and with an emphasis on the rhythm section, this
has become the characteristic dub sound. "Dub artists utilized reverb to
construct sonic spaces that sounded as if they were free of human impediment
and therefore full of possibility." Baker (2009 pg.26).
Baker then goes on to describe
how dub’s audiotopias can be described as natural which is problematic as these
alternate spaces which are created, serve to remove the listener from the
everyday, therefore cannot be described as natural. Also Baker contradicts
himself with this statement by talking about giving the listener an impression
of deep canyons and limitless plains. The spaces created through the creative
use of effects in dub were never meant to be natural, with the help of the
previously mentioned effects Dub artists were able to create impossible
soundscapes or audiotopia’s which do not relate to any real world acoustic
spaces.
"Dub’s rhythmic decentring,"..."can be read as simply another example of the genre’s emphasis on
fragmentation. Dub’s echoic alternate rhythms are never fully established,
after all. They do not overtake the rhythmic foreground but instead remain
within the song’s defining background, influencing the listener’s awareness of
sonic space. They are incomplete, offering only a hint at the possibilities
offered by the audiotopia." (Baker 2009 pg.41).
