Maybe this is a really stupid question, but considering dub mixes made it on to quite a few 12" collections I bought in the '80s--what are they there for? Did they have a use or a purpose when artists and/or producers first began putting together extended versions and remixes?

I was listening to the dub to Whitney Houston's Thinking About You and thought the same thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music

yanowha said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music

I think a dub remix from the 80's is different than dub music. Dub music is a style, while the dub remix usually keeps the original sound (although extended), but is more an instrumental with some vocal (like Fury said).

The point is that it's fun

They were much more funky than the original and had more sound effects than just a straight up instrumental. They were great for mixing. Here are some good ones.....

robertlove said:

yanowha said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music

I think a dub remix from the 80's is different than dub music. Dub music is a style, while the dub remix usually keeps the original sound (although extended), but is more an instrumental with some vocal (like Fury said).

The point is that it's fun

That link was right on target when it made it's way down to the early 1980s. The link just started from the beginning origins and worked it's way through the years on what the dub became.

Although it was called "Instrumental", this version of Teena Marie's "Lovergirl" was more like a dub because it maintained a lot of the vocals. This is probably my favorite dub from the 80's.

[Edited 7/13/11 11:37am]

So far, all the dub mixes posted are killer. I love them. And thanks for the link; that was interesting.

A couple of the last maxi-singles I purchased that included a dub mix...

[Edited 7/13/11 12:57pm]

One that I've always liked.

Dub mixes are weird

They are hit or miss imo. I either completely enjoy them or can't stand them, there is no middle ground.

daPrettyman said:

This one is exactly what I was going to post. It craps all over the regular extended version.

I'm really into roots reggae and electronic dubs, but I never really got the point of pop/r&b songs being done that way. For some reason they don't really do anything for me.

Dub started out in Jamaica as a way to make 2 sides out of one session. They didn't have a lot of money for studio time to record a b-side, so once you had a 4 minute song done, you needed to turn it into 8 minutes of music.

So for the b-side, they'd take the same rhythm track and make something new out of it, usually emphasizing the bass and drums and tweaking them out with echo and added sound effects. King Tubby was one of the first to get famous doing this, he had a spring reverb unit, and he'd often just whack it with a stick for a percussion effect. It sounds like a hallucination of the same song, like it's trying to get through but you're too high to hear it properly.

When dance remixes became big in the 80s, people called them "dub versions" even though they have nothing to do with the dub tradition. It just means, there's a tweaked out remixed version on the b-side.

bobzilla77 said:

Dub started out in Jamaica as a way to make 2 sides out of one session. They didn't have a lot of money for studio time to record a b-side, so once you had a 4 minute song done, you needed to turn it into 8 minutes of music.

So for the b-side, they'd take the same rhythm track and make something new out of it, usually emphasizing the bass and drums and tweaking them out with echo and added sound effects. King Tubby was one of the first to get famous doing this, he had a spring reverb unit, and he'd often just whack it with a stick for a percussion effect. It sounds like a hallucination of the same song, like it's trying to get through but you're too high to hear it properly.

When dance remixes became big in the 80s, people called them "dub versions" even though they have nothing to do with the dub tradition. It just means, there's a tweaked out remixed version on the b-side.

I'd add to it, though, that a lot of the early dubs also consisted of live mixing where one track (or several) would be dropped, another would be pushed forward, any combination thereof, and then that would be repeated throughout the song. That's the tradition that the 80s "dubs" were trying to follow. Unfortunately it just never sounded the same with music out of the roots reggae realm. It doesn't even sound the same to me when the do it with dancehall. You've got to be working in the right tempo range to get the real tripped out effect of a good dub, imo.

A few from T.R. and Guy... yep, yep!

sextonseven said:

daPrettyman said:

This one is exactly what I was going to post. It craps all over the regular extended version.

Cerebus said:

Dubs are also used by dj's to "cut up" the original and make it sound different/extended.
Thats why dj's would get 2 copies of a track in the past.
Nowadays with all the software it's much easier to remix on the spot.