1. INTRODUCTION
A significant body of academic literature and music journalism has examined the historical trajectory of Jamaican dub music and its innovative use of audio recording technology. Previous analyses have highlighted the similarities between dub remixing and acousmatic electroacoustic music (Veal Reference Veal2007; Partridge Reference Partridge2010; Williams Reference Williams2013). For example, ethnomusicologist Michael Veal notes that, in purely sonic terms, dub resembles certain works by the electronic composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and Vladimir Ussachevsky (Veal Reference Veal2007: 39). Such comparisons are informed by the fact that both dub and electroacoustic pioneers employed analogue electronic recording technology (e.g. magnetic tape machines, mixing consoles) as their primary instrumentation. Furthermore, many electroacoustic composers subjected pre-recorded musical materials to electronic manipulation, which is a primary feature of dub music (Veal Reference Veal2007: 39). Therefore, the novel sound effects produced within both genres sound similar in some instances, especially when contrasted with Western acoustic music or electric rhythm and blues.
However, examining dub pioneer King Tubby’s work through the lens of the technologically centred acousmatic electroacoustic tradition may not provide a sufficiently complete understanding of the thematic complexity and conceptual depth of his music. Acousmatic composers generally apply an abstracted syntax such that the acoustic properties of sounds themselves are used to determine how sounds are organised in a composition rather than real-world associations (Truax Reference Truax2002: 7). As such, these composers separate the sound from its original context and create a purely aural experience. This is in contrast to dub music, which uses compositional techniques that carry social or political messages, therefore embedding the sound into a very particular real-world context. For example, Chude-Sokei proposes that delay echoes and reverb in dub serve as metaphors for black people’s diasporic dispersal (Chude-Sokei Reference Chude-Sokei1997: 57). Moreover, Baker (Reference Baker2009) suggests that the spatial audio effects used in dub help construct vast open spaces or ‘audiotopias’, temporarily liberating Kingstonian listeners from their cramped ghettoes. These scholars argue that dub music’s sound effects reflect the human experience of people living in oppressive environments.
The sociopolitical context of Jamaica during the 1970s, as well as the influence of Rastafarian philosophy on roots reggae from which Tubby sourced a large portion of his material, is a major factor in dub music. An examination of Tubby’s studio methods reveals that they are informed by environmental context and the act of listening, thus highlighting the relationship between the human and the environment. Such thematic focus on real-world contexts is generally de-emphasised in acousmatic compositions which are instead more concerned with technological experimentation. Soundscape compositions, on the other hand, articulate concepts including acoustic communication and the referential potential of sound that reinforce the theme of human–environment listening relationships. As such, soundscape composition may provide a more fruitful point of comparison for an analysis of dub that explores what Tubby’s unique sonic gestures actually reveal about his compelling conceptual themes.
This article seeks to compare the compositional methods of King Tubby with those of Canadian soundscape composers Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp. The primary aim of this article is not to single out similarities in terms of sonic style or aesthetics between Tubby’s dub and soundscape composition, but to provide a critical examination of these artists’ works and a close reading of their studio approaches. Our assertion is that the compositional techniques of Truax, Tubby and Westerkamp can be aligned through three conceptual themes: 1) referential composition and the invocation of past listening associations through sonic abstraction, 2) timbral play as a means of linking sound-processing techniques to acoustic communication, and 3) the evocation of real-world motion cues by way of ecologically informed sound-processing effects.
Through these conceptual themes, we show how Tubby’s music references real-world soundscapes, such as the outdoor reggae sound system dance (i.e. dancehall) and the dub mixing studio, and therefore is closely aligned with the context-based composition approach of soundscape composition. The interpretation of Tubby’s work set forth in this article focuses on the human listening experience in relation to physical environments, using notions fundamental to soundscape composition including the communicational and ecological potentials of sound. Because it is impossible to know Tubby’s actual intentions while composing, this article serves as one alternative interpretation of his work. Our study should be considered as a complement to other important dub music research centred on political metaphors.
This article is organised as follows. The second section provides a brief historical outline and introduces key compositional features of both Tubby’s music and the soundscape composition practices of Truax and Westerkamp. The third section introduces the concept of Tubby’s dub as a soundscape exploration. The fourth section suggests links between Tubby’s macro-structural composition techniques and the referential composition approaches of Truax and Westerkamp. In particular, we discuss how sonic abstraction is employed in Tubby’s works to convey contextual information as it is in soundscape composition. The remainder of the article then proceeds with a micro-structural investigation of Tubby’s sound-processing methods. The fifth section examines how Tubby’s repurposing of the high-pass filter unit on his mixing console permitted an acoustic communicational approach to timbral play comparable to Truax’s granular synthesis technique. The final section proposes that Tubby’s improvised use of frequency equalisation (EQ) knobs, volume faders and tape delay evokes a strong sense of motion for listeners, allowing them to associate the abstract world of the dub composition with environmental motion cues perceived in real-world soundscapes.
2. DUB AND SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION: A HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Dub music was arguably the first instance in popular music history in which the sampling and remixing of pre-recorded musical materials were employed as a primary compositional technique. The birth of dub was largely due to the contributions of one artist, Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby (Barrow and Dalton Reference Barrow and Dalton1997), working as a mixing engineer from his technologically limited home studio in Kingston, Jamaica, in the early 1970s. Formally trained in electronics, Tubby first discovered the thrill of completely removing a reggae vocal from its pre-recorded instrumental backing track while cutting discs (i.e. acetate records or ‘dubplates’) for reggae producer Duke Reid. Over time, Tubby proceeded to manipulate the instrumental arrangements on these tracks using innovative mixing techniques and processing effects: the dropout, extreme EQ, long delay, short delay, reverb and echo feedback (Toop Reference Toop2004: 356). Tubby’s experiments with dub remixing were largely improvised, and his studio mixes were recorded straight to analogue tape without additional post-production editing (Bradley Reference Bradley2000: 316).
Soundscape composition emerged during the mid-1970s in Vancouver, Canada, at Simon Fraser University with the World Soundscape Project (WSP). WSP members, including Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, composed using environmental audio field recordings. Westerkamp defines soundscape composition as ‘the artistic, sonic transmission of meanings about place, time, environment and listening perception’ (Westerkamp Reference Westerkamp2002: 52). The aims of acoustic ecology are often implicated in this genre in that there is continuous contact between the composer, the listener and the sound environment (McCartney Reference McCartney2000). Furthermore, even though the composer may process and abstract urban or natural field recordings through the use of frequency filtering, reverb, tape-based pitch shifting or digitally based time stretching, these manipulations should never compromise the preservation of environmental context perceived by listeners hearing the soundscape composition.
3. MOVING BELOW THE MUSIC’S SURFACE: DUB AS A SOUNDSCAPE EXPLORATION
Many of the now clichéd sonic tropes in popular electronic club music, particularly those involving frequency EQ, were appropriated from Tubby and other early dub artists. As a result, there is a tendency to confine the dub genre to a narrow popular music lens within electronic music literature and music journalism. For example, several authors have provided comparisons between Jamaican dub and the production techniques and aesthetics of popular genres including hip-hop, house, and drum and bass (Reynolds Reference Reynolds1998; Manuel and Marshall Reference Manuel and Marshall2006; Howard Reference Howard2008; Katz Reference Katz2014; Sullivan Reference Sullivan2014). We therefore move beyond a purely aural and stylistic characterisation of Tubby’s music and instead examine the relatively understudied conceptual dimensions of his work.
Tubby’s compositional methods share many of the conceptual themes of soundscape composition, in particular those underlining the relationships between listeners and environmental soundscapes. We argue that while in soundscape composition environmental field recordings are incorporated into the piece, Tubby’s exploration of soundscapes is implied by his mixing and processing techniques.
The term ‘soundscape’, as it is used in soundscape composition and as we use it in our comparative analysis, is defined by the WSP as follows. A soundscape is
an environment of sound (or sonic environment) with emphasis on the way it is perceived and understood by the individual, or by a society. It thus depends on the relationship between the individual and any such environment. The term may refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an artificial environment. (Truax Reference Truax1999)
Truax proposes the notion of acoustic communication as central to the soundscape composition approach, wherein listening is the primary interface for information transfer between the environment and an individual (Truax Reference Truax1996: 58). Although Truax’s communicational model is primarily intended for interpreting and composing with environmental sounds, Tubby’s groundbreaking audio processing techniques can also be read as highlighting situated relationships between the listener and environmental contexts such as outdoor reggae dancehalls and Tubby’s studio. Furthermore, Tubby’s specific sound-processing choices are arguably linked to the subjective identifications he wishes his listeners to experience via the evocation of real-world motion cues. These context-based, acoustic communicational and ecological facets of Tubby’s studio work are what link his music to soundscape compositional methods and differentiate it from the purely abstract and non-referential methods upheld by the acousmatic electroacoustic tradition.
The role of soundscape perception arguably informs Tubby’s dub remixing methods. This article suggests that although Tubby did not incorporate field recordings into his work, Kingstonian listeners hearing his studio dubs were able to associate these compositions with real-world soundscapes.
4. REFERENTIAL COMPOSITION AND THE INVOCATION OF PAST LISTENING ASSOCIATIONS THROUGH SONIC ABSTRACTION
Within this article, we employ the term ‘sonic abstraction’ to refer more generally to analogue or digital processing techniques that composers apply to their audio source material. For Truax, ‘abstracted’ sound in a soundscape composition is a means for processing to bring out the internal aspects of sounds and to enhance them, rather than obliterating the identity of the source material (Truax Reference Truax2013). A processed sound often creates a sense of it being abstracted from its real-world origins (Truax Reference Truax2002). However, the soundscape composer is concerned with maintaining a level of recognisability in the use of sonic abstraction so that the listener may link processed sounds back to their original environmental sources.
Sound studies scholar Andra McCartney (Reference McCartney1999) uses the term ‘sounding’ to describe Westerkamp’s work. When soundwalking and recording, Westerkamp takes time to listen to places in depth in order to understand them, moving through landscapes, seeking out their resonances (McCartney Reference McCartney1999: 2). Her sonic abstractions in the studio are intended as mediated extensions of her sounding methods. Tubby’s dub remixes or ‘versions’ emerge from his interactive sounding of pre-recorded reggae instrumentals (i.e. ‘riddims’). He mentally scans through original source material and uses his studio tools to enhance subtle musical intricacies that may have previously gone unnoticed by listeners. Through innovative mixing and processing methods, Tubby emphasises or de-emphasises specific elements of ‘riddims’ in order to abstract new referential meanings from them.
The most recognisable sonic trope of dub music is the ‘dropout’ or the fragmentation of the reggae song surface through the cutting out of formerly continuous musical material and then intermittent re-insertion of its various multi-tracked instrumental parts. Tubby was the master practitioner of this mixing technique, but because his MCI mixing console was not fitted with mute switches, his dropouts were achieved through the quick manipulation of linear volume fader controls (Veal Reference Veal2007: 121). Tubby’s Chapter of Money (1975), a dub version of singer Barry Brown’s roots reggae hit Politician (1975), clearly demonstrates his use of the dropout technique. The first ten seconds of the track include the unprocessed ‘riddim’ from the original song in which the drums, bass, sax, organ and guitar are heard. Starting at 0:11, a tape delay echo effect is added to a sample of a single guitar strum while the original ‘dry’ guitar and organ tracks are dropped out of the mix. Then, at 0:15, the sax abruptly disappears, and we are left only with the drum and bass rhythm, with the processed guitar signal echoing on for several seconds and then fading out. This is followed by short transient fragments of the sax and organ tracks processed with delay and reverb dropping in and out of the mix.
Although dub dropouts unquestionably help establish a dynamic musical tension and release, there is a subtle conceptual theme at play that links dub to soundscape composition, namely, the idea of contextual meaning. Whereas the notion of context in soundscape composition tends to refer to the known and recognisable sounds of a given environment, in Tubby’s dub the context refers to the known and recognisable sounds of a given song and to the physical context in which that song is most often heard played. The discussion of referential composition presented in the next section examines how Tubby’s music maintains links to the musical context of his pre-recorded source material (e.g. Barry Brown’s Politician), while invoking past listening experiences of the physical context associated with that song (e.g. outdoor reggae dancehalls or Tubby’s studio).
4.1. Conveying contextual meaning: shifting between familiar and abstracted sound
In discussing the macro-compositional approach employed by soundscape composers, Truax (Reference Truax2002) refers to the juxtaposition of environmental soundscapes and their processed counterparts in his piece Pacific Fanfare (1996). The first section of the piece involves a montage of unprocessed Vancouver sounds that a local might recognise, such as ship horns and church bells. However, in the second section, the sounds from the beginning of the piece are time-stretched and frequency-resonated, allowing the listener to aurally explore the harmonic characteristics of the original sounds and their symbolic associations (Truax Reference Truax2002: 6). Thus Truax commences the piece with contextual information from Vancouver’s soundscape to establish a sense of place and familiarity for the listener. The piece then employs a sonic rupture to abruptly shift to an abstracted soundscape. Because time-stretching maintains the original pitch of sound samples, the listener is still able to associate the abstracted sounds to the unprocessed sounds used in the piece. Additionally, personal memories are evoked for some upon hearing these common Vancouver soundmarks.
Although Tubby’s use of the dub dropout technique is done using pre-recorded music rather than field recordings, its referential and mnemonic potential for the listener is comparable to Truax’s sonic rupture. Tubby’s dubs navigate the border between the familiar and abstracted or, in other words, enhanced sounds of a well-known piece of music, whereas Truax navigates the border between the familiar and abstracted sounds of a well-known location (assuming the listener is a local).
Truax clarifies that a primary trait of soundscape composition is ‘not that the pieces use environmental sound materials, but rather that most pieces can be placed on a continuum between what might be called ‘found sound’ and ‘abstracted’ approaches’ (ibid.). The imagination evoked while recording in the field as well as the memories of the listening experience often inform soundscape compositional methods. As Westerkamp states: ‘Most of my pieces, including Beneath the Forest Floor (1992), are riding this edge between the real and the imaginary. When one takes that further, the ways in which real and processed sounds interact in the piece, very much reflect my relationship to the environment’ (Westerkamp Reference Westerkamp2008).
In the case of dub, the sampled popular reggae tunes reflect the familiar soundmarks of the dancehall’s environmental soundscape. For example, the opening segment of Tubby’s Chapter of Money (1975) utilises the unprocessed introduction of the instrumental backing track from Brown’s Politician (1975), an A-side single that was a popular tune at the time in Kingston’s dancehalls. It is important to note that the large majority of residents in Kingston’s ghettoes during the 1970s could not afford record players and mainstream radio seldom played roots reggae (Bradley Reference Bradley2000), so the association between the sounds of roots reggae and the physical context of the dancehall would have been quite strong, as for many the only opportunity to hear this music was at the dancehall.
Tubby first conveys contextual meaning within Chapter of Money (1975) and many of his other dubs by documenting the sound material sourced from another producer’s recording session master tape. Hearing the familiar unprocessed source material in Tubby’s studio dubs provides listeners with a sense of place in relation to the real-world environmental context of the dancehall where they likely first heard the original A-side songs. He references the dancehall soundscape in his studio work using transparent mixing so that the traces of his technological intervention start as relatively concealed, similar to the found sound editing approach employed in the WSP’s Soundscapes of Canada (1974) CBC radio series. Once context is established, Tubby abruptly introduces dropouts and processed instrumental samples to achieve perceptual shifts between familiar and abstracted sound. His deconstruction and subsequent re-assembling of sampled material uses spatial effects like reverb and echo as cohesive elements bonding displaced sonic fragments of music.
The processed instrumental parts dropping in and out of Tubby’s studio mixes can be understood as echoing the real-world sensorial experiences of listeners being immersed in the dancehall soundscape. The listener hearing the original A-side single within the dancehall may have meditated on the guitar riffs playing from specific loudspeakers or honed in on the deep bass at other moments. In addition, there would have been the natural reverb and echo effects of the music reflecting off nearby buildings, and the dancehall listener’s imagination may have also coloured and mentally abstracted the instrumental sounds she or he was subjectively drawn to. The dancehall listener’s highly personal experience of the music and spatial acoustics of the dancehall then would have found a reflection in the sonic abstractions employed by Tubby in the studio. For listeners of Tubby’s studio work, the dub might therefore trigger memories of their experience in the physical space (dancehall) and encourage them to associate the abstracted sounds in the composition to that live experience.
Furthermore, the ways in which original and processed sounds interact in Tubby’s studio remixes reflect his deep engagement with the source material. Westerkamp’s Beneath the Forest Floor (1992) reflects her relationship to the environment. She processes field recordings to present a personal commentary on her subjective experience listening and recording in Vancouver’s forests. In Tubby’s case, his initial subjective experience of a song was often in his own studio, as numerous Kingston reggae producers would bring their most recent session master tapes to him to remix. He was known for sometimes producing over a dozen unique remixed versions of a single song (Bradley Reference Bradley2000: 316), reflecting the complexity of his experience of the music. Tubby interprets the musical subtleties in the original material, and then extracts and emphasises certain elements through dropouts and processing effects. The overall mixing dynamics he performs on his mixing console result in some sounds abruptly appearing in the foreground and others disappearing from the mix, reflecting his own listening subjectivity in the studio and his mental focus shifting between specific interesting sounds within the source material.
Thus Tubby’s macro-structural compositional methods reference the environmental context of the outdoor dancehall and his own listening experience in his studio. The following section suggests that Tubby’s studio dub compositions themselves operate as soundscapes that preserve and enhance the spatial effects and performance gestures common within the dancehall soundscape.
4.2. The dub composition as a soundscape
In soundscape composition, it is environmental context that is preserved, enhanced and exploited by the composer. The listener’s past experiences, associations and patterns of soundscape perception are called upon by the composer and thereby integrated into the compositional strategy (Truax Reference Truax2001: 207). In a similar vein, Tubby’s remixes arguably maintain explicit reference to the sound effects, acoustic spatial play and performance gestures listeners would have experienced within the dancehall. He therefore preserves and enhances not only the immediate compositional context of the original A-side single’s music but also the environmental context of the outdoor dancehall soundscape.
Prior to working as a studio mixing engineer, Tubby started his musical career as the highly sought-after operator of Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi sound system.Footnote 1 We argue that Tubby’s studio dub mixing methodology may be analysed as a context-based approach informed by his interpretation of listener subjectivity among attendees at his earlier dancehall performances where he would play popular A-sides. His studio-produced remixes can be understood as soundscapes adhering to the WSP’s definition of the term: abstract constructions with an emphasis on how they are perceived by listeners in relation to their past listening experiences.
Tubby was famous for the live processing of reggae original A-sides at his Hometown Hi-Fi performances and he was arguably the first sound system operator to use self-modified reverb and tape delay echo units for spatial effects in a live setting. He would additionally separate high frequencies from the bass and route them to different amplifiers. Steel horns functioned as treble speakers that were suspended from trees so as to project the high frequencies evenly across the dance floor (Williams Reference Williams2012: 239). Tubby was interested in the aural experience of his audience, rather than simply producing good tunes to dance to (Partridge Reference Partridge2010: 316).
Tubby’s studio approach further articulates the contextual links between the dub composition as a soundscape and the dancehall soundscape. His studio remixes exploited the potential of frequency EQ and stereo-field spatial panning in conjunction with reverb and echo effects to evoke the listening experience of his live mixing at the dancehalls, where he would experiment with frequency splitting and audio spatialisation. However, rather than his studio dubs merely serving as refined versions of his earlier live sonic experiments, his specific studio processing effects suggest deeper acoustic communicational and ecological undertones (discussed in sections 5 and 6).
Furthermore, Tubby’s use of the dropout in studio compositions, when inserted immediately following a segment of unprocessed sounds, serves as a mnemonic device reminding the listener of the common live performance gesture of Tubby and other sound system ‘selectors’ (i.e. DJs) flipping a 45 rpm vinyl record at the dancehall. After playing an unprocessed excerpt if not the whole track of a popular reggae A-side single, the selector would abruptly and ritualistically turn over to the B-side of the record that contained the purely instrumental version of the tune. Tubby would often add his own musical flourishes to the B-side using his live sound-processing units. Also, rather than performing continuous DJ mixes with smooth transitions between songs, Tubby would allow for abrupt gaps of silence while flipping over a record or switching between different records.
The gesture of flipping the record in combination with silence fractures the overall dancehall soundscape. Macro-structurally speaking, it is evident that the dropout incorporates sonic fragmentation into the studio dubs. Furthermore, this fragmentation not only alludes to a live performance gesture, but listeners hearing the dubs are also reminded of the fractured dancehall soundscape. Similar to the jarring aural effect experienced by a listener at the dancehall when the linear narrative delivered by the reggae singer heard on the A-side was interrupted as the record was flipped, the studio dub dropout functions as an aural index marking Tubby’s intended perpetual shifts between aural presence and absence, as well as explicitly referential and abstracted sound. The dropout prompts listeners to question their knowledge and memories of popular reggae singles from the recent past. Tubby’s attention to the indexical properties of sound is also suggested by his strategic juxtaposing of processed sounds alongside their sources.
4.3. Sonic juxtapositions: linking sounds to their sources
Sonic juxtaposition is a compositional technique common in soundscape composition where the processed version of a sound is placed in close temporal proximity to the unprocessed version of the same sound. Westerkamp uses sonic juxtapositions in her editing by placing a processed field recording in close proximity to its unprocessed source, highlighting the similarities and contrasts between the two. For example, in a transitional section between the beach and dream sequences in her Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989), the original barnacle sounds are heard in close proximity to their frequency-filtered counterparts (McCartney Reference McCartney1999: 172). Hearing the two forms of the sound in such close relation allows the listener to be actively engaged with the processed sound in a way that highlights the link to the original.
In Chapter of Money (1975), Tubby also uses the juxtaposition technique, as tape delay echoes of the original guitar and saxophone sounds can be heard in close temporal proximity to the unprocessed versions of the same sounds. It is telling that Tubby chose this referential method of organising sound mid-track as opposed to simply introducing abstracted fragments at the start of the piece without providing the listener with contextual cues in the form of the prior unprocessed sound. Such context-based sonic juxtapositions in his music help generate what Truax defines as a ‘coherent soundscape’ in that the composition keeps a ‘clear degree of recognisability in its sounds, even if some of them are in fact heavily processed, in order that the listener’s recognition of and associations with these sounds may be invoked’ (Truax Reference Truax2002: 6). If the guitar and saxophone echoes were inserted completely out of context, the listener may not easily be able to identify the sounds’ sources.
Tubby’s use of juxtaposition is again evident in his application of the high-pass filter effect in songs like Tubby Get Smart (1975) and Young Generation Dub (1976). In these remixes, Tubby places the filtered signal temporally in parallel with the original (Williams Reference Williams2013: 183). This combination of signals produces audible phasing effects, with a recognisable audio aesthetic that Tubby’s apprentice King Jammy refers to as ‘squawky sounds’ (ibid.: 168). However, on a more conceptual level, the listener compares and contrasts the processed sounds with their sources as they are heard simultaneously. Therefore, as in soundscape compositions, where juxtaposition is used to prompt listeners to think again about the relationship, or lack of relationship, between the original and the processed sound, Tubby’s juxtapositions assist listeners in navigating between familiar and abstracted sounds. In both genres, juxtapositions encourage a playful active listening as listeners try to discern whether contextual meaning is being articulated or obscured.
We have focused on Tubby’s context-based sonic abstraction on a macro-structural level and how it relates to Truax and Westerkamp’s referential composition approaches. Tubby’s work can, however, also be examined from a micro-structural perspective. A micro-structural perspective would pay close attention to his specific processing effects including frequency EQ and echo and how they address Truax’s acoustic communication model. Although rhythm is generally considered as the predominant musical component of dub music, the remainder of this article investigates the conceptual implications of the subtle sounds generated from Tubby’s high-pass filter and tape delay echo unit that sit discretely between the gaps of the more overt reggae drum and bass pulses.
5. TIMBRAL PLAY AND MICROSCOPIC SOUND: LINKING SOUND-PROCESSING TECHNIQUES TO ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION
Truax’s real-time granular synthesis (i.e. time-stretching) software serves as a relevant studio tool for comparatively analysing the communicational undertones of Tubby’s performance on his high-pass filter. Digital time-stretching allows a sound to be prolonged by any factor, thus producing ‘environmental-like’ processed sounds using sampled sound grains (Keller and Truax Reference Keller and Truax1998). Truax’s time-stretching software permits him to compose directly with the timbral properties of environmental sound. More specifically, he employs this technique not merely to create immersive dense drones but to ‘allow the inner timbral character of the sound to emerge and be observed, as if under a microscope’ (Truax Reference Truax1996: 61).
For example, the sampled environmental field recordings of church bells used in his piece Basilica (1992) are time-stretched, resulting in a sonic texture that resembles organ clusters slowly dying away in a reverberant cathedral (Truax Reference Truax1994). Considering how granular synthesis is now used in many genres of contemporary electronic music and not just in soundscape composition, it is important to note that Truax is primarily interested in articulating the acoustic communicational potential of this software. In other words, this processing tool challenges the traditional listening model centred on passive listening. The added duration resulting from time-stretching allows the sound to reverberate in the listener’s memory, providing time for long-term memories and associations to surface (Truax Reference Truax1994). Basilica (1992) preserves referential indices that cite the familiar resonant sounds of bells and situates the listener within an enhanced version of a real-world soundscape in which the spatial acoustics inside the Basilica of Notre Dame in Quebec City are magnified.
Unlike Truax, who worked with state-of-the-art tools in the institutional sound studios of Simon Fraser University, Tubby worked independently with limited access to second-hand and relatively obsolete audio technology. The cultural context of Jamaican dub music of the 1970s was relatively insulated from the globalised pop music industry of the time. This ‘limitation’, however, should instead be read as a type of ‘enabling constraint’ (Manning and Massumi Reference Manning and Massumi2014) that was exploited by Tubby when exploring the timbral and spectral properties of his sourced riddims. Reggae journalist Chris Lane refers to the built-in high-pass filter on Tubby’s MCI mixing console as his exclusive ‘secret weapon’ and ‘big knob’ that contributed to the unique sound of 1970s dub. This filter was a feature of the console rarely used by most mixing engineers except for removing extraneous low frequency rumble from signals. However, the filter control has several notches, so that one can hear the separate frequencies disappearing when the knob is being twisted (Lane Reference Lane2001). Tubby exploited the stepped nature of this filter and, as Sean Williams suggests, repurposed this element of the console as an intriguing electronic music performance instrument. Rather than employing the filter in its static mode (i.e. setting and leaving it at one frequency setting), Tubby dynamically adjusted it through musical improvisation (Williams Reference Williams2013). Because the inductor and capacitors of the filter are switched via a rotary knob, audible clicks and pops are heard in the processed signal when the knob is turned. Such noise transients are used by Tubby in pieces such as Rebel Dance (1975) to impart additional rhythmic elements within the remix (ibid.: 178). Beyond this interesting aestheticisation of machine noise, the filter permitted Tubby to compose directly with the timbral intricacies of his sampled source material. Interestingly, Truax does the same with granular synthesis, revealing a deeper level of signification inherent within the original sounds (Truax Reference Truax1994). A critical listening of Tubby’s Young Generation Dub (1976) in which the high-pass filter is used evokes the aural image of a microscope or narrowly focused flashlight rapidly scanning and zooming into specific frequency components of the drum hi-hat’s overall spectral profile.
Truax suggests that listening is not the end stage of a series of linear energy transfers from source to listener, but rather one element within a dynamic system of information exchange he terms the ‘acoustic community’, where sound mediates the relation between the listener and the environment (Truax Reference Truax1996: 59). He argues that sound guides the composer’s shaping of it, or in other words, ‘one is both composing and being composed through the sound’ (ibid.: 60). Despite Tubby’s processing of sampled music rather than environmental sound, the multi-directional communication network linking himself as a listener to his high-pass filter as well as the sampled source material can be analysed as a dub analogue of Truax’s concept of ‘acoustic community’. As Tubby sat in his studio environment listening to what the signal transformed by his filter communicates back to him, which in the case of Young Generation Dub (1976) are rapid fluctuations between fuller-sounding timbres and at other times more sharp and thin metallic timbres, he uses this acoustic information outputted from his filter to inspire other interesting sound-effect combinations. Through a collaborative and improvised dialogue with his studio tools, Tubby also works within this acoustic community. His sound-processing approach is consistent with the acoustic ecology framework that emphasises how the information we take in as listeners is balanced by our sound-making activities (Truax Reference Truax1996: 59). Tubby’s dialogic studio-processing methods can thus be situated alongside the soundscape composition approach that draws from Truax’s acoustic communication model.
Furthermore, the subtle conceptual implications of Tubby’s playing of the high-pass filter can be read through the following observation on granular synthesis by Truax: the listener is able to hear ‘inside’ the sounds with their gestures enlarged and spectral characteristics exposed, while recognisability is retained (Truax Reference Truax1992). It is not surprising that dub innovator Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry refers to dub as ‘x-ray music’ (Natal Reference Natal2009). Westerkamp similarly processes recorded environmental sounds only to a certain degree so as to avoid blurring their original clarity. She transforms sounds in order to highlight their original contours and meanings, similar to the manner in which a caricaturist sharpens the contours and our perception of a person’s face (Westerkamp Reference Westerkamp1996). Tubby’s timbral play via the high-pass filter allows him to ‘sound out’ and sharpen the spectral details of his sampled instruments. Because he juxtaposes the filtered signal with the original version as previously discussed, the listener is able to associate abstracted hi-hat sounds, for instance, with the hi-hat in the real-world context of the Jamaican studio where the original drummer played it.
Our micro-structural analysis of Tubby’s sound-processing effects has revealed the acoustic communicational facets of his studio work. The following section investigates how Tubby’s combined use of frequency EQ and tape delay conveys environmental motion cues to listeners in manners comparable to the everyday psychoacoustic phenomena referenced in Westerkamp’s compositions and the illusion of relative motion often achieved through soundscape composition.
6. ECOLOGICAL DUB: PERCEIVING ENVIRONMENTAL MOTION CUES IN TUBBY’S MUSIC
Westerkamp’s soundscape compositions often use sound processing to simulate the environmental motion cues we perceive when listening in the real world, such as the Doppler Effect. An example of this psychoacoustic phenomenon is the perceived increase then decrease in pitch when a honking car passes by a stationary listener. In Beneath the Forest Floor (1992), water and bird sounds are slowed down and sped up using tape-based pitch-shifting (Westerkamp Reference Westerkamp2008) and are rapidly panned between the left and right sides of the stereo field in order to imitate the Doppler Effect. Truax suggests that the structural approaches of soundscape composers are sometimes intended as analogues of real-world experience, such as the soundwalk (Truax Reference Truax2002: 5). The composer who creates the illusion of relative motion between the listener and the auditory space has a rich palette of meaning from which to draw (Truax Reference Truax2002: 9).
In Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning, Eric Clarke proposes that rather than considering motion in music as metaphorical in nature, we may perceive sounds as capable of perceptually specifying genuine motion, but in a virtual space rather than a real space. This sense of motion is in turn one of the ways in which music brings about a strong sense of subjective identification for a listener (Clarke Reference Clarke2005: 89).
Clarke’s critical reading of Fatboy Slim’s Build It Up, Tear It Down (1998) is helpful in analysing the ecological implications of Tubby’s sound-processing techniques. Starting at 0:21 of Slim’s piece, we hear a synthesised rhythmic riff with barely audible bass as well as snare drum hits in the background. The whole mix sounds as if it is being processed by a low‐pass filter, resulting in a dark and muffled timbre. However, the sound continuously evolves as if the cut‐off frequency of the filter is being progressively raised, the higher frequency components becoming more audible, and revealing the sounds of a drum kit at about 0:40 (Clarke Reference Clarke2005: 81). Although this filtering effect is directly influenced by dub music and has now become a cliché in mainstream club music, Clarke highlights a surprising ecological significance inherent within this sonic trope. The perception of the timbre gradually becoming clearer and brighter is of a continuous movement towards a sound source that is at first occluded but progressively revealed. A strong sense of motion is achieved, derived from ecological principles: in everyday circumstances, the acoustic perception of a sound source that is concealed in relation to a listener (e.g. behind a building) will possess attenuated high frequencies (Clarke Reference Clarke2005: 81). Moving around the obstruction will result in the progressive perception of more high frequencies.
Perceived motion is achieved in Tubby’s music via his use of frequency-filtered echoes. He uses the standard EQ knobs built into each channel of his mixing console and the tape delay echo effect simultaneously, so that once the tape echo unit is activated during the mix, he starts turning the EQ knobs to gradually cut off the low-end and articulate the higher frequencies of the ‘wet’ echoed sound. As a result, each subsequent echo is heard as progressively becoming thinner and sharper in timbre. This thinning echo effect can be situated alongside Westerkamp’s creative use of pitch-shifting and stereo-field panning to evoke real-world perceptual cues. Starting at 1:55 of Tubby’s Chapter of Money (1975), the echoes of a saxophone slowly fade out of the mix as if they are moving further away from the stationary listener. Meanwhile, the instrument’s timbre morphs from a brass instrument into an electronic-sounding instrument such as a synthesiser. The tinny timbre of the signal also conjures the aural image of the steel horns suspended from trees emitting treble frequencies at Tubby’s earlier Hometown Hi-Fi performances.
Such an interpretation of musical meaning is influenced by common ecological principles: we tend to localise sound sources rich in high frequencies as emanating from above our heads. While surround sound diffusion tools are now readily available to electroacoustic and soundscape composers, in 1970s Jamaica, Tubby did not have access to multi-channel audio spatialisation technology at dancehalls. He therefore devised experimental strategies for placing loudspeakers in unusual locations so as to exploit the urban outdoor acoustics and produce an immersive sound experience. His studio remixes use basic EQ and tape delay tools to simulate the perceptual cues experienced by listeners within the environmental soundscape of the dancehall.
A strong sense of motion is articulated in Chapter of Money (1975) starting at 0:11 when a sampled guitar strum processed with delay lingers for 40 seconds after the original unprocessed guitar signal disappears. Meanwhile, Tubby rides the linear faders on his mixer using abrupt gestures causing the volume of the tinny echoes to pulsate as if the guitar fragments are hesitantly receding into the background, but occasionally approaching the listener in the foreground similar to the motion cues we interpret while a buzzing mosquito flies back and forth overhead. Truax’s description of the moving spatial perspective conveyed in the piece Entry to the Harbour (1973) produced by the WSP serves as a strong point of comparison for the sense of motion implied during Chapter of Money (1975): a simulation of a ferry boat trip with characteristic foreshortening of its duration was produced using studio techniques such as cross-fading and reverberation to create the illusion of various sounds approaching and receding (Truax Reference Truax2002: 9). In the soundscape composition approach, processed environmental sounds help evoke a wealth of difficult-to-verbalise images and associations, all of which guide the composition and its reception (Truax Reference Truax1996: 60). Tubby comparably employs processing effects to evoke a sense of motion that listeners can associate with their navigations through real-world soundscapes.
It is important to clarify that artistic representations of timbral play and psychoacoustic phenomena are not unique to either soundscape composition or Tubby’s music. Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète compositional approach emphasises the spectromorphological (i.e. perceived morphological developments in sound spectra over time) properties of all sounds, including environmental ones, as well as how they can be manipulated with recording technology (Smalley Reference Smalley1997). Stockhausen explored the simulation of environmental cues including reverberation and the Doppler Effect through experimentation with immersive multi-channel sound spatialisation technology. However, we argue that Tubby’s work veers away from Schaeffer and other acousmatic composers’ ‘pure sound’ or objet sonore approach that privileges the inherent acoustic properties of sounds rather than their real-world referents. Schaeffer proposed that the listener must disconnect the sound from any physical, cultural and psychological references and indexes (Chion Reference Chion1983). Tubby’s high-pass filter, EQ and delay echo effects orchestrated through his dynamic control of the mixing console may be understood by some as a virtuosic manipulation of sound objects on par with the techniques of electroacoustic pioneers such as Stockhausen. However, we believe that Tubby’s dub approach parallels the conceptual foundations of Truax and Westerkamp’s work in terms of their attention to environmental context and to the communicational properties of sound.
7. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Tubby’s unique attention to context, past listening associations, and the act of listening itself suggests that his compositional methods parallel those used in soundscape composition. Tubby’s dubs employ dropouts and sonic juxtapositions to help listeners navigate the grey area between familiar and abstracted sounds in a similar way as the soundscape compositions of Truax and Westerkamp. Although sounds are heavily processed in Tubby’s work, he maintains the referential links to the musical source material, while recalling the environmental context of the dancehall. His repurposing of the high-pass filter allows him to move ‘inside’ the sounds of sampled instruments and enlarge their timbral properties while demonstrating this studio device’s acoustic communicational potential. Furthermore, Tubby’s improvised gestural motions on the EQ and volume controls of his mixing console, in combination with delay echo effects, communicate a sense of motion to listeners fostering their strong subjective identification with the musical material in contrast to a passive listening experience. Therefore, in conclusion, it is reasonable to hypothesise that contextual meaning, acoustic communication and an ecological approach to sound processing are implied by Tubby’s compositional methods.
Considering that contemporary electronic club music has subsumed many elements of Tubby’s techniques, our understanding of Tubby’s work is concerned less with explicitly ‘dub’ sonic gestures. We instead highlight how his creative approach of ‘sounding out’ the subtle resonances of popular reggae singles operated on numerous conceptual levels that can be aligned with those explored in soundscape composition. Our study provides a novel perspective on Tubby’s work as reflecting a multifaceted musical approach that warrants further scholarly critique.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful feedback from Nadine Bekkouche.
