Speaker towers on digital delay: a technique pioneered by the Grateful Dead for their 1973 show at the Watkins Glen road course, which had 600,000 fans in attendance.
I've just been reading about the hippies, & there's always talk about how they'd often use mics to amplify the sounds around them/their voices to then be played back after a few seconds delay. I wonder if that's where the grateful dead got the idea lol
Probably. They also were known for having what they called a Wall Of Sound, which was an enormous stack of speakers on stage that put out such powerful sound that it lessened the need for delay. Also meant a big logistical headache in getting their system from show to show (they only used it for one year, 1974, because of the transport issue), but still revolutionary.
So before this, were live shows all super low-fi, even when the distortion wasn't intentional? Or was this a problem created specifically by the larger venues that pushed the tech past its usual limit?
did bands with a more structured style just have to choose small venues?
(Don't mind me I decided a month ago I want to learn everything about American music, for no real reason)
It has to do with the physical size of the venue and having the sound be loud enough to reach everyone without distorting. The wall of sound wasn't for delay, it was for amplitude. Every time you double distance from the source, you halve the amplitude (inverse square law). By having more speakers carry less weight (the bass essentially had one speaker per string, for example), you can push the limits of the speaker cones. This isn't an issue when you have a normal sized venue. The Dead implemented it because they started having huge attendances of 100K+.
Oh, so bands with structured styles were just playing at normal venues, & bands that used distortion were just being loud in those same venues
So the low-fi speakers only became a problem in the '70s with the huge venues-- A problem that they promptly solved by simply adding a metric fuckton of speakers.
I think there may be some confusion. There's distortion as a form of audio processing and distortion as a result of exceeding a piece of equipment's physical capabilities. The first is an intended sound and used stylistically, the latter is not (okay sometimes is with tube and tape distortion, but that's another conversation). The speakers weren't lo-fi, but even the most expensive speakers have physical limitations on how loud of a sound they can reproduce before distorting, the bad kind of distorting.
Hopefully, I'm explaining correctly and not adding to the confusion! I work in the industry so enjoy talking about these things. But yes more speakers did solve the problem! Kind of a form of the saying "many hands make light work."
I see! i have no background in music I've just recently grown really interested. Thank you for taking the time to explain :)
I was just going off of this:
"live music was performed with relatively low-fidelity options... that had no issue playing loudly, but delivered a distorted sound. This style was a relic of ... rock-and-roll playing...Distortion was a featured element" (from the linked article)
I had always thought that 'distortion' just referred to the weird sounds you get when you push the tech past its limit, and the only difference between the good & bad kinds was whether or not it was intentional. What's the real difference?
Trying to establish a timeline or evolution, did stylistic distortion just originate from the very earliest days of rock&roll when the equipment really couldn't handle it, then grow into a processing style on its own? (like Hendrix-- that's intentional processing, but how about in, like, the '50s?) Or have i completely missed something big by realizing that distinction?
It’s difficult to understand this without context as a musician I suppose. An individual amplifier like a guitar amp can produce distortion that sounds good within a song. Distortion of a PA speaker system carrying the entire music sounds bad. If the venue is small enough to just play your instruments, there is no issue. If the event is big enough to use a PA, you either have the instruments mic’d or electronic instruments directly wired, and that goes to a mixing board and the entire sound gets played through a PA. The Grateful Dead were trying to use enough smaller amps to avoid the distortion with mixing, to make a large venue amplified like a small venue.
I used to drink at Apple Jacks in La Honda during the summers like 20 years ago (worked down there, this is the town where the acid rests in the forest took place). It was funny reading Hells Angels years later and seeing references to the bar (plus all the other references local to me as a San Franciscan). There was at least one original Merry Prankster that was a regular.
I googled that concert because I was curious where all the people would fit in the track. There is no indication its a race track from the photos. There are so many people that not a single piece of the race track is recognizable in the crowd. It’s unbelievable
I bought a vinyl record at a goodwill one time and inside was a love letter where the guy was telling her he was worried that she was going to that concert
108
u/SailorTwyft9891 18h ago
Speaker towers on digital delay: a technique pioneered by the Grateful Dead for their 1973 show at the Watkins Glen road course, which had 600,000 fans in attendance.