![wall of sound grateful dead wall of sound grateful dead](https://i.redd.it/yuchjx95vcf41.jpg)
They would often hear a version of the sound that was delayed, and with reverberations produced by the club, hall or stadium. The band would only hear themselves after the sound had bounced around the walls of the given room and the bodies of the audience. ‘Mic’ing up’ amps, then, was a new idea.Įven if a band had the luxury of amp mics, monitors were unheard of. Early P.A systems were usually reserved for the vocalist alone.
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In the ’60s it wasn’t uncommon for bands to solely use the power of their amplifiers to project to the crowd. Probably just as well they weren’t around to hear the primitive live setups of rock concerts back in the day. These days, it’s common to hear younger audiophiles and keen fans complaining about the sound after a gig. Live sound, however, had not kept up with the growth spurt and, simply put, the primitive public address systems of the time were just not as good as the music. Legendary shows were held featuring artists who defined generations. Rock and roll was in its adolescence, constantly growing and evolving. People have a romanticised view of live concerts in the 1960s and 1970s, and for good reason. Those who heard it say it was the best live sound ever. It looks excessive, but there was a method in Owsley’s madness when he designed the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound.
WALL OF SOUND GRATEFUL DEAD FREE
It was free of all distortion and served as its own monitoring system and solved many, if not all of the technical problems that sound engineers faced at that time.ĭid it need to be quite that big?… Probably not, but it did look damn impressive. Was his ludicrous wall built just for the sake of it then? Definitely not, the Wall of Sound was state of the art and changed the way technicians thought about live engineering. The mad-genius knew that sometimes you have to push the envelope and sometimes you just do it because you can. At first, Bill and I were laughing, but then we said, ‘Wow, he’s really serious.”Īnd serious Owsley was. He was addressing these electronics as if they were a person. “We heard somebody sobbing and we went over to the side of the stage and Bear was talking to the amplifiers. The Dead’s intermittent drummer Mickey Hart told Rolling Stone about walking in at this very moment. “I love you and you love me-how could you fail me?. Tears streamed down his face and he whispered to the mass of wood, metal, and wiring, with the tenderness of any parent witnessing their child’s first recital. He was perched on the stage, mixing and testing the sound a gentleman on the shorter side, he was especially dwarfed by his brainchild. A feat of engineering only he could dream of, let alone accomplish. Owsley stood before a three-story behemoth. This night, however, was the Grateful Dead’s turn, and they had brought some heavy artillery with them. However, some of the biggest names of the 70s had graced its stage: Pink Floyd, Queen, The Stones – you name it. Rumoured to have especially sweet sonic qualities, the venue was a converted ice rink and by this point was showing wear from decades past. On a night in 1974, sound engineer Stan ‘Bear’ Owsley stood alone in an empty theatre – the former Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. A feat of engineering only he could dream of, let alone accomplishġ6 July 2018 | Luka Osborne | Enmore Audio
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The wall of sound, is a solid wall of over 600 speakers.