Tripping Through Acid Rock

Thousands of young adults from all over the country who were college students, dropouts, or never attended, all flocked to Haight, San Francisco beginning in 1966 going into the early 70s. All of them traveling to one city in San Francisco for the same reason; to buy into the hippie culture. At the heart of the hippie culture were drugs and music. These self-proclaimed “hippies” consumed psychedelic drugs in large amounts, especially LSD, or commonly known as acid. The hippies believe that LSD opens up and unlocks your mind to the real beautiful world. The music that the hippies listen to is called acid rock, or psychedelic rock.

Psychedelic rock includes electric “trippy” sounds, including distortion, reverb, and reversed, delayed, and/or shifting phased sounds. These effects were possible due to the innovations of recording studios. An example of an improvement to the recording studios is multitrack recorders. Multitrack recorders allow you to record multiple things separately and combine them into one song. This is used in acid rock music to add in sounds and effects.