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[Weogo Reed]

"Show was amazing."

    Indeed!
What struck me was the kindness of the folks that made Woodstock happen. 
Am guessing this is part of why it worked.
 
Thanks!  Weogo

[Dan Mortensen]

Pete and Randy:  Thanks for coming and I'm glad you enjoyed it. The presentation was something like 3.75 hours long, and I was worried that it would be too tedious, which I am fully capable of being, but I didn't know how to get the information across in the depth that I wanted without taking some time. Glad you were there and enjoyed it.

Pete, regarding your points at how difficult that had to have been: They were handed a slew of problems, continuing when they were thrown out of a site they'd spent months and lots of money preparing, less than a month before the starting date, then going to a beautiful and otherwise perfect site that had nearly zero infrastructure like electricity, water, sewage, etc., and built what they needed through almost non-stop unseasonable rain with the deadline of show day, combined with tens of thousands of people who showed up days if not weeks early and were onsite and in the way.

There were hundreds if not thousands of issues that could have killed it completely or made it a very unpleasant situation for all concerned, and each one balanced on a knife edge and managed to fall in a way that was most beneficial to the event's success. It's proof of my belief that luck beats talent every time, although in that case Michael Lang's genius gathered other geniuses in their area to do what needed to be done and gave them slack and resources to find the best ways to solve or mitigate the myriad problems.

Riley: Did you get a confirmation email when you signed up? If not, your email address given must have been bad. If you did get a confirmation email, I know you signed up early enough to be sent two messages with the link from "Pacific Northwest Section, AudioEngineeringSociety" 2 hours before and 10 minutes after the meeting started.

Look in your Junk box, because they absolutely went out to everyone who signed up the same time as you. We do that to avoid Zoom bombers, of whom we've had one so far.

I am aware that there were a bunch of people who signed up after the meeting started who were too late to get the message sent 10 minutes after the start, and I need to fix that in the future, either making late signups impossible or by making it so they get an immediate email back containing the link. But, I don't want people who signed up early to get lots of emails with the link, and I don't know Eventbrite well enough to know how to schedule emails to attendees other than at specific times and to everyone, not just those who recently signed up.

That's more detail than you wanted to know, but it's reality to me.

Last night was recorded and will be on my Youtube channel when we get it ready, maybe in two parts, maybe in one.

I'm in the midst of planning another Woodstock event that will examine it from a completely different perspective, or host of perspectives. I'll post notice of that here when it comes together sufficiently.

Thanks again, everyone.

PS Weogo, whose reply came while I've been typing this: It was nice meeting you, and i think the kindness thing is a very good point. I just got off the phone (first time talking) for 40 min. with someone who will be part of this next event who I could tell was a very kind person, and who was a major part of the behind-the-scenes before and during. The tone of universal love and kindness at the festival papered over many shortcomings of all sorts, which can't be ignored when considering all the valid points Pete raised. It was a miracle in many ways.

[Andrew Broughton]

Enjoyed every minute of it; my enthusiasm dampened only a little by Pete's constant bitching about the COMs.

Thank you to all that were involved, I look forward to watching the YouTube to catch the parts I may have missed.

[Tim McCulloch]

Dan, THANK YOU for the well-done evening. To have that group together chatting about everything in such a properly thought out format was not only educational, but really entertaining. I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to be a viewer (and a small part!) of it.

Hi Randy -

Dan and the fine folks from the PNW chapter have done a few other, similar meetings, and Dan has a weekly "Tea Time Topics" Zoom call where the techniques and tools for such gatherings have been used.  Hint - ask Dan about joining Tea Time Topics.  Not every minute is about audio but is always interesting.  The depth and breadth of knowledge never fails to impress.

Dan is far too modest to shamelessly self promote, so I'll do it for him. 

[Dan Mortensen]

Thanks, Tim. When I form my rap group and take it on the road, I want you to be my Hype Man.

[Art Welter]

Enjoyed every minute of it; my enthusiasm dampened only a little by Pete's constant bitching about the COMs.

Thank you to all that were involved, I look forward to watching the YouTube to catch the parts I may have missed.

Missed the whole presentation, also looking forward to watching it on YouTube.

Looking back, the first intercom I used or owned was a Terry Hanley intercom, which used 5-pin XLR to connect stations, and wasn't marketed until 1972.
Even so, don't think I'd heard that his brother Bill had done sound at Woodstock '69 until sometime this century.

Just looked at an asset list from the early 1990's, and found I had also owned Clear-Com RS-100 beltpacks, which could have pre-dated Woodstock '69, though I had never seen one until many years after that date.

The ways we commonly communicate now was not common then...

Art

[Pete Erskine]

Just looked at an asset list from the early 1990's, and found I had also owned Clear-Com RS-100 beltpacks, which could have pre-dated Woodstock '69, though I had never seen one until many years after that date.

First ClearCom BP was in 1970.   Charlie Buttons began developing in 1966 but no hardware was available till the in 1970 2 years after WS

[Dan Mortensen]

First ClearCom BP was in 1970.   Charlie Buttons began developing in 1966 but no hardware was available till the in 1970 2 years after WS

Thanks, Pete, that was what I thought but with no proof.

Thanks again for being there.

I was talking with someone who was involved in the production and management of the festival and highlighted how there was no communication devices there like what are common now at all levels of events, and she agreed that it was wondrous but that things just had a way of working out when you needed to talk with somebody.

That reminded me of the first year I did sound at this bluegrass festival that I did for the next 23 years or so, where the "Stage Managers" of the 5 stages let bands play as long as they felt like, which threw the festival hours off so they grabbed anybody who happened to be standing by to get up and play and thus the audiences were constantly wandering through the hallways of the hotel that it was mostly in to find the bands they were looking for. That resulted in a constant crush of people flowing two ways in the hall and there was no back way to get anywhere, so when you needed to talk with someone you had to jump in the river and make your way to the other side.

It was constantly astonishing how when you needed to talk to someone you'd be in the river and there they'd be coming the other way. That happened over and over, and I have to imagine Woodstock was similar. She agreed with that.

There's a movie called Shakespeare In Love that is about the famous guy in his early days, and Geoffrey Rush plays the impresario who continually says when there are impossible obstacles put in the way of the play presentation, that everything will work out and nobody knows how but they will. It was true in that day and still holds. The event finds a way if there's only faith by the participants.

That first Woodstock had faith (and luck, with the right tone to create luck set by Michael Lang) in Spades.

FWIW, the second year I did that bluegrass festival and for the next 20 or so I was in charge of the Stage Managers and crews, too, and all stages ran on time.

[Dan Mortensen]

So a friend of mine who provides backline showed up the other night at one my Summer gigs to pick up his company's gear, and I was telling him about this meeting. He said he'd been independently looking into the logistics of the event even though he's not interested in the music, and was psyched to hear about this meeting.

He later texted me a link to an article about how McIntosh amps were helicoptered in to save the day, and while looking for that article online (without using the link, duh) I found some more with sketchy information. Here's one:

Woodstock & McIntosh An Iconic Duo

First:

'According to Hanley, "I built special speaker columns on the hills and had 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up to the hill on 70-foot [21 m] towers..."'

That quote may be accurate, as Bill has said a number of things at different times, but at the meeting we looked closely at the scaffold and it was actually about 54 feet to the bottom of the top boxes, which is still pretty damn high, so the top horns were somewhere around 61' off the ground.

The rest of the article is pretty good, but there is one part:

"During the editing process for the movie, Hanley Sound had enough influence to demand that its sound engineer take part in the process to ensure the best sound quality possible. The engineer, Lee Osborne..."

Hanley Sound provided all the recording gear and staff to record the festival, and the primary recordist was Lee Osborne. He was assisted by Eddie Kramer, but I'm told that Lee did the bulk of the recording and planning. Wouldn't it make sense to have the primary recordist present at least at the beginning of the process of assembling a fairly massive quantity of tapes into a coherent archive? While Hanley was the pre-eminent live audio person of the day, the statement seems excessive.

Note that two other people actually were nominated for the Oscar for the movie soundtrack, so Lee was gone by the time of completion.

[Dan Mortensen]

Another one:

From "Commercial Integrator" July 22, 2019

"Woodstock Tech Highlights

(quotes from the article under the above heading)

"Hanley explains the field was chosen because they were working with an estimated crowd size in mind and based on those estimates of 100,000 people, they decided to use Altec HIS 410s in horn-loaded 15-inch cabinets."

The "410's" were indeed horn-loaded 4 x 15" cabinets. Those were all on the lower level of the scaffold, but the upper level had direct-radiator 8 x 15"s. There were four of each box on each level of each tower, so 16 boxes totaling 96 15's.

Hanley tri-amped the Altecs with crossovers set at 50Hz and 8kHz..."

50Hz and 8kHz crossovers? Maybe 50Hz high pass, but there was nothing below 50Hz. Bill has talked about running the 15's full range because why not? Having the horns only be above 8k seems like leaving a lot on the table. On June 22, 2022, Bill was ambiguous about crossover frequencies, so...

"Hanley Sound powered the speakers with a range of McIntosh Amplification products"

The main PA seemed to be fully 3500's, but that was ambiguous. The bulk of the amps were Mac 3500's, although there were another smattering of Mac and Crown amps. We talked about that as much as we could.

"Another portion of the sound system was located high upon on a hill. Hanley says that’s why the towers were located approximately 60- to 70-feet above the crowd."

There was no other part of the sound system that was not on the towers; nothing was high upon a hill other than audience. And as referenced in the first updated post, the towers were about 54' tall with another 7 or 8' of speakers stacked up.

Yes, minor corrections so far but important to set the record straight IMO.

[ProSoundWeb Community]