Sound: Dubstep & Music Website Research

For the sound we decided upon using a new form of music which is emerging now as popular with young people. I began looking for unsigned dubstep artists who were creating heavy but non-techno or synthesized music. A lot of famous dubstep artists are signed to a labels which have copyrighted music meaning we couldn't use their tracks, so it made it more difficult to find good quality sound clips. It was important to find an UN-signed artist.

 Finding The Music:
To search I checked out websites like YouTube, Sound cloud and MySpace for a quality piece of dubstep that we could use. A few screen shots below are sites I searched upon for music which we could legally use.

SoundCloud is an online website where artists can audio distribute from a platform which can promote unknown artists. For this reason it seemed a good place to start from when looking for the music we could later use in our film opening.

MySpace has always been used by a lot of unsigned musicians. So looking on there proved to be a really helpful tool for our group, however finding dubstep artists was a lot harder than I thought! As most of MySpace is filled with bands or solo singers who are creating alternative, Indi or pop sounding music and there was only a limited selection of dubstep to analyze.

YouTube was a brilliant tool to use when researching dubstep tracks as there are millions of clips and tracks uploaded by unknown artists. It also has a huge range of self uploaded music. For dubstep there was a wide range: from soft, mellow old school dubstep to dark, heavy bass dubstep. However they varied in sound quality so it was important to find one of high quality otherwise it would give a scratchy sounding effect over our film as well as lower the overall quality.

Reasons For Choosing Dubstep
The reason we chose dubstep is because it's a modern, urban music genre, which is parallel with the tone we are aiming for with our gritty British drama film.

Here is one of the best in keeping sound clips I found:

This video clip found on YouTube is one of the group's favorite as it has a dark, heavy bass. It is mixed with grinding metallic noises which give it the heavy-non techno feel we were looking for. We looked for non techno, because much of dubstep music has bursts of sounds created by synthesizers which give the music a more disco feel/tone and wouldn't fit the dark drama we are trying to create. Looking back to this clip: it slowly builds up suspense with a quiet opening before introducing a really heavy bass at 00:34. It's from 00:30 on the track that we decided could be the best part to use as it becomes more intense at this point with the pitch of the music increasing.  

We wanted dubstep music as it is connotative to: underground parties, gangs, teenagers and is a contemporary music form. It links well with the non-stereotypical teenage drama film as it is unlike the music conventionally used i.e. the sprightly, pop music form Mean Girls or 17 Again. Using this type of music will hopefully make our film seem more edgy and show that we are trying to break the stereotype of a middle class girl without us having to use violent messages or swearing in our music an example being if we had chosen rap music instead. Also there is a repetitive loud booming noise which creates a source of momentum within the track parallel to a fast pumping heartbeat and the motion of running, which is just what we were looking for. The sound quality of the clip is also relatively high and the whole track has a clear sound without muffling in any areas, despite it coming from YouTube.

This video clip, also found on YouTube, has a slightly softer bass, with a lower pitch but it has a faster pace than the first track. The sound quality of the track isn't as high as the one above as it isn't as loud so might become slightly distorted if we tried to increase the volume. Yet, the opening of the track has a repetitive beat typical of dubstep music, which is part of the reason it is catchy and fun to listen to. There is a scene within our film opening were we plan for our actress to be running down the stairs on her way out and the momentum of this track could be useful to create a deigetic sound which works in parallel to the non-diegetic sound of her feet as they hit the steps. The track was made by an un-signed dubstep artist called Dark Elixir.