Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart
continues his sojourn into the world of surround sound
with his Percussion-heavy DVD releases

Surround Professional      October 1999
by Elizabeth Cohen
Photos by Jay Blakesberg

For most of us, Mickey Hart is best known for his nearly three decades as an integral part of an extraordinary expedition into the soul and spirit of music, disguised as a rock'n'roll band called the Grateful Dead and its subsequent incarnation as The Other Ones. But Mickey's long, strange trip has is far from over; he recently released the world's first audiophile, two-song, two video DVD multimedia single, featuring the DVD's title track "Indoscrub" and "Endless River" from his album SUPRALINGUA. Mickey also serves on the advisory board of the Smithsonian Folkways and was recently appointed a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. He is using his position there to champion the archiving of all endangered material on digital formats. Here, Mickey discusses the pros of surround, his techniques for using it, and what it means in the futures for "shapers of sound" like himself.

SP: What have you recorded in multichannel?
Mickey Hart: I started in stereo, of course. That is, needless to say, a multichannel recording. I was there. I saw the transition from mono to stereo. Then we went to 4-track and we doubled the image. I mixed the first run of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now in Quad. The whole percussion underscore was in Quad. We also, that is, the Grateful Dead did the first live Quad simulcast. We had two FM stations broadcasting simultaneously. You needed two receivers on two different channels to pick up on the double stereo Quad image. So those were my first olden-days recordings in the '60s and '70s. That was multichannel back then. My first foray into six distinct channels was the DVD single Indoscrub and Endless River. My most recent multichannel recording is The Best of Mickey Hart, [which is] to be released by Rykodisc this fall.

Were the original mixes for Indoscrub multichannel?
No. The original mix was a stereo mix. So, after I made the record, I went back and made the DVD. I remixed the master 48-track tape.

To date, have you recorded multichannel where there was the original medium of destiny?
Nope, negative. All of my records have been simulated. I have recreated their space in my version of multichannel surround. I haven't had the opportunity to compose in surround. Even though now, when I am thinking compositionally, I think in surround. It is quite different. So next time I go into the studio, I will record in multichannel from the start.

When you are thinking compositionally about multichannel, how is it different?
Let's take vertical movement for instance, which I think is really important when we are talking about multichannel. When we feed the lower frequencies, when we move from the lower frequendes to the higher, sound rises and falls. So, frequency-wise, we can create interesting sounds and spatial effects. When you set sounds/textures passing through space, say from right front to left rear, you are composing specifically for spatial effect. You are not manipulating after the fact, as it were.

To an engineer, this sounds like you hear the full surface of a sphere. Your words describe going for that sphere.You've got Theta, phi, and r, and then the gestalt of the space. You've left the line, the plane so to speak.
Yes, I want not only the dimensions, but also the space, the room as well. Multichannel thought generates a very Cagian - type of composition (John Cage), a Musique Concrete composition along with your standard song format. I am thinking spatially now more than ever. I am thinking up and down and peripheral - not just right and left, not just around, not just a circle. There are so many different ways in which you can spatially affect the music if you precompose it with the full field in mind. So, I am dreaming now in 5.1. After you come out of a 5.1 mix, you start dreaming in 5.1. 0nce you've done your first discrete multichannel, deep space starts working its way into all of your compositions. This is serious surround. That's what I'm working on. Now, 5.1 is just one manifestation of surround. There's 10.1 and 20.1.

Dream for me in 10.1.
It's more finite. You can localize better that way. Right now, it's sort of a gross localization. It's right front, left front, right rear, left rear, center. These are just gross placements. However, 5.1 is just the medium we're dealing with for the moment. We have barely crossed the threshold of space. I have great expectations for multichannel. Dreaming in 10.1 or 20.1 now is a little ludicrous for the marketplace, but I can always hope that the audio standards race towards the envelope of human perception.

Remember, in defining space, in identifying an environment, nothing localizes sound better than percussion. And that is basically my passion, the percussive moment. Now I am exploring all of the dimensions of the given spatial spectrum. For instance, in the left field, I use right-left quadrant, left-left, center- left, etc., so I'm exploring the entire spectrum. I am not just looking off at one particular space. I am looking at the increments of the spectrum. I'm clicking. I'm on the click. You know, click, click, click, click, click, click. So, where I am trying to place something, it's very finite. I work with the lights down so [that] the light doesn't distract me. I try to use this 360 as best as I possibly can considering the limitations of the medium.

How do you push the limits of a commercial medium?
First of all, you can't be unrealistic. You can't put the listener in a compromised situation where they would be uncomfortable, where the ear would be unfriendly. For instance, most people are used to being in the audience, so when you hear a band coming out of the back, a live band coming out of the rear speakers, it's a little strange.

Just recently, I did a 5.1 mix of a live Other One's concert for multichannel demo purposes. I put some of the instruments like the bass in the back to give it a nice full sound all around. It's well supported with the audience wrapping around you. Some of the instruments are placed lightly in the back. Mostly, it's a frontal feeling because the band is coming to you with the video component attached to it. It's really difficult to see the band in front of you and hear it out of the back. It's an unnatural way of listening to a concert.

The Other Ones demo was a DVD, so again the medium does dictate, in a way, what can be and what cannot be, to a certain extent. I push it every way I can, but when I start feeling uncomfortable, I let my heart and my ears tell me that. I don't let the medium serve as the only guide. It's a kind of friendly thing. I have a few hairs go up on the back of my neck when I become uncomfortable. And that's what I let dictate my choice of spatial content. It's purely subjective; a matter of personal taste because you have so much more geography available.

You've got to relax in this new soundscape, because if you are too frittering, too anxious to get into the technology, you will lose the music. Throwing stuff around just because you have a joystick and you've got 360 doesn't make for a good musical experience.You've got to move in slowly; let your heart and guts guide you and not take you to a place that's unfriendly. Don't be afraid, but you've got to be cautious. Cheap tricks will only go so far, and they will wear very thin. So you have to move into this with great caution. Don't be too conservative. Be Brave. But you have to follow your heart.

How did you approach your latest 5.1 Project, The Best of Mickey Hart?
This new "record" is my greatest adventure in 5.1 to date. I started out with a lot of dilferent mediums. I had 4-track, 8-track, 16-, 24-, all the way to 48-track masters, and took it all to 48 digital and into Pro Tools. You have to do a few projects in 5.1 to find the possibilities. What was truly the most surprising discovery is that, after I did the 5.1 mix, it only took me a few hours extra to fold down to stereo. Yet, the 5.1 mix reinvigorated the music and completely opened up the stereo mix.

I wasn't going to do a stereo mix - coming back from multichannel, it was like going back to prison, but then I discovered that it gave me new ears for stereo. I found myself in the studio with all this new space up, so I couldn't resist the stereo. I found the process of collapsing the newly derived 5.1 mix back down to stereo fascinating. After doing the 5.1 mix, using 5.1 space, I found a whole new world of perception in doing my stereo mix. Of course, some of it didn't play, but I would have never gotten to this new stereo spatial geography if I had just started off with a stereo mix. Doing the 5.1 mix first really worked. It's terrific. It gives you whole new opportunities for approaching a stereo mix. Many opportunities arise. It enhanced my stereo mix and my perception of stereo tremendously.

My instructions: Open wide up to 5.1 and then go down so that space lives in stereo.

What other advice do you have from your Best Of Mickey Hart experience?
The other important thing is to have multiple listening posts. I move between my Meyer full-range system and about six different home systems. I need to be able to program the real world. For instance, I simulate a soft-carpeted living room experience. I physically take the music to real places where people listen to music.

How do you deal with the fact that people are rarely listening to music in a sweet spot? They are Iistening in their kitchens, in their cars, etc.
Again, you have to trust your ears and your sensibilities. Your experience comes into play. You have to quantize this and you've got to make it a good listening experience for all. So I mix a lot of my stuff with the highest quality systems available, but I also listen to it over a wide range of consumer systems. There is a way for the work to sound great on all speakers. So what's on the Meyers is the final frontier. Listening on my 833's is what tells me whether I've got it or I don't have it, but I am monitoring on many different systems. Here at Yolo [Hart's studio] I even broadcast in FM - 89.5 on your dial. So I can be at the house, in the guesthouse, on the birdhouse speakers in the garden, up in my office - everywhere I get modulated sound. This is stereo, of course, but we are planning on for multichannel digital radio next.

And of course there is the car... l'm into the listening experience for people. It's not just me in the studio on my big 833's. 1 1ove that. I love to crank them up to respectable levels and enjoy the wonders of sound, but I also want those people out there that are buying multichannel to sit back and turn on their little peashooters and get the best payload they possibly can. That's really my goal. It's to try to reach those ears and have those ears just fall in love with that sound. I want them to have a love affair with the sound and that space.That's what I think of, I think of someone sitting there, in ecstasy. Multichannel is like selling ecstasy.This method works, it translates beautifully.

How are you approaching repurposing Grateful Dead masters into multichannel?
We are about to do that. We are just in the planning stages. I look forward to being able to restore both the sense of place and sense of space in our recordings.

What is the status of the Library of Congress Sound recording archive?
Right now, we are involved in the preservation issue in general. At the Library of Congress, we are trying to find the right way to preserve the archives. We are researching the best ways to digitize and distribute the collection. And then I hope I will be turning a lot of this material into multichannel. But, right now, we are at a crawl, considering the amount of information we have in our great archives. We are just coming to grips with preservation of the dilferent mediums. Remember, we have things from the 1890s, from wax to tin to wire to acetate to magnetic tape, you name it, Yak Butter„whatever, we got it.

First we have to identify the most endangered materials. Then, we have to digitize the collection. We must digitize everything on the masters: noise, scratches - warts and all.There is no excuse for not digitizing. Even if a digital conveyance medium becomes obsolete, we will always be able to make a perfect copy as long as we transfer to the next digital medium while the digital master is still within the error-correction envelope. In the digital era, archiving is a continually evolving process. So, I am recommending that we record everything we can capture, down to the bare nub. Right now, we are capable of 24-bit, 96 or 192 kilosamples. Now that will even get you the thumbprints on the wax. Even if the dynamic range on an original analog master was 40 dB, we should utilize the full 120 dB capability. We don't want to leave anything behind. The trick is to capture everything in the archive procedure.

The next step is to get rid of the noise and then the re-creation of the environment.

What are some of the criteria for repurposing an archival recording? How do you prioritize?
Certainly anything that has any spatial content is an ideal candidate. For example, if you have a recording that was made on a back porch, something that was recorded outside, this would lend itself perfectly to multichannel.You could recreate the ambiance and bring back the live spatial experience. Of course, a lot of the collection is in mono, so there is a lot of experimentation to be done. I haven't really gotten that far yet, I am mostly concerned with the preservation of this great archive. As soon as I get that under control, then I can approach the spatial restoration of these wonderful sounds and musics.

If people want to help with this project, by donating either time or money, where can they go?
They can contact Peggy Bulger, director of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. Anyone who is interested in helping with the preservation of this archive should step forward. This collection is the greatest repository of sound recordings in the world. The Library is looking for partners. Now is a good time to get involved with the Library. There is a great new active board. The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, is on a dead run to get these materials preserved and back out into the world. I'm on the subcommittee for the digitization of the archive. Now is the time for the best of this music to be put into circulation. We are looking for technical and financial support at the Library. We need your help. The sound community should be saving the music, preserving the voices of humanity, and enabling all voices to be heard.

What is limiting the rate of preservation and archiving materials?
There is a plethora of issues. They include identifying the preservation medium, creating future proofing procedures to deal with medium turnover, dealing with a universe of mutating technologies where sounds can be easily manipulated, artist's rights, copyrights, and the manpower and womanpower to solve these questions. We have a massive amount of information. It's almost beyond imagination. We have over a million and a half hours of sound information, and it's growing daily. We have to choose and prioritize what is the most endangered of the materials. In some cases, these recordings are the only records we have left of both cultural and physical environments.These voices are fading; they are falling off the edge of the world. Therefore, multichannel may play a key role in conveying a community's experience across time.

When you add the challenge of multichannel to preservation, we also must educate. Part of our heritage is the space of the recording. With multichannel, we can recreate the spatial content of the time and place. Remember that the ear is a 360-degree detective. In the past, music has been neutered in mono or stereo. You have collapsed the space. It's quite a task to restore it. You can never do it exactly, but you can resuscitate it, bring it back to life. That's where the musicianship comes in, and that's really important. That's where the artistry is. It's not just dumping it into a Sonic Solution and cleaning it up. It's how you clean it up and how you recreate that space. It takes both great machines and talented operators. It's a dance. You have to love and respect the material. You can't over spatially endow it. It's personal; that's what makes it art. There is no formula. We are creating our own new rules. It's the wild wild west out here. We are talking about spatial equity.

What do you mean by spatial equlty?
It used to be we were only concerned with preserving melody and rhythm, but now we have space. We have a stake in defining space, in recreating it with all its power. We are making it what it is, if we create it badly, it will be worthless. But if it is a thing of great beauty, it will be a treasure. It will be a model for all others involved. If somebody doesn't start setting a standard, we are just twisting in the wind. So when I'm doing something, I'm thinking of setting a standard. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but somebody's got to do it. So I put as much as I can into it, because I believe that these first multichannel recordings are precedent setting events. This is acoustic history. People will be holding these up for years. That was the way it was with stereo. The first stereo recordings set the pace for better or worse. It takes years to break out of that once it's established.

You are describing what sounds like a mission or a sense of duty.
In an era where people seem to be experiencing the lives of people that they merely see on television, it becomes even more important to deliver the genuine. People crave what's real. As musicians, we are in the business of transforming the spirit into form. We are the agents of awareness. We are the servants of reality. We are the sound shapers.We shape space. We are in the transformation business. We convert the power of music, of sound, of spirit. We take this invisible energy and feed the ears of the people. The ears feed the soul. Multichannel music is soul food.