DUBstEp .

Admittedly, it's a weird genre. I used to think it was completely dumb. Despite that, I decided one day to find and download a bunch of dubstep music. Just some compilations and samplers. Turns out, it's definitely an acquired taste; or in this case, sound.

[music to listen to while reading is below; loud volume highly recommended]

It's hard to say what I really like about the genre. For quite a long time, I didn't even know it existed, so this is a more recent discovery. But I'll try to point out the things that really make it interesting.

First, it's got a great beat. Booming bass and and low hard "womps" (you'll know what it is when you hear it) just get my going. It's something you can bob your head to, and I use it all the time in studio when I'm working on a model or something like that. It's good because it generally doesn't have lyrics, unless it's some sort of remix. This lets you focus on your work, but gives you a driving beat to get a good rhythm to. I've found that if I have songs with lyrics, especially ones where I know the words, I'll be singing along in my head instead of working. Not the best idea, when I'm already on tight deadlines.

I have noise canceling headphones, which are pretty good quality and have some great bass capabilities. When you practically feel your head vibrating, the bass is pretty intense.

But that's not all there is to it. There's the complexity of the songs in general. Erratic syncopation mixed with fast and slow, jumping from one to the other, jump cutting and somehow making garbled lyrics and words into rhythms and sometimes even beats. Some may say that this is all stupid, and you could practically mess around with any song and have a dubstep song as the output. Others may just open up their Glitch program and use that to make it. I don't know, I'd like to think that it takes more talent than that.

With the exception of a wobbling bass and a solid beat, the songs have a lot of variety. They can go in so many different directions. You can go from long string chords and high pitched synthesizer to really any other instrument in the spectrum. Granted, most of the time these are just different pads on a synth, but I've heard reggae remixed as dubstep, and even some heavier rock too. It's pretty cool that people can transfuse music like that. I'm getting more into mixing my own stuff, and really digging the output that these people have, even if they are just sitting behind a computer all the time working on it.

And that's about it. May not seem like much, just some sort of weird electronica mixed with some hip hop beats. And if that's all it is to you, oh well. My hope is that perhaps I opened your eyes to another genre that happens to be out there -- I know I'm always interested to hear something totally different and sorta out there musically. It just shows the people in the music industry who are really taking some risks with their work. Like the genre overall or not, hope you enjoyed at least the one above.