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Essaya in music and method by iServalan, stage name of Sarnia de la Maré FRSA
What Would Bach Have Done in a Dub Studio? | iServalan | Continuum Approach
What Would Bach Have Done in a Dub Studio?
If anyone from the late Baroque period belongs in a dub studio, it’s Johann Sebastian Bach.
Not necessarily because of style — but because of belief.
If you want to hear why Bach belongs in a dub studio, listen to the opening of the First Cello Suite. (One of my personal favourites as a budding cellist)
One line.
No harmony stated — only implied.
Repetition doing the work.
But wait, listen harder to the lowest notes. What are they up to?
Bach trusted resonance.
He trusted memory.
Bach is 'all about the bass!'
And we already know that dub is too.
Feel the beat of the Prelude, deep rosonating bass notes pushing us to move, and oh such exquisite lingering!
Bach believed that music was a system through which truth could be revealed. Not emotional confession. Not spectacle. Structure and assured foundations.
Dub works the same way.
Dub strips music back to its skeletal roots, its foundational architecture. Bass becomes ground. Delay becomes memory. Reverberation is the inhabited space you can walk around. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is wasted.
Bach would hear that immediately, despite the centuries of time difference. He would feel the dub through his feet and his chest like a conversation with God.....or perhaps, the devil, who knows.
Forgive me, I was momentarily transported.
Bach's music is built from relationships — lines speaking to one another across time. Repetition isn’t redundancy; it’s examination. What happens if I return here slightly altered? What do you hear now?
This is why Bach feels inexhaustible. His music doesn’t perform emotion — it creates conditions in which emotion emerges naturally. Bach sucks you in. Those broken chords encompass the body and soul in an almost heavenly way, connecting you to the higher place....of bass.
In a dub studio, Bach wouldn’t fill the mix. He’d reduce it. One line at a time. Each return clarified. Each echo meaningful. He’d understand that silence isn’t absence — it’s preparation.
Bach’s sound is unmistakably “him” because it trusts continuity. It assumes the listener is capable. It doesn’t rush to convince.
Bach's dub producer (if he needed one) would recognise that instantly.
Not as classical reverence — but as someone who knows that depth comes from staying with an idea long enough for it to transform you.
Bach would leave the studio unchanged, probably humming the new dub version of the suites.
And everyone else would apprecitae him afterwards in new ways.
What Would Mozart Have Done If He’d Been Dropped Into a Grime Night? | iServalan | Continuum Approach
What Would Mozart Have Done If He’d Been Dropped Into a Grime Night?
People underestimate Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because they confuse charm with lightness.
Mozart is funny, yes.
He’s elegant, yes.
A frivolous dandy?....How very rude.
But underneath that is a musical mind that moves faster than almost anyone who ever lived.
If you think Mozart is polite, listen to the final movement of the A-major Sonata, K. 331.
It’s bold. It’s repetitive on purpose.
It dares you to keep up.
Mozart doesn’t ask for your attention —
he assumes it.
That confidence is exactly why he’d hold his own on a grime night.
Grime would not intimidate him. It would energise him.
Grime is music that rewards alertness. You miss the moment, you’re gone. You repeat without variation, you’re exposed. The whole thing runs on wit, timing, and the ability to pivot instantly under pressure.
Mozart lived there.
This is a composer who could improvise entire structures in real time. Who treated form not as a cage, but as a springboard. Who understood that repetition only works if each return changes the meaning.
Mozart’s signature is momentum. His music moves forward even when it pauses. He sets expectations, then twists them at the last second — not to confuse, but to delight. He plays with the listener the way a great MC plays with a crowd.
Drop him into a grime night and he’d clock the rules instantly — not the genre rules, but the social rules. Who leads. Who interrupts. How tension escalates. When humour disarms.
He’d respond with ideas, not volume.
Short motifs. Sharp contrasts. Sudden shifts that feel cheeky rather than aggressive. He’d understand that bravado without intelligence gets exposed fast — and that true confidence lies in agility.
Mozart’s music is unmistakably “him” because it thinks with the listener. It invites you into a game you didn’t realise you were already playing.
That’s why it survives translation.
Grime audiences would recognise it, not as classical irrelevance, but as someone who knows how to hold a room without forcing it.
Mozart wouldn’t need to dominate the night.
He’d win it by speed of mind and the dexterity of universal notes.
