Riddim Community ?

Since 2002 I'm an active member of the Versionist website, at begin I was only sending my tracks but since 1 or 2 years I'm too an active user of the forum. Using this website I had met virtually a lot of fantastic reggae-dub producer from around the whole world, and the Murcia gathering was the ultimate experience for me.

The history of Versionist is really complicated cause the website was owned by different people. At the begin, the creator of Versionist was a musician and a pure reggae lover that was happy to give to worldwide reggae musician a nice platform to exchange music, ideas, ...

Today it's a bit different, Versionist was bought by someone that enjoy reggae music but that don't want only host the website for the community, he do that too for commercial purpose cause he had bought and invested money in the Versionist website. The owner isn't active inside the community making a separation between him and the members.

This wasn't a problem until the website was running with same features, but today the website is moving to an other platform, fortunately the owner asked to members what they think about different possible platform, and some constructive debate occured to find best platform.

Now the community start splitting, cause it's seems that the Versionist website going to contain some paying service to enable member host track and use bandwidth. The main power of the old platform was to enable anyone to upload full song without restriction, and some members (including me) don't want to loose that.

Due to this difference of opinion, I first made a demo website to show to all that the community can run himself the platform, and few days ago my friend Irish Moss started a new community called Reggae Dubwise to give members the choice.

Both community are based on the same platform with some minor technical difference, but the main difference come from a philosophical point of view (way of managing/owning the community) and the way both websites going to earn money.

So where is my family ?
I don't want to loose friends/relationships during this migration ...

I think lot of members from Versionist would agree with Irish Moss and let it run the community the way he build Reggae Dubwise, but the fact is that it's impossible for us (the community) to buy the domain name due to his expensive price.

Seems we need to be ready to change our community name, and Irish Moss's Reggae Dubwise initiative sounds good to me (nuff respect to him for this fantastic initiative, he had spend time and money to start this really powerful website).

By the way both websites can run in parallel, concurrence is good in industry, hope it's going to be the case for online community.

Thinking about gathering, I just ask myself why we call them using a website name ... why not calling them 'Online Reggae Dub Community Gathering' (or another name that don't rely to any organization/website), going to be simpler for everyone, and as far as I know the online reggae dub community isn't split we are all sharing same interests.

ODVC 20080302

The last virtual conference was a total success, thanks to all who have participate, with a duration of approximately 45min the show had run without network failure, thanks to NetroMedia free broadcast service for that.

Next one is planned 6 April at 7pm (GMT) and as requested by a listener, I will try to do a little workshop after the show to explain how I use my controller and how the controller is linked to the PC software.

The conference was recorded, I just finished upload materials on youtube, enjoy:
ODVC_20080302 #01 - Endless Fighting Dub
ODVC_20080302 #02 - Tolerance Dub
ODVC_20080302 #03 - Unfreeze Dub
ODVC_20080302 #04 - Opening Connection Dub
ODVC_20080302 #05 - Drum Song Dub
ODVC_20080302 #06 - Murcianists Dub

Don't know exactly how many people was attending to the conference (cause I now use a dedicated server, not streaming to everyone directly with my PC, not enough bandwidth for that), but I estimate near 10 users based on feedback I got, don't hesitate to join us for the next one.



I'm gonna made a tutorial to explain how to stream from PC and run virtual conference, hope Don Fe will be able to do a session for the next one.

Murcia Versionist Gathering

I just arrived in Switzerland yesterday after had spend some times with versionist bredrens.

This gathering was a fantastic opportunity to meet versionist members, and to share musical knowledge together. We spend first days jamming together, doing irations and enjoying the nice place where we was staying together.

Then Saturday was the day of the show, an amazing show, the venues was full of spanish reggae-dub-head ready to shake their body and enjoy good music.

Many thanks to Don Fe for his big investment and the great organization !

The show was really good, sound system by I-Rebel and the VISS German crew, Luciano with El Bib doing some roots tunes, then we had the pleasure to enjoy The Manor with YaBass doing some toasting peformance on pure dubwise tune... and finally a really impressive show from 'Zacheous Jackson with Dubheart' (one of best show I ever seen, just after Burning Spear's one).

Inside the 'Versionist Mansion':

You can find more info on the Murcia Versionist Gathering thread.

ODVC 20080131

Here is a video shot from the open dub virtual conference done yesterday, special thanks to KayaGardens (Thomas) to have made test with me.

Was able to do a session with 4 clients (has done first test with 3) at same time without so much lag, but need to do a compromise between image quality/fluidity/sound. Using broadcasting technology, number of clients limit is high.

I privileged fluidity and sound, during session I recorded a full track, here is the result, quality is exactly same as if you was watching the conference in live.

This was done as a try out to test technology for streaming, was able to use VLC but without a stream compatible with an other player than VLC, so I used the Windows Media Encoder.

Recorded at home, I haven't Internet access at studio, so the mix is done using digital stuff (MIDI interface controlling PC), doesn't sound same as mixing in studio !

Next step is to build a good infrastructure on ODF to make able anybody join the conference, and give possibility to member to start their own.

New contents for the foundation

I uploaded yesterday a new project on the Open Dub Foundation, this project is based on the 'Drum Song' riddim used to record vocal from 'The Gladiators' some time ago.
Feel free to download the project and do a remix !

I still working on the Open Dub Conference project, actually trying to write a license to avoid any issue while organizing 'real' conference, and building a whole infrastructure to easily start running virtual ones.

Hope to be able to run weekly conference soon, first with only one dubmaster (at same time) streaming his performance to other, and then perhaps start doing live collaboration.

Hot dubwise for cold winter

I just finished last week to mix the dubplate from The Gladiators and the remix of Hot Drop 'Tell Me'.

You can access them here (free mp3 download) :

KoCha meets The Gladiators - Mix Song

KoCha meets Hot Drop - Tell Me

It's from far away toughest production of the Almighty Dub Records, enjoy !

First open dub virtual conference

What a nice preview of the Murcia gathering that doing a Jam with people that I'm going to meet !

Last week I had the honor to take part of the first ever 'Open Dub Virtual Conference', I wanted to make that from long time and Don Fe (Spain) make it real, so many thanks to him.

For me it's really a historical and technical performance, we was able to do a real 'virtual jam' and record it. Don Fe was mixing the dubwise using his digital mixing desk while streaming audio and video threw Skype to me and KayaGardens, then I used my gypsy to play in live on the dub-mix and stream the result to conference participant. Don Fe was able to hear me playing guitar while mixing dubwise, and fortunately latency wasn't too high.

You can listen to the resulting track of the recorded jam here:
Versionist All-Stars - Open Dub Virtual Conference (20080111) - Track 1

The jam was ~5 hours long and we finished it at 2am, many thanks to Irish Moss to had give us some fantastic exclusive mix.

It's a big step for the Open Dub Foundation Conference project, I hope to make available tools to let people synchronize their time of availability and then do music virtually together.

Hoping to be able to make it run using Ninjam instead of Skype.

Dub poetry or the roots of slam

I love dub poetry from long time, the first ever dub album I bought was the 'LKJ in Dub' (recorded in 1981, and bought by myself more than ten years later...) and this was a musical revelation for me.


Then I started listening to Tubby's records and other 70's records, until I found a Prince Far I record made by Adrian Sherwood in 80's... I was shocked by the power of Prince Far I voice, it was like a slam in my face !

Dub poetry is the spoken word version of dub music. For I dub poetry is more related to dub than 'simple reggae', because words get an other power when the music is mixed in a specific way giving voice a strong signification, it's for me the roots of 'today' slam...

I'm actually trying to create a new project about dub poetry, here is some links to get more inside this musical style:

Dub Poetry - Wikipedia article
Dub Poetry Introduction - Nice introduction to dub poetry
Dub Poetry Selection - A selection of dub poetry albums
Dub Poets Collective - Dub poets crew from Canada

Opening Dub Connection

I've just uploaded a new project on the Open Dub Foundation.

A preview of the whole song is available for download at versionist.

This song was build using only digital synth (except vocoder samples), it's first time (since I started use traditional instrument) that I make a full digital dub, I hope artists from the foundation are going to enjoy playing with it !

It's a kind of try out to see how can sounds my music in digital style... It was a real pleasure to build this song.

Don't hesitate to download the new project.

Worldwide Dub Meeting #1

The first album from Almighty Dub Records are now released ! and for free !

It's a free net-album containing a compilation of tracks done on the Open Dub Foundation featuring me.

Many thanks to all dub-masters/artists active on the foundation, without them this release simply can't be made !

Tracks aren't mastered so volume can change slightly between tracks.

KoCha meets Open Dub Foundation - Worldwide Dub Meeting #1

It's a debut album, the foundation was created in June, I hope quality are going to get higher with next release.

Experimental Connection To The Sun

I just discovered this week-end, a fantastic software (unfortunately running under windows) called Orion.

Orion is a full featured audio studio, it's a modern version of what I used 5 years ago: Jeskola Buzz.

I started creating music using synth an other electronic instrument/effect inside Buzz, and it's made long time that I want to create a kind of trip-hop piece using synth, but Buzz is really painful and I never found what exactly I wanted... before this week-end with Orion.

Here is the experimental track (done with demo version!):
KoCha - Experimental Connection To The Sun

Hope to find something free and equivalent under Linux one day...

Album under Creative Commons

I'm actually building a compilation including the work done between I-self and the Open Dub Foundation, this compilation going to be released on Creative Commons.

So I was happy few days ago to read in my mail-box that a release from Hot Drop (ES) is available for free under Creative Commons !

This make me believe I'm going in good direction, and I hope Hot Drop going to accept to publish a remix on the Open Dub Foundation.

Download the whole album

Unfreeze Me

A new project is available on the Open Dub Foundation.

I'm really happy to present the first project that wasn't created by me !

The instrumental was created by Ackboo, then I added a solo guitar part using my cheap gypsy guitar (that sounds terrible), but I was at home without good mic so I used a piezo.
After hearing the recording, I found that the sound was bad so I made lot of EQ/Compression and then I added a amp sim making my acoustic gypsy guitar sounding like a electric Gibson in a Marshal amp.

This is an improvisation and I was tired so lot's of little mistake in the solo :

Open Dub Foundation - Unfreeze Me

Hope you enjoy this roots digital steppa.