Red Hill Danger Zone

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track.

In past years, I’ve had “requests” come from friends to try different styles or write about specific topics. One of the most successful of these was 202’s Spicy Bee. I never guarantee that I’ll actually take the request – Song-A-Day is already stressful enough on its own without having to satisfy an audience, and inspiration isn’t always a predictable thing. I do, however, try my best to at least give   it a try.

This year, the request was “do a dubstep track and it has to have a massive drop.” Ok. Easy enough, right? Electronic dance track? I can do those in my sleep. I’ve made lots of killer drops. But wait a minute, what exactly do we mean by “dubstep?” Like many genres, they’re somewhat subjective and what they are depends on who you ask. My initial interpretation was that I was being asked to do a Skrillex-style track, but my first introduction to dubstep was far more stripped back. ¹I can recommend two videos that demonstrate the difference: First of the Year by Skrillex, and Fly Eyes by Distinction. I wanted to embed them here so you wouldn’t have to deal with ads (or leave my site), but YouTube sucks more and more with each passing day.

Skrillex stuff, since renamed “brostep” by the genre cork sniffers,²Case in point, @FelonyBellend (which should give some indication…) comments on the Trolley Snatcha remix of Fly Eyes (which sounds a lot more like Skrillex), “Original sounds better, a true DUB-Step tune. This shit is verging on bro-step skrillex style sheeeeeet. Drop the angry rock/metal influenced synths. Dub-Step was never meant to be mosh music, get me?” That scraping sound you hear is me rolling my own (fly) eyes. is characterized by hyper-edited FM synthesis, samples, melodic hooks, and a free and easy movement between half and double time. The Distinction track, on the other hand, is deeeeeeeeeep. It’s less something I want to dance to and more something I want to experience, probably while sitting on a comfortable couch under the influence of something or other and with a well-balanced sound system that features at least one powered 12” subwoofer. Old-school dub step (as it is now termed) is all about submerging in wobbly bass.

Trying to Split the Middle

I never got a good answer to “what kind of dubstep?” which was actually ok with me, because it kept me from feeling like I was tied to something in particular. Unfortunately, I kind of ended up in this weird middle zone between Old School Dubstep and Brostep, and didn’t really hit the mark for either.

I’d spent part of the morning listening to Red Hill Zone on a loop. That, of course, had sent me down a videogame web surfing rabbit hole and I ended up finding a lot of old samples from retro³They weren’t retro when I was playing them, but they are now. As, I suppose, am I. games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc.

While still enthralled with the chiptune exploration from yesterday, I started toying with the idea of doing a dance mix. At this point, I also realized that it would be a decent base tune for my sort-of-promised dubstep track. I increased the tempo a bit so I could move to halftime without it feeling too sluggish.

The end result wasn’t exactly dubstep. It also wasn’t exactly not dubstep either. My hyper-critical inner voice calls it a dubstep track made by someone who only superficially understands dubstep, but that’s not entirely fair. I do understand it, but I don’t have all of the production skills or deep familiarity that I might with, say, a Minneapolis Funk sound or a Nine Inch Nails sound.

I was also up against a very short clock for a style that can take days to program just a single 8-bar measure. The amount of sample chopping and synth sound design required⁴And FM synthesis at that, which is kind of like taking a shade-tree mechanic and asking him to fix that F-22 Raptor over there. It’s all just mechanics, right? is way more than I could do well in a day.

Obviously, I’m excusing my results but I don’t think it’s entirely unjustified to do so. It’s better to       instead put this track in the “swing and a miss” category, because I learned a lot making it. Lesson one: it’s too long. It’s only four minutes, but there’s not enough happening to keep things interesting. This was disappointing to me because Fly Eyes isn’t exactly an ADD-fueled chop and drop fest like Skrillex, yet it never feels like it’s dragging.

Another lesson is that if I ever want to make more dubstep, I need to firmly pick a lane and stick to it. This track doesn’t know what it is, so neither does the audience. On top of that, I’ll need to listen to a lot of whatever style I’ve chosen because I clearly don’t have a firm enough grasp of the details to make a convincing track.

Even half-assed dubstep takes a lot of work. There are over 50 tracks in this one. Now, granted, I could collapse that down, but the key metric is that there are over 50 “things” that have to be dealt with over the course of the piece. And I barely scratched the surface compared to what Skrillex does in less than two minutes on any of his stuff.

It might sound like I’m really unhappy with this track, but I’m not. It’s still fun and I like to listen to it every now and then. It might not even be that bad to the average listener who isn’t a dubstep fanatic; I do think the samples are cute or clever, and they follow a fun pattern for game nerds.⁵One comment I got from another participant: “Navi telling me to listen and then I lose my rings, this is a stressful experience”

I’ve very happy with the way I managed to transition from the first “dubstep” section back into the double time of Red Hill Zone, and if you want to hear what a possible Bomb Sworders track made out of this would sound like, the bits between 2:00 and 2:30 would be a good starting point. So… it doesn’t suck. It’s not just all that great either. I think my friends were a tiny bit disappointed in the result, but I also am not sure they knew exactly what they were asking me to do either. Or maybe they did and I just didn’t understand.

In any case, it’s a finished track and that makes 28! The month is over! Another… what? It’s a leap year? For crying out… ok, fine. See you tomorrow.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

Chipsynth MD, XO, Omnisphere, Serum, Massive, Hive2, Rise & Hit, Damage 2, Battery 4

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

FabFilter, MOTU Masterworks EQ, Autopan, & Trim, Valhalla Delay, Little Alterboy, Ozone 10

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Notes

• 1
  I can recommend two videos that demonstrate the difference: First of the Year by Skrillex, and Fly Eyes by Distinction. I wanted to embed them here so you wouldn’t have to deal with ads (or leave my site), but YouTube sucks more and more with each passing day.
• 2
  Case in point, @FelonyBellend (which should give some indication…) comments on the Trolley Snatcha remix of Fly Eyes (which sounds a lot more like Skrillex), “Original sounds better, a true DUB-Step tune. This shit is verging on bro-step skrillex style sheeeeeet. Drop the angry rock/metal influenced synths. Dub-Step was never meant to be mosh music, get me?” That scraping sound you hear is me rolling my own (fly) eyes.
• 3
  They weren’t retro when I was playing them, but they are now. As, I suppose, am I.
• 4
  And FM synthesis at that, which is kind of like taking a shade-tree mechanic and asking him to fix that F-22 Raptor over there. It’s all just mechanics, right?
• 5
  One comment I got from another participant: “Navi telling me to listen and then I lose my rings, this is a stressful experience”