Then they would send the output of the tape deck back to itself in order to create a feedback loop. Often these engineers would manipulate the signal before it hit the tape deck to filter out frequencies and create cool textures within the delay. Each time the signal feeds back into itself, the filter affects it more and more cumulatively, and the signal gets reprinted to the tape and played back at the rate it is delayed by on the repro head. The repro head would be delayed in order to play back the track in note increments (usually 8d or 1Ž4 triplets for dub music to create a syncopation). I know a lot of original dub records are created using feedback loops. We all take for granted the feedback knob in many delay plug-ins these days, but back in the day, engineers would use a send from the source track to feed a tape recorder/player.

Here’s what I do…įor the Dub Delay channel, I had to get pretty creative to mimic the sound I hear on a lot of dub records.

I can’t really say that I came up with these techniques, but I have adapted them for modern use in Pro Tools specifically. While mixing some records for Inner Circle, I was asked to do some additional dub mixes once the original mixes were approved. While doing those dub mixes, I wanted to find a way to adapt some old-school techniques to more “in-the-box” techniques using Pro Tools so I could have recall ability and be able to create a different sound. The techniques used are always custom-tailored for the song, and the style effects are what give the dub mix personality and individuality.

Of course, there isn’t really a clear-cut way to do this all the time. Dub music is an amazing thing. This genre allows the engineer to become the artist by exercising creativity through rearranging and effecting a mixed record. As a young man and still today, I am always intrigued with these types of sounds and spend hours of my time trying to re-create the sounds and effects I hear while listening to dub mixes by engineers such as King Tubby, Scientist, Lee Scratch Perry, King Jammy, and Mad Professor, to name a few. These engineers were working on more barebones setups back in their day and had to manually set up signal flow to achieve the techniques we have at our fingertips today with a couple knob turns in a plug-in.Ī big part of achieving this sound is experimentation.

Dub vst