Dub is a genre of music that grew out of reggae in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae. Music in this genre consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, and emphasizing the drum and bass parts (this stripped-down track is sometimes referred to as a ‘riddim’). Other techniques include dynamically adding extensive echo, reverb, panoramic delay, and occasional dubbing of vocal or instrumental snippets from the original version or other works.

Dub was pioneered by Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Errol Thompson and others in the late 1960s. Augustus Pablo is credited with bringing the melodica to dub, and is also among the pioneers and creators of the genre. These producers looked upon the mixing console as an instrument, manipulating tracks to come up with something new and different. Dub has influenced many genres of music, including rock (most significantly the subgenre of post-punk and other kinds of punk), pop, hip hop, disco, and later house, techno, ambient, electronic dance music, and trip hop. Dub has become a basis for the genres of jungle and drum and bass. Traditional dub has survived and some of the originators, such as Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mad Professor, continue to produce new material.

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