Wall of Sound
Clipped from various sources and pasted here.
The March 23,1974 Cow Palace show features a performance that
was not just a landmark in the career of the Grateful Dead but in the history of concert
production as the show that unveiled arguably the greatest P.A. system of all time, the
Dead's fabled "Wall of Sound."
As the Grateful Dead's popularity as a live act grew - taking
the band in the first decade after its inception from tiny clubs to ballrooms and large
theaters, and then to giant sports arenas and stadiums - the band resolved to develop a
sound system that was up to the daunting task of filling those larger spaces with sound
that was not just loud but clear. The ultimate result of years of research and
experimentation was the Wall of Sound, conceived and built in collaboration with Owsley
Stanley, Ron Wickersham, Dan Healy, Bob Matthews and others in the Dead's circle of
technical wizards. The Wall was a wonder to behold, rising up like the skyline of a small
city with its towering stacks of speakers (641 in all) and amplifiers (putting out more
than 26,000 watts) and it was even more of a joy to hear. Alas, the Wall would also prove
to be both physically and financially cumbersome, requiring two (and sometimes three)
separate crews to set up the stage, and five trucks to carry 72 tons of equipment. It was
a huge drain on the band's resources, and would only be used by the band for thirty-seven
shows spread over seven months, passing into history when the Dead took their two-year
hiatus from touring in October of '74.
But it was a glorious thing while it lasted, and the Dead gave
it a rousing coming-out party at the cavernous, acoustically temperamental Cow Palace,
just south of San Francisco, on March 23, 1974. This being an experimental affair, a few
technical glitches were to be expected, and sure enough, they happened (as in the
microphone-challenged false start to "Playing In The Band," heard here in all
its glory). But for the most part, the assembled throng was treated to a huge, undistorted
sound that could be heard as loud and clear up in the rafters as it was down front.
STATE OF THE CHANGES
Summer 1973
How the Dragon Urobouros (Giga Exponentia)
Makes Us Go Round and Round
We've received 25,000 letters to date from Dead Heads, telling us your
trips, and ideas and questions and comments about ours. Whatever the voyage, the current
concerns are at least real, and this newsletter is a report on the state of the ship.
The pursuit of quality presentation of our music, with more and more
people wanting to hear it, has led us into larger and larger halls with an ever increasing
array of equipment. St. Dilbert calls this process 'Urobouros'.
Configurations of speakers and amplifiers change almost as rapidly as we
move from gig to gig. The equipment diagram shown overleaf is a schematic of the set-up at
Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, 26 May 1973, (auxiliary PA's and mid-field delay towers to
reinforce the sound at the back against wind, are not shown.)
You are one million Dead Heads who attend the concerts. In the New York
City area, given the space, we will draw some 50,000 people. As your numbers increase in
each area, we play larger and larger halls. The apparent alternative to this is a kind of
riot. We are musicians.
The physics of sound projection dictate that any given increase in the
size of a hall requires an exponential rate of increase in equipment capability to reach
everyone in the hall with quality-at-volume.
YEAR - WEIGHT - TRANSPORT
1965 - 800 lbs - Bill's station wagon
1967 - 1300 lbs - Barney's van
1968 - 6000 lbs - Metro van
1970 - 10,000 lbs - 18 ft truck
1973 - 30,000 lbs - 40 ft semi
We're growing! - some 30 people now on payroll. We're affiliated with
Alembic in San Francisco on design, research and development of equipment and recording.
Our rehersal hall in San Rafael is the center of acoustic enquiry and equipment
maintenance/development. Our office here manages, controls finance, accounting, insurance
and the like, and Ice Nine Publishing Company (copyrights, licenses, songbooks) and Dead
Heads. Out of Town booking agency and Fly By Night travel agency, two outgrowths of our
scene, are in the building.
By the nature of the beast, the energies of over a hundred directly
enter our endeavour. Urobouros turns his circles. St. Dilbert is a bombast. Let's surface
the moon with an electrostatic spherical tidal spatial counter-entropic sound system.
Energy spoken here.
On earth, our overhead expense is $100,000 a month. In 1972 we grossed
$1,424,543. Here's who ate the pie:
70% of this income came from gigs, and 30% from record royalties. Gigs
offer the only means to earn more money when it is needed to maintain our operation in all
its particulars. We cannot sell more records at will, but we can go on the road, within
the limits of energy: so that we must play larger halls, with more equipment, and a bigger
organization, requiring more gigs.....
St. Dilbert calls this fellow 'Urobouros', and he's a good trip, but he
has a mind of his own:We like a variety of concert situations. Ambiance comes in different
sizes. We like a small hall, and so do you, and an outdoor gig in the sun, and a large
hall when it can be made to sound good; (few halls over 6000 capacity aren't sports arenas
with novel acoustic and environmental puzzles.)
Urobouros is hungry. How do we control him? We've planned for a year to
form our own record manufacturing and distributing company so as to be more on top of the
marketing process, package and promote our product in an honest and human manner, and
possibly stand aside from the retail list-price inflation spiral while retaining more of
the net dollar, (keep a tight ship). If the records cover a larger share of the overhead,
then the concert situation becomes more flexible. This is the working future-possible, in
the direction we see to go, now. We want this freedom to achieve gig variety, to
experiment. We are musicians.
What else might we do? Write and suggest it. Magic ideas welcome. Dead
Heads altogether, too - what might we do with it? What might you do with it?
Your mail is an energy input, 400 letters a week that we tack on
bulletin boards and read aloud and pass back and forth,The drawings ('DH') in this issue
are yours. This flow enters the common pool of plans and theories and ideas and
speculations and fantasies and hopes and fears and futures and galaxies and stuff.
To hear from you, furthers.
"Having been born into a world of rather curious values, values
apparently unrelated to the direct experience of human truths, the Bozos and Bolos
hypnocratically pursue a direction of self-determination in as many ways as interestingly
possible, believing that this course will best aid a continuation of integrity and meaning
in their music and other life spaces. This has meant that their business activity seeks to
be in control of as many areas as become possible, employing their own people to do the
work that would otherwise be farmed out to straight business. Thus there is the
possibility that the message in the music can be reflected in the manner and purpose of
conducting the business necessary to get the music heard."
- St. Dilbert, Bombast
THE GRATEFUL DEAD'S SOUND SYSTEM
(HOLLYWOOD BOWL - JULY 1974)
Recently there have been major changes made in the Dead's sound system.
Bringing it a big step closer to the ancient ideal of the perfect sound system*. This is a
technical report; from the standpoint of the ideas on sound reproduction incorporated into
its design, and with a description of its sub-systems. The system is unusual in that all
the speakers are arrayed behind the musicians. Conventionally, vocal systems occupy the
front corners of the stage. There are two disadvantages to this. It creates a blind spot
for people sitting in potentially good seats, and the musicians themselves don't really
know how they sound. They have monitors, but these are not very effective, nor are the
echoes which ricochet around the hall. With the speakers behind them, in integral array
with the instrument speakers, the band is in a such better position to hear what the
audience hears, and to adjust accordingly. With the new set-up there is no need for
a mixing console to adjust the various sound levels. Each microphone has a volume control
on it, enabling the band to mix the vocal sound from the stage. Each musician has control
of his own local sound environment, being able to adjust his stage monitors of other
instruments as well as his own Instrument.
The sound system is actually a combination of six individual systems.
each being electronically separate and having a specific purpose and function. No two
musical 'voices' go through the same system. Thus the vocals, piano, drums, lead guitar.
rhythm guitar and bass each have their own channel(s) of amplification (see Table ).
This separation is designed to produce an undistorted sound, a clean
sound in which qualities like 'transparency', 'brilliance', 'presence', and clarity' are
substantial musical dimensions.
• 'Gandharvas•, world of, wherein sound, as in song and music,
is the prevailing quality of existence. (Tibetan.)
SIX INDEPENDENT SOUND SYSTEMS
* 4 in quad or 2 in stereo
The whole system operates on 26,400 Watts of continuous (RMS) power.
producing in the open air quite an acceptable sound at a quarter of a mile and a fine
sound up to five or six hundred feet, where it begins to be distorted by wind. A sound
system could get the same volume from half as much power. but it wouldn't have the
quality.
THE VOCAL SYSTEM
The signals from each of the vocal microphones are brought together by a
Differential Summing Amp, where phase purity can be regulated and hence the transparency
of the sound maintained. From there the combined signal goes to a Crossover which divides
the frequency range into four band High, Upper Mid, Lower Mid, Low). The signal in each
band is then separately amplified by Macintosh 2300 amps fed to JBL I5 inch, 12 inch or 5
inch speakers or Electrovoice tweeters.
THE VOCAL SYSTEM
DIFFERENTIAL
The center cluster of the vocal system, consisting of high and
midrange speakers, is curved so as to disperse sound cylindrically; there is not much
vertical dispersion, and horizontal dispersion is ideally between 140 and 180 degrees.
The vocal low range speakers are arranged in a column. Each type of speaker is designed to
have the same horizontal and vertical angle of dispersion so that all frequencies are
heard equally well. The speaker cones are arranged together as close as possible so that
the whole surface of the cluster acts as one working surface. !n this way a large mass of
air is moved at once which doesn't require very high pressures from any individual
speaker. A major improvement in the quality of the vocal sound is due to the use of
differential microphones. Each singer has a perfectly matched pair of Bruel and Kjaer
microphones hooked up out of phase. only one of which he sings into. Any sound which goes
equally into both microphones is cancelled out when the two signals are added together.
Therefore leakage of instruments and background noise into the vocal channel is minimized.
THE PIANO SYSTEM
This is a small version of the vocal system. In this case a crossover
divides the frequency range into three parts. The Highs and Mids go through a cluster of 5
inch and 12 inch speakers built in the same fashion as the vocals center cluster.
The Lows go through a column of 15 inch speakers. There is a separate volume control for
each of the five Countryman custom pickups (one for each division of the frame) so
that Godchaux can balance the sound. Garcia and Kreutzmann both have piano
monitors or fills in their areas of the stage, which can be independently adjusted by
them.
THE DRUM SYSTEM
The drum system has two independent parts. The bass drum uses one
amplification channel and sixteen 15 Inch speakers in a column. The other drums and
cymbals are miked through a three-way crossover which separates the signal into Highs,
Upper Mids and Lower Mids and feeds them to Tweeters 5 inch and 12 inch speakers. This
second part of the drum system uses two channels as it is stereo with identical speaker
columns on both sides.
THE GUITARS
Both guitars use columns of twenty 12 inch speakers. Jerry's guitar has
extensions beside Keith and behind Phil.
Jerry is using a Doug Irwin/Alembic custom guitar. It has a
Gibson/Les Paul type body with a Fender Stratocaster pickup.
Bob currently plays a Gibson 335 guitar. He uses such special instruments
as an Eventide Clockwork Digital Delay unit for repeating notes and creating an echo-like
delay of different sound colorations and textures. Another accessory is an Alembic
Parametric Equalizer (a flexible tone circuit) which gives him complete control of
frequency response by enabling boost or cut adjustments at any or all of three
band-widths. The sharpness of the boost or cut ran also be controlled.
THE ELECTRIC BASS
Phil is using a new quadraphonic bass, the electronics of which were
designed and built by George Mundy and the body and pickups by Rick Turner. The new bass
has the same versatile qualities as the old bass: three pickups (bass and treble
low-impedance pickups covering all the strings, and a quad pickup which has a separate
signal for each string); on each of the bass and treble pickups there are controls which
enable him to select 1) the band width of the filter, 2) the center frequency of the
filter, 3) the kind of filter being used, and 4) mix unequalized unfiltered direct sound
with the filtered sound.
The variety of sounds which can be achieved on the bass is the result of the many
different combinations of these variables which can be used. no new bass has a frequency
response with a crisper tone, and two quad pickups instead of one. the new one being a
frequency-detector pickup. The main addition to the new bass is a Digital Decoding Circuit
such that ten push buttons on the bass allow Phil to select any one of sixteen quad
spatial arrangements of his speakers, and eight in the stereo mode.
DESIGNERS AND WORKSHOPS
The Grateful Dead's sound system has evolved over the last eight years
as a technical and group enterprise. a sort of topical accumulation of speakers and
people. Changes have been made continuously in all directions which aid in improving the
quality of the sound, both which the audience hears and which the band has to work with on
stage. The concept and design of the current system/level was worked out by Bear, Dan
Healy and Mark Raizene of the Dead's sound and equipment crew. and by Ron Wickersham and
Rick Turner of the Alembic sound company. The construction and regular maintenance is done
at the Dead's technical workshops by the people responsible for managing and transporting
the system on the road. The design and construction of some special electronic components.
was done at Alembic, where John Curl is a consultant to the project.
The number of people going on the road to handle all the sound
equipment, lights, scaffolding and staging varies, but a typical Configuration is:
Band - 6,
Sound - 10,
Lights - 4,
Staging and trucking - 7,
Road management - 3,
The sound system travels in a 40 foot semi, and staging and scaffolding on two
flatbed semis and the lights In a 24 foot van. All of this weighs about 75 tons.
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