Dub Reggae

One-drop and steppers drums from a Drum Rack

Two drum feels define the genre. One-drop: no kick on the one, kick and snare/rim together on the three. Steppers: four-to-the-floor kick with the snare on the three, a militant march. Both live or die on the snare sound and the hat drop-outs.

1. Kick: a soft, round acoustic-ish kick in Drum Sampler, pitch −2 semitones, decay 350 ms, Punch moderate, Sub a touch. No click above 3 kHz — dub kicks are felt.
2. Snare: tight and dry on the pad (decay 120 ms, Drum Sampler filter LP 7 kHz), then a rimshot on a second pad for the one-drop "crack". The spring/reverb lives on the send, not on the sample.
3. Hats: closed hat on every 1/8 (or 1/16 for steppers), open hat on the off-beat "and" of 2 and 4 occasionally. Program the hat on its own track so you can mute it for a bar — the drop-out is a dub gesture.
4. Add a timbale/wood-block pad for fills and a shaker running 1/16 at −14 dB.
5. Drum Buss on the rack: small Drive, Boom tuned to the kick's fundamental (55–65 Hz), Transients +10–20% on the snare only if you split it out.

Dub bass: round, melodic, slightly dirty (Analog, or TD-3 through Saturator)

Fretless-style, palm-muted bass guitar tone with a fat fundamental and a short, defined release so the line stays melodic even at 80 Hz. Played, not pencilled.

1. Analog: Osc 1 saw, Osc 2 square one octave down at −6 dB. Filter 1 low-pass 12 dB (gentler slope = more "wood"), cutoff ~220 Hz, resonance 10%, filter envelope +15% with 80 ms decay for a soft pick attack.
2. Amp envelope: A 5 ms, D 400 ms, S 0.6, R 90 ms. The release length is the note length in dub bass; too long and lines turn to mush.
3. Mono, Legato on, Glide 40 ms. Play the line with overlapping notes where you want slides.
4. Saturator Soft Sine with Drive 4–6 dB and the DC option engaged gives even harmonics around 160–240 Hz that let the bass show on small speakers.
5. Compressor after: 4:1, medium attack so the pick comes through, 3 dB of gain reduction for consistency.

Skank: organ/guitar off-beat chops (Electric, Simpler) with tape delay bubble

The off-beat chord chop — short, mid-range, dry at the source, then thrown into the delay on command. A "bubble" organ pattern can double it an octave up.

1. Electric with a Wurlitzer-ish preset: Mallet stiffness mid, Fork tine low, damper high for a fast decay. Or a muted guitar chord in Simpler, One-Shot, decay 180 ms.
2. Note length 1/16 (use the Note Length MIDI effect or clip Transform Quantize+length). Chord on every "and" (steps 3, 7, 11, 15 of a 16-step bar). Velocity 80–100, alternate slightly.
3. HP at 250 Hz, dip around 900 Hz. The skank must leave the bass and the vocal alone.
4. Bubble variation: organ (Electric in a brighter setting or a sampled Hammond) playing root–5th alternation on every 1/16 between the skanks, very quiet.
5. Send amount to the tape delay is a performance control: 0 normally, pushed to 60% for one chop every few bars.

The tape delay return: Echo in dub mode with feedback into self-oscillation

The single most important dub device. A sync'd delay with filtered, saturated, wobbling feedback that can be pushed to self-oscillate and then pulled back. It lives on a return and is played from the send knobs.

1. Return track, Echo. Mode Sync, Left 3/8, Right 1/4 dotted (or both 3/8 and turn on Ping Pong for the classic bounce). Input gain so a full send doesn't clip.
2. Feedback 60–70% at rest. Map Feedback to a Push encoder or a fader on your controller: the throw is "send up, feedback to 95%, send down, let it ring, feedback back to 60%".
3. Echo's filter section: HP ~200 Hz, LP ~3.5 kHz so repeats get darker and thinner — tape. Character: Wobble 20–30% for flutter, Noise 15–25% for hiss, Gate off, Duck on with a moderate amount so the delay sits behind the dry hit and swells after it.
4. Echo's internal Reverb at 10–20% adds the "space tank" smear between repeats.
5. Saturator after Echo so feedback above 100% distorts gradually instead of clipping digitally; a Limiter at −3 dB as a safety when the feedback runs away.
6. Return's own send to the spring return at 20% so delays splash into reverb. Enable the return-to-return send in the mixer's send options.

Spring reverb: Hybrid Reverb convolution + Corpus drip for the "splash"

The metallic "boing" on the snare and the drippy, fluttery tail on everything else. Hybrid Reverb's convolution section with a spring impulse gets 80% of the way; Corpus provides the drip when you hit it hard.

1. Hybrid Reverb, Convolution mode. Pick a spring IR (several ship with Live's IR library; "spring", "tank" or short metallic plates). Decay 1.8–2.5 s, pre-delay 5–15 ms, Dry/Wet 100%.
2. Blend a little of the Quartz algorithm (10–20%) for density if the IR sounds thin.
3. Corpus after it: Plate resonator, frequency ~600 Hz, low decay, 20–30% wet. This adds the pitched "twang" the IR alone may lack. Lower the Corpus frequency when the mix is in a minor key an octave below the root to keep it musical.
4. Saturator Hard Curve 2–3 dB: springs distort when hit hard; the snare "crash" is that distortion.
5. Send the snare at 40%, the rim at 60%, the skank at 15%, the vocal fragments at 50%. Bass: 0%.

Dub siren and melodica lead (Operator)

Two signature lead voices. The siren: a square/pulse with a pitch LFO sweeping up and down, triggered once every 8 bars and hurled into delay. The melodica: a reedy, slightly flat solo instrument that plays the hook.

1. Siren: Operator osc A Square, level 0 dB; LFO waveform triangle, rate 3–6 Hz (free, not synced), amount to pitch of ~±7 semitones (set via the LFO's pitch destination amount). Pitch envelope: +12 semitones over 1.5 s on note-on, then fall. Amp env A 50 ms, R 400 ms.
2. Map LFO rate and pitch-env amount to two Push encoders. The siren is played: hold the note, change the rate, release into the delay.
3. Melodica: Operator osc A Saw at 0 dB with Osc B Sine ratio 2 at −20 dB (adds breathiness through the FM); Filter LP 12 dB at 1.8 kHz with slight resonance; Fine tune −8 cents (melodicas are never in tune); Spread 15%. Amp env A 30 ms, D 200, S 0.8, R 150. Velocity → filter 30%.
4. Add vibrato with Operator's LFO at 5.5 Hz, tiny amount, with delay/fade-in if your LFO section offers it, or draw pitch-bend wobble on sustained notes.
5. Both get 40–70% to the tape delay and 30% to the spring. The melodica hook is played once dry then only as delay fragments on the version.

Variations: Use Meld's Reed engine for a more physical melodica; use the modular (a square VCO through an LPG, pitch from CV Tools' CV LFO) for a siren that actually sounds like a sound-system siren box.

Vocal fragments and the "version" treatment (Simpler + Beat Repeat + sends)

A dub version keeps only a word or a line of the vocal, repeats it, filters it, throws it. In Live: slice the vocal, trigger phrases from Push, and let the sends do the rest.

1. Simpler in Slice mode on a sung phrase (or the vocal stem from Live 12.3 Stem separation of your own recording). Slice by Transients, sensitivity so each word is a slice. Play slices on pads.
2. Auto Filter band-pass around 800 Hz–1.5 kHz, resonance 15–25% — the "telephone" EQ that makes a fragment sit inside the delay spray. Map cutoff to an encoder; sweep it during the throw.
3. Beat Repeat with low Chance and 1/8 grid for the occasional stutter; set Decay so repeats fade.
4. Sends: tape delay 50%, spring 40%, and a Utility gain mapped so you can "dive" the dry level to zero and leave only the effects.

Horn stabs and the tape-saturated chord hit (Simpler/Wavetable + Roar)

A unison horn or brass-ish chord stab that lands with the one-drop every 4 or 8 bars and gets thrown. Dub stabs are short, mid-range, saturated and slightly late.

1. Wavetable: a brassy Harmonics-category table, Osc 2 saw an octave down, Unison Classic 3 voices, small detune. Filter 1 LP 24 dB 2.5 kHz with filter env +30%, decay 180 ms. Amp env A 15 ms, D 350 ms, S 0.2, R 200 ms.
2. Roar Single routing, Diode shaper, Drive 8–12 dB, post-filter LP ~4 kHz. This is the "pushed console" tone.
3. Compressor fast attack, ratio 6:1, 4–6 dB GR for the squashed stab.
4. Place the stab 10–20 ms late (clip delay or nudge) — dub stabs drag behind the snare.