dub1
dub (dùb) verb, transitive
dubbed, dubbing, dubs
1.To tap lightly on the
shoulder by way of conferring knighthood.
2.To honor with a new title
or description.
3.To give a name to facetiously
or playfully; nickname.
4.To strike, cut, or rub
(timber or leather, for example) so as to make even or smooth.
5.To dress (a fowl).
6.To execute (a golf stroke,
for example) poorly.
noun
An awkward person or player;
a bungler.
[Middle English dubben, from Old English dubbian, perhaps from Old French aduber.]
dub2
dub (dùb) verb
dubbed, dubbing, dubs verb,
transitive
1.To thrust at; poke.
2.To beat (a drum).
verb, intransitive
1.To make a thrust.
2.To beat on a drum.
noun
1.The act of dubbing.
2.A drumbeat.
[Perhaps from Low German dubben, to hit, strike.]
dub3
dub (dùb) verb, transitive
dubbed, dubbing, dubs
1.a. To transfer (recorded
material) onto a new recording medium. b. To copy (a record or tape).
2.To insert a new soundtrack,
often a synchronized translation of the original dialogue, into (a film).
3.To add (sound) into a
film or tape: dub in strings behind the vocal.
noun
1.The new sounds added by
dubbing.
2.A dubbed copy of a tape
or record.
[Short for double.]
- dub´ber noun
dub4
dub (dùb) noun
Scots.
A puddle or small pool.
[Origin unknown.]
dub (verb)
name: give a handle to, call
by the name of, surname, nickname, dub, clepe
misname: nickname, dub,
name
dignify: confer a knighthood, dub,
knight, give the accolade
"If reggae is Africa in the New World, dub is Africa on the moon." - Luke Erlich
Jamaican producers and engineers created dub reggae by manipulating and remixing prerecorded analog tracks of music coded on magnetic tape. Dubmasters like King Tubby would saturate and mutate individual instruments with reverb, phase, echo and delay; abruptly drop voices, beats, and guitars in and out of the mix; strip the music down to the bare bones of drums and bass and then build it up again through layers of distortion, percussive noise, and electronic ectoplasm.
Good dub sounds like the recording studio itself has begun to hallucinate.
But while the space of dub is certainly "out" in both the extraterrestrial and Sun Ra sense of the term, its heavy use of echo also produces a sense of enclosure, an interiority that, along with a variety of moist and squooshy effects, conjures up distinctly aquatic surroundings.
With dub we do not find ourselves in the cold and rather cheesy deep space of SF soundtracks and bad hippie synthesizer music, but in a kind of "out" inner space, a liminal womb. This unresolved spatial tension not only explains the "druggy" or even "mystical" qualities of the music (qualities rooted in psycho-physiological effects that erode the experiential division between interior and exterior), but also explains why 70s dub so powerfully anticipates the virtual spaces of today—spaces which seem at once extensive and implicate (or implied), intensive and unfolded, inside and out.
It's perhaps no accident that in Jamaican patois, "science" refers to obeah, the island's African grab-bag of herbal medicine, sorcery, and occult lore. In his book on the trickster in West Africa, a study in "mythic irony and sacred delight," Robert Pelton also points out the similarities between modern scientists and traditional trickster figures like Anansi, Eshu, and Ellegua: "Both seek to befriend the strange, not so much striving to 'reduce' anomaly as to use it as a passage into a larger order." We could ask for no better description of the technological tricks pulled by the great dubmasters.
- Erik Davis - _Roots and Wires - Polyrhythmic Cyberspace and Black Electronic_
By giving flight to the producer's technical imagination, dub sculpted a sort of science-fiction aesthetic alongside reggae's crunchy Africentric mythos. Just look at the cover art: Mad Professor's _Science and the Witchdoctor_ sets circuit boards and robot figures next to mushrooms and fetish dolls, while _Scientist Encounters Pac-Man at Channel One_ shows the Scientist manhandling the mixing console as if it were some madcap machine out of Marvel comics. It's important to note that in Jamaican patois, "science" refers to obeah, the African grab-bag of herbal, ritual and occult lore popular on the island. And as Robert Pelton points out, the figure of the scientist is not so distant from the spirit of the trickster that runs throughout this tale: "Both seek to befriend the strange, not so much striving to 'reduce' anomaly as to use it as a passage into a larger order...like the scientist, the trickster always yokes just this world to a suddenly larger world."
Dub music, reggae's great technological mutant, is a pure artifact of the machine, and has little to do with earth, flesh, or authenticity. To create dub, producers and engineers manipulate preexisting tracks of music recorded in an analog—as opposed to digital—fashion on magnetic tape (today's high-end studios encode music as distinct digital bits rather than magnetic "waves").
Dub launched these already tangled ridims into orbit, using technological effects to thicken the beats and to stretch and fold the passage of time. Besides stripping the music down to pure drums and bass and adding raw percussion, Dubmasters introduced counter-rhythms by multiplying the beats through echo and reverb while splicing in what the producer Bunny Lee called "a whole heap a noise." And by abruptly dropping guitars, snares, hi-hats and bass in and out of the mix, they created a virtual analog of the tripping, constantly shifting effects of West African polymetric drumming. Though the hallucinogenic effects of dub are usually attributed to its "spacey" effects and the role of ganja in both its production and consumption, the almost psychic pleasures of the music also arise from its silly putty beats and their ability to yank the rug out from under your deeply ingrained sense of a central organizing rhythm.
- Erik Davis - _Dub, Scratch and The Black Star_
The Dub Pistols
release _Ethnic Dub Simmphony In Ten Parts_ CD by Mere Mortals on Map (1997)