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July 22, 2012 3:36 PM   Subscribe

A Capella Dubstep (slyt) Offered without explanation, because honestly, you can't explain something like this.
posted by cjorgensen (43 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
At first I was thinking "huh this isn't very good." Then the 'drop' came and I laughed my fucking ass off.
posted by KathrynT at 3:39 PM on July 22, 2012 [8 favorites]


The outtakes were the best part. The Street Fighter 2 move made me laugh and laugh.
posted by roll truck roll at 3:44 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


Man, I have been doing this all my life. It drives the cat, dog, and my fianceƩ crazy.
posted by Scientist at 3:45 PM on July 22, 2012 [2 favorites]


It drives the cat, dog, and my fianceƩ crazy.
Er, yeah. The posted video sounds less like dubstep and more like the Leonard J. Waxdeck Bird Calling Contest run amok.
This, on the other hand, seems to hit the wubwubs right on the nose, even though I guess he's kinda "cheating" by shifting the pitch down electronically.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 3:50 PM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]


Needs more Autotune.


(Somewhere, someone, I guarantee, will have that as their ringtone.)
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 3:57 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


the Leonard J. Waxdeck Bird Calling Contest run amok.

In other words: dubstep.

ducking, running, laughing
do people still say that?

posted by KathrynT at 3:59 PM on July 22, 2012


I never realized how similar dubstep is to heavy metal. That explains a lot, and I guess it's even a comparable demographic, only in a different age.
posted by deo rei at 3:59 PM on July 22, 2012 [2 favorites]


Sam, Bill and Neal's spirits live on in these fine young men.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:00 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


I chuckled appreciably.
posted by Decani at 4:07 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


I ran across this a capella dubstep number last week and thought about posting it here but never got around to it. It's actually pretty amazing. The artist has done a lot of other voice-manipulated stuff that's interesting too.
posted by adamrice at 4:29 PM on July 22, 2012 [9 favorites]


The wubwubwub kids are way too much in sync.

What people don't get about "rave dubstep" (because this isn't what purists would call "real dubstep", and "brostep" is just an insult), partly because Skrillex and Rusko themselves lost sight of it, is that there's a time structure to the amped-up wobble that doesn't sync with the drums every bar. This isn't because of musica virtuosity particularly, but because we're looking at the hyperbolic, Vegas-Elvis version of frequency-based filters. The filtering works different on different pitches, essentially.

For an example that's between "garage dubstep" (old-school) and "rave dubstep" (the emo hair kids), I particularly enjoy this track. Pay attention how in the wubwubwub break the rhythm of the cutoffs seems to correlate with the pitch of the underlying note, and just how nonlinear it is w.r.t the rhythm track.

At the most extreme of "rave dubstep" (even Borgore, Skrillex when feeling aggro), the wubwubwub is this kind of effect on the bassline. The increasingly loud wubwub wars began from a context where club-mixed music (often on short-lived "dub plates") was translated home; wubwubwub filters started being resonated at higher harmonics and distorted and so on. Ultimately dubstep was an abortion of a larger cultural project because it became too popular too early on, so its ideas didn't crash the dance culture mainstream, they crashed on it.
posted by syntaxfree at 4:33 PM on July 22, 2012 [7 favorites]


Wubwub. Wubwub wars. Wubwubwub. Smock.
posted by Decani at 4:35 PM on July 22, 2012


while i admire people who are willing to do something like this in public (even on a time delay), I have no idea what this is supposed to sound like.
posted by lodurr at 4:54 PM on July 22, 2012


I don't get dub step at all. It's the first music that makes me feel old.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:54 PM on July 22, 2012 [5 favorites]


adamrice: "I ran across this a capella dubstep number last week and thought about posting it here but never got around to it. It's actually pretty amazing. The artist has done a lot of other voice-manipulated stuff that's interesting too."

I clicked on this thread to say that dubstep is one of the very few things you just can't really acapella. Apparently, I was mistaken. I now have a new mission in life.
posted by wierdo at 4:55 PM on July 22, 2012


I clicked on this thread to say that dubstep is one of the very few things you just can't really acapella. Apparently, I was mistaken.

That is amazing. Flat out amazing. It's not really what I consider a capella, and I'm not 100% sure I can articulate why, but it is really cool the way he calls back to what I think of as DJ culture and performance. Nice.
posted by KathrynT at 5:05 PM on July 22, 2012


cjorngensen: dubstep is a close cousin to drum'n'bass, if that makes you feel better.

Here's an early dubstep track that won't make you feel old: Loefah -- The Goat Stare.

Roughly, "Rock around the clock":"Smoke on the water" :: "The Goat Stare":"Scary monsters and nice sprites". The latter is the kind of dubstep you've probably been listening to.
posted by syntaxfree at 5:08 PM on July 22, 2012


I may as well pass this on.

Redneck Dubstep
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:18 PM on July 22, 2012


The kid on the left has the wobbliest mouth I have ever seen. It's like it was drawn on by Chuck Jones.

I am not saying this is a bad thing, just a thing.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:18 PM on July 22, 2012 [2 favorites]


Oh my god, that was just like being in high school band again. I don't mean the dub step, but god, those kids could have walked right out my band room and into that kitchen. I mean, can't you just tell that they after the football game they go to Denny's then to one of their houses to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail? And the Mt. Dew!
posted by that's how you get ants at 5:36 PM on July 22, 2012 [11 favorites]


This is where I let folks in on a little secret: Dressing like a redneck doesn't make you a redneck.
posted by wierdo at 5:41 PM on July 22, 2012


I don't get dub step at all. It's the first music that makes me feel old.

It's probably better to start with the various genres of glitch music that influenced it.

This comment is an excuse to link some Glitch Mob.
posted by LogicalDash at 5:47 PM on July 22, 2012 [3 favorites]


So apparently a capella Skrillex is a thing.
posted by erniepan at 6:03 PM on July 22, 2012


Here, I fixed the post.
posted by jnnla at 6:05 PM on July 22, 2012


BungaDunga: Sam, Bill and Neal's spirits live on in these fine young men.

But that video cuts him off mid-funk!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:16 PM on July 22, 2012


So apparently a capella Skrillex is a thing.

You missed a lovely one.
posted by arm's-length at 6:22 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure how seriously I can take a comment dissing the "new kids" for "forgetting their roots" in the "old school" in a form of music that's only about 10 years old.
posted by DU at 6:37 PM on July 22, 2012


Oh man am I ever old. I was thinking these guys looked liked my oldest kids...and then I noticed two of them having wedding rings.
posted by DU at 6:39 PM on July 22, 2012


No wait, just one.
posted by DU at 6:41 PM on July 22, 2012


One has a class ring I think. I thought this was adorable and what YouTube should have more of. 90 seconds of content and two and a half minutes of blooper reel.
posted by jessamyn at 6:43 PM on July 22, 2012


I defy you to identify a pop music track more awesome than this from the last twenty-five years.
posted by FLAG (BASTARD WATER.) (Acorus Adulterinus.) at 6:46 PM on July 22, 2012


One has a class ring I think.

Yeah, the one on the right. But the leftmost guy has what looks like a plain gold band on his left hand ring finger. If it isn't a wedding ring it's meant to look like one.
posted by DU at 7:10 PM on July 22, 2012


LogicalDash: "This comment is an excuse to link some Glitch Mob ."

One needs no excuse to link Glitch Mob. Similarly, one needs no excuse to link to Virtual Boy. Unfortunately, there is none to link to. You have to buy that stuff.
posted by wierdo at 7:12 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the one on the right. But the leftmost guy has what looks like a plain gold band on his left hand ring finger. If it isn't a wedding ring it's meant to look like one.

One Ring to rule them all. Perhaps.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 7:35 PM on July 22, 2012


Redneck Dubstep

Dubtrot
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:01 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


I had my speakers turned up a little too much and now I have to go apologize to my neighbors for first frightening them with the teenage shrieking, followed by frightening them with my tremendous guffaw.

Because oh lord, did I guffaw. I guffawed to beat the band, so to speak.
posted by palomar at 8:18 PM on July 22, 2012


Total Glitch Mob derail - "Drink the Sea" should be the official soundtrack to "The Night Land".
posted by Fejery at 8:27 PM on July 22, 2012


DU: I'm not sure how seriously I can take a comment dissing the "new kids" for "forgetting their roots" in the "old school" in a form of music that's only about 10 years old.
Pretty sure this comic was made with syntaxfree in mind...
posted by hincandenza at 12:15 AM on July 23, 2012


Glitch hop is a precursor chemical to dubstep.
posted by LogicalDash at 4:01 AM on July 23, 2012


The filtering works different on different pitches, essentially

To me it sounds, in essence, like a sample being sped up or slowed down. If the sample has a rhythm, then obviously the rhythm also changes in proportion to the change in speed. This explains the coordination between changes in pitch and rhythm. I have no idea what "frequency based filters" are, because I have no idea how one would conceive of a "non-frequency based filter", much less a "hyperbolic, Vegas-Elvis version" thereof.
posted by deo rei at 6:42 AM on July 23, 2012


If the sample has a rhythm, then obviously the rhythm also changes in proportion to the change in speed. This explains the coordination between changes in pitch and rhythm.

This is actually makes more sense than what I said, given my general lack of coherence then ("frequency-based filters" -- heh), but this isn't ordinary turntablism. If you listen to that same track with a subwoofer turned up loud, you'll first perceive a bassline, then notice (on a second listen) that said bassline is oscillating (and that's what's making you uneasy) and the oscillations -- like vibrato, but tiny -- are generating the wubwubwub mid-range sounds. What I'm thinking is -- oscillating bass -> band-pass filters -> lots of distortion -> band-pass filters -> lots of distortion -> wubwubwub wub wubwub.

The whole thing about the wubwub wars is that dubstep was originally meant to be heard with subn+1woofers, enough that the inaudible sound resonates inside people. That's club gear, and as the genre became more popular, the higher frequencies became more and more emphasized. But anyway, to channel the dubstep hipster that I'm not, you can't listen to it on a laptop -- you will get just the screams.
posted by syntaxfree at 9:59 AM on July 23, 2012


Dubstep seems to me a continuation or evolution of the techstep/neurofunk d-n-b developed by the likes of Dom & Optical on Prototype / Moving Shadow etc, but with stronger links to the industrial/conceptual vibe of EBM bands like N-I-N and Front-242. On its own I don't see that that it really has a new message or even a new sound - most of it really wouldn't be out of place next to some of the stuff by Ed Rush or Dillinja or Photek from late 90's / early 00's - but it does seem to have also led to a reappreciation of dub/dancehall soundsystem culture, which is I think is interesting and positive.
posted by deo rei at 2:38 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]


I had this bad flashback imagining the same table with half a bottle Jack Daniels, some white powdery residue, and John Belushi, Steve Martin and Bill Murray doing the exact same thing in about 1977.

Talk about a time slip.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 2:55 PM on July 23, 2012


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