- Some people in the
Stapleton neighborhood
say what's happening over at
Dick's Sporting Goods Park
is not music to their ears.
They say that two day Bassnectar concert
literally rattled their
homes late into the night.
- At one point dubstep was so big
that Colorado residents thought
a nearby Bassnectar
concert was an earthquake.
- Thought it was an earthquake.
I went outside and I looked,
and realized it was bass.
- We have to be neighbors
and we have to be friendly neighbors.
This was not a friendly event.
- Dubstep shook the landscape of music
in the early 2010s, but its viral success
was followed by its viral disappearance.
I'm gonna try to make
my own dubstep track,
but first let's find out
where dubstep came from
and why it disappeared.
The history of dubstep starts in
the UK garage music scene of the 90s.
UK garage music came from house music.
And features a four-on-the-floor
bass drum pattern
and syncopated high hats and snares.
♪ In my dream you and
I are holding there ♪
DJs took the syncopation in garage
a step further with a
sub-genre called 2-step.
In 1999 music journalist Simon Reynolds
described 2-step as, a general rubric
for all kinds of jittery irregular rhythms
that don't conform to garage's
traditional four-to-the-floor pulse.
Essentially, 2-step skipped over some of
the four-on-the-floor bass drum pattern
and added other shuffle percussion
to create a more erratic feel.
Check out the off-kilter
pulse in this 2-step remix
featuring the singer Sia.
♪ If they fall away ♪
♪ I'll stay with you ♪
♪ Do as I say ♪
♪ Not as I do ♪
So 2-step is where the
step in dubstep comes from.
But what about the dub?
Dub originated in Jamaica in the late 60s.
Artists like King Tubby
reworked reggae instrumentals
making drums the focus of the tracks,
by raising the reverb, delay, and bass.
♪ I never, I never never heard ♪
♪ I never heard ♪
♪ I never heard just some people ♪
♪ No, no ♪
Now hold on.
Before you get angry in the comments,
I'm not saying dubstep came from Jamaica.
But the way dub artists
altered reggae instrumentals
in the 60s inspired DJs in the late 90s
to rework 2-step tracks, creating dubstep.
As dubstep pioneer Kode9 told Vice,
the name made sense.
There were aspects of dub
that influenced dubstep.
The most important was playing
the instrumental versions
of vocal garage tracks,
which was a little like
what dub was to reggae.
The second was dub as a methodology,
manipulating sound to create
impossible sonic spaces
using reverb, echo, and such.
This early dubstep was more minimal
than the dubstep we know today.
But this minimalism provided room
for variation in the future.
Check out this early
dubstep track by Burial,
an artist on Kode9's
record label, Hyperdub.
♪ Holding you ♪
♪ Couldn't be alone ♪
♪ Couldn't be alone ♪
♪ Loving you ♪
A breakthrough in dubstep
came in the early 2000s
thanks to two teenage DJs from
England, Skream and Benga.
Along with other London producers
they departed from the
dark sound of early dubstep
by incorporating elements of reggae,
house, funk, and hip hop.
(electronic music)
This more melodic sound found
an audience outside of London.
And with the help of online
forums, spread around the world.
The main ingredients
are syncopated rhythms
with a tempo between 138 and 142 BPM,
a kick on the one, and a
clap or snare on the three.
But the defining ingredient
is that wobbling bassline.
(electronic music)
The wobble effect is usually created
by modulating the bassline
with a low frequency oscillator, or LFO.
- [Instructor] So now that
we got one brought up--
- I'm the original YouTube student.
- Go ahead and create the
dubstep wobble thumbscratch
so we can use one of--
- Look at that, I'm right here.
And what he do?
He did this one.
(buzzing)
Y'all bear with me, don't trip
'cause we about to get it.
- [Announcer] 20 minutes later.
(buzzing)
Ooh.
Listen for the wobbling bassline
in the song Midnight
Request Line by Skream.
(electronic music)
By 2009, dubstep had taken
hold in the United States.
And artists like Skrillex and Bassnectar
were creating their own
versions of the genre
by putting an emphasis on the
buildup and the bass drop.
The bass drop consists of
dropping out all percussion
until near silence and
then resuming the song
with a heavy sub bass wobble.
- Oh my god!
(electronic music)
- This new version of dubstep
earned the mocking term brostep
due to its more aggressive
fist-bumping sound.
What was once the
soundtrack for illegal raves
in London was now being played
in halftime shows and
in cereal commercials.
(electronic music)
- [Announcer] New Weetabix
Chocolate Spoonsize.
- Dubstep found its star moment in 2012
when Skrillex won three
awards at the Grammys.
- Hi, Sonny Moore, Skrillex.
This is really crazy for me man.
Just a year and a half ago
I was making that song in my bedroom.
- Soon after, pop heavyweights
like Justin Bieber
and Britney Spears began to include
more electronic sound in their work
as dubstep merged deeper
into the mainstream.
♪ As long as you la la la la ♪
♪ La la la la la ♪
♪ La la la la la ♪
The DIY element of electronic music
in the early 2010s made it accessible,
but it also drew criticism
from music purists.
Computer programs like Ableton
with its presets and plugins
allowed anyone with a laptop
to produce electronic music.
Websites like Dubstepforum,
where audio programs
were shared and pirated, helped amateurs
break into the genre at
a professional level.
Eventually artists reacted against
the in your face sound of dubstep.
The extreme nature of the music
that originally made it appealing
might be what pushed fans away.
By 2013, dubstep started
to break into other genres.
Post-dubstep artists, such as James Blake
and Mount Kimbie,
emerged as early as 2011.
And featured songs with
a slowed down tempo
in the range of 130 beats per minute.
♪ That you will ever know ♪
♪ The limitations of a clone ♪
♪ They kept me on my throne ♪
By 2016 the popularity
of dubstep had declined.
But it didn't disappear,
it just transformed.
Dubstep mixed with Atlanta
trap to create EDM trap,
which is still popular today.
Other spinoff genres
include filth, glitch,
halfstep, chillstep,
deathstep, and drumstep.
Even the pioneers of dubstep
began to distance
themselves from the genre.
Around 2012, Skream began playing music
that was more informed by
house, disco, and techno.
(electronic music)
(buzzing)
I need it to be better than that though.
It gotta be like.
- [Instructor] And we're
gonna move this down
to the sine wave.
And we're gonna hit control click over it.
Select number 14.
- Ooh, what you talking about?
- [Announcer] Two hours later.
- This the bassline right here.
(singing)
It's a sliding bassline.
Like this right here.
(buzzing)
That's the bassline.
And then the melody would be this.
(buzzing and beeping)
I took different elements of dubstep,
different ingredients from
the list that we said earlier,
and I just made it my own.
I put it at 140 bpm, I
used the wobble bassline,
but I used it in the
beginning, not in the ending.
Made the wobble a part of the buildup,
drop out, and then the full
instrumentation at the end.
I think it's a cool switch.
I hope you guys enjoy it.
(electronic music)
That's tough.
(singing)
