Dub Tactics

(Tactical Manoeuvers)

This track is pretty unlike any of the others in this collection. I started out with a fairly syncopated drumbeat from an obscure dub sample collection, and layered on a log drum-type bassline I had kept around for just such an occasion. Then I began to explore some of the more atonal sounds available to Reason's Malstrom and Subtractor synthesis devices.

As the track developed, the original syncopated drum track became a little too insistent, so I explored a couple of REX loop collections until I found a heavier loping beat that shared a similar feel. It suggests the same syncopated beat that the original track was based on, but leaves a little more to the imagination. I placed tom hits and cymbal crashes manually at strategic locations using a Redrum device.

After quite a bit of fussing around, I had a track that was starting to sound like something. I asked ADX to come up with some guitar parts I could layer in, and he dropped a few ideas onto tape. I cut them up into the best sections, then imported and placed them in the track using the NN-XT sampler. This cut required quite a bit of creativity with the guitar arrangement as there were lots of cool parts to choose from.



After the guitar was in place, it seemed like the cut needed some focal points, so I fattened up a few instrumental parts and added a radio broadcast montage I cooked up using some audio from the 1940's and 1950's. The drums seemed a little lonely, so a tamborine track was dropped in, but there was still something missing. I wasn't hearing a particular kind of sound that I thought I should be, so I poked around in the Malstrom banks until I came up with a spiky, AM-synthesis patch that sounded like crap by itself, but fit exactly into the "hole" in the audio that had been bugging me. Needless to say, the rack gets pretty full pretty quick!


©2004 Dub Train Records