Sound effects in musicals are an odd beast.
Well: just as in straight plays, there are plays with many sound effects, and plays with few. In the latter category come those drawing room comedies where all the action takes place inside a box set and nothing happens but an occasional phone ring. These are the designs you can (if you'll forgive the pun) phone in.
There are also plays, such as any of Shakespeare's, in which the play could be done with strong sound effects, but generally aren't -- mostly because most directors don't think in terms of sound. The same play, then, can be reduced to "A bear roars off-stage," or in other directorial hands be a through-composed seamless and continuous panoply of quadraphonic ear candy.
And then there are plays in which the environment or elements in the environment cry out so for sound effects it is hard to find a director who won't want them.
Musicals embrace all three of these worlds. But then they add another dimension; that they are, well, musicals. There is singing and a band playing for much of the running time.
This hits your sound designs with three constraints; intelligibility impact, limited space, and necessary timing.
Take the last first. In "The Jungle Book," Shere Khan needs to roar several times. All but one of those roars are in the score. Which is to say; they have to happen at a specific moment in the orchestration, and occur on the beat. In "Into the Woods" there is a baby cry that is scored in the Entre-Act. In "Seussical" the opening of the Egg has to occur over and within four specific measures of the score; heard before the first bar and concluding with the last.
There are two techniques that help greatly with this. The first is to record the rehearsal. I used to do it on mini-disc, now I just use my laptop. Sitzprobe is a great time to do this. This is also a great technique for certain cues in straight plays as well. Record the actual scene as sung/performed by your cast and/or orchestra.
Back in the early days I'd use a stopwatch and jot down time through the scene in question:
0:0 thomas in
0:5 "what'cher doing?"
0:12 falls in water
1:33 approx scene end
Now I take the recording from rehearsal and make it the top track in CuBase. I can then do a rough synchronization with that as a guide track.
When I did this for the dogfight for "Your a Good Man, Charlie Brown" I knew that I was not going to depend on the scene staying in lock step to the exact time they'd spent in rehearsal. I designed a dozen cues in total that would come in, or cross-fade, at specific moments in the action.
So this is how I built that show; I started by making a rough cut of the entire scene as it would be heard in performance. Then I saved the original file and began to edit; for each sub-cue, I muted the elements that would happen in the next cue, and extended the events that would happen in the current cue, and rendered a sound file that was long enough to cover any change in the timing. Then, in Qlab, I built a show that would fade out or cross-fade the previous cue as each new cue was played. This gave me the ability to do a constant engine sound of the Sopwith Camel that could still react to the power climb and stall out that happen at various moments in the music. The ack-ack, machine guns, and so forth were layered on top to be played simultaneously with the engine noise bed.
The same technique is wonderful for composing musical underscore for a scene in a straight play.
But back to musicals. Another trick I've been using more and more is to hand over control of a sound effect to the band. Since of course they know where they are in the music at all times, and they can see the conductor's baton to get accurate tempo.
In many cases, it is most appropriate to leave behind your own ego, and hand the sound over literally; let the percussion player do something instead of making it a recorded sound effect.
If it has to be recorded, like the baby from "Into the Woods," I've been handing a MIDI device to conductor, keyboard player, or percussionist. A small sampler (like the Boss "Doctor Sample") does the trick. A laptop and the right software would too. Or stick a keyboard or MIDI drum pad down there and route it to a sampler, soft sampler running on a laptop, or the show playback software.
Or you can have a button. I created my own MIDI button a while ago using the Arduino as a platform. Since it is detecting a state change in 5v TTL, I can run it through two hundred feet of XLR cable without worry about dropping signal. The conductor or drummer gets a box with a big red button on it. The wire leads to the brain box in the booth, and Qlab gets the signal via MIDI to trigger the sound effect.
Ineligibility is shorthand for the problem that in a musical, there is already a lot of sound going on. Singing, the orchestra, the sound of the actors in motion, moving scenery -- all of that conspires to make a congested sound environment. Often as not you will simply have to omit a sound effect because it would get in the way of the audience being able to hear the more important things (like the lyrics.)
This runs into the third constraint I mentioned, in that it also compels you towards sound effects that are short in duration, simple in form, and that have a limited frequency range.
That last constraint is that, again, with all the other noise going on nuances are going to be lost. And with the fast-moving nature of a musical, and the necessity that the effect be finished and over before the next verse of the song comes in, the pressure is towards sounds that are instantly identifiable and that can speak their piece and get out of the way.
The musical is rarely a place for nuanced, expressive sounds, or complex environmental sounds, or detailed story-telling. What you want instead are sketches, cartoons; sounds pared down to the minimum that expresses the idea.
As a for-instance, I have a "Palm Beach" cue in my current production. Surf and seagulls. The cue was constructed so the seagulls make a single loud establishing chatter, and there is one loud wave, then the birds fall silent and the waves drop down to a lower level. So the sound only plays at volume for 3-4 seconds before dropping down to an inconspicuous background. The surf, too; I started with the most generic surf sound I have, and equalized it to bring out as much wave froth as possible and take out pretty much everything else.
Played baldly, the cue sounds horrible. Seated into a scene that starts with loud orchestral underscore and seques immediately into a song, it works quite well.
My first stop for these cues is to find the most generic lion roar or train whistle I can. The art is to find that sound that even played at half-volume over a phone will be instantly identifiable. Hollywood is very good at this. The thing is, those "instantly recognizable" sounds are rarely anything like what those things actually sound like. No dog in the world ever said "bark" after all (or "wan," for that matter.) Eagles do not sound like a red-tail hawk. Most monkeys do not make the stock "Eee, eee, eee!" sound. Snakes inhale as well as exhale (aka hiss). And of course a real gunshot sounds like a stick slapped on a hard surface and a real punch lacks, well, punch.
The next step, besides the inevitable equalization, is to trim the cue for time. Often I've had to use Time Bandit or similar to shorten the cue. There has never been a musical with enough time for an airplane to actually make a full pass; instead I take the best sound I have, cut a section out of it, and apply pitch shifting, panning, and volume envelope to create a new and much shorter fly-by sound.
It is pretty much part of the above, but many of these ultra-short cues will still be compound cues. It has to do, again, with audience expectations. Four seconds of "chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff" might not be enough for the audience to run through all possibilities in their minds and arrive at "Oh, a train." But if you add a (very shortened!) train whistle on to it, you can have a four-second cue that they will recognize is supposed to be a train. It is, as I've been saying, a sketch of a train, a cartoon, the kind of outlining a landscape painter does to create the illusion of a fir tree with a dot of paint and a brief brush stroke. Given time to think about it, the audience would find that a fairly ridiculous excuse for a train sound. But in the context of a scene change in a musical and all the artificiality that entails, it works.
Games are a good place to see this sort of art of compression. Not modern FPS games -- RTS and TBS games like the Civ series, the earlier Warcraft, Sim City, and so forth. Think of those games where you click a "build farm" icon and get a two-second sound burst that says "Hi, I'm a farm."
So here's the rough process for designing these things:
1) Read the script and talk to the director (the first design/production meeting, an interview, an email -- whatever it takes to get a basic idea of where they are going with the show.) This is not a time for minutiae; this is a time to learn if the show is realistic or not, what period it is, how much the director is open to sound effects, whether it is the kind of show where live practical effects or orchestral sounds are more appropriate, and so on.
On a recent production of "Your a Good Man, Charlie Brown" the idea was presented in the first meeting that the entire show occurred as if on a playground, and that everything that happened was being acted out by children who were playing the environments as well as the parts. This led into discussion of "detoxifying" the "Red Baron" scene (trying not to have a lot of war sounds in a play with and for children) -- and a moment of inspiration when we realized the direction to go there was to play the entire scene as if children were playing war on the playground and to make all the airplane and battle noises from actual recordings of children's voices.
2) Spot cues. I like to take the script to my favorite cafe and have a leisurely brunch while marking it up. I usually make a complete pass of the script sticking colored tape markers where ever there is something that might be a sound issue. I even use several colors of tape; one for scene changes that might involve a background or environmental sound, one for spot cues, and one for potential vocal processing -- such as the Ghost of Christmas Past, or The Knight of the Mirrors, or perhaps a character who is temporarily down a well.
What you are looking for are several things. You are looking for artifacts on stage that might not make the right sound by themselves...a prop gun, for instance, that might need to have an effect when it is fired. Or a vacuum cleaner, which might not be practical and would again need a recorded cue.
You are looking for changes of scene or time that could benefit from something to underscore them. For instance, one scene may be "that evening." To emphasize that the time of day has just changed, throw in some crickets. You are also looking for places to enhance a setting. The sewer in Guys and Dolls is a giant set-piece scene that wants to be amazing. Add some drips and steam to make it come to life.
You are looking for things that aren't on stage but are either implicit or explicit parts of the action. In the latter, "Listen to the howling of the wolves!" says a character. You probably want some wolves for them to listen to! In the former, the scene might take place on a street corner, and even though no-one mentions the cars passing by, to leave them out of the sound picture would be odd.
And, of course, you are looking for the explicit sound effects described in the script. Please be aware that in some musicals, there are effects that don't get mentioned in the script but that DO appear in the written score.
3) Tentative cue list. This is a list that shows page number, kind of cue, and a brief description. I use my tentative cue list as a reference for coordination with the other departments; "These church bells heard on page 33. Are those a sound effect, or is that something the orchestra is playing there?" Or, "This door slam on page 15. Are we going to have a practical door for that or do you want a sound effect?"
So my list is not just sound effects, but also includes even those things like starter pistols, crash boxes, and actors yelling lines from the wings that I am pretty sure are not going to be pre-recorded. Because you want to ask. And if it turns out it is a sound effect, you've already thought a little about how to do it.
This list gives the director a firmer sense of how much sound you intend to use, how realistic you are going with it, and so forth. And it gives them a place where they, too, can say "I've added a bit in rehearsal and we need a siren sound on page 3 for that," or "We've cut the business on page 114 and there is no sewing machine anymore."
4) Pulls. I make up a pull list. This is not the list of actual sound CUES. This is a list of the individual sound EFFECTS. For instance, effect might be "Ocean liner hits iceberg." I know I have plenty of stock water and boat sounds, and those will be easy to pull, but the pull list reminds me I need to search for something that says "Iceberg." As much as I can, I break down the problem and come up with tentative solutions so instead of doing giant library searches for "Titanic disaster" I can do a specific search for "ice sliding across metal" instead.
My method has pretty much always been to start a directory for the show and make sub-folders for major cue groups (On "The Jungle Book" my sub-folders are "Monkeys, wolves, tigers, elephants, jungle backgrounds, water, sand and weather, other.") Then I copy from my SFX libraries so all the files are right there, consolidated.
I need to look for gaps and go purchase/record/synthesize new sounds. And I need to audition sounds -- playing one tiger roar after another to narrow down the best roars for that particular production. And the pull list is also a track of work completed versus to be done.
5) Trials and tailoring. This is where you want to be in the theater if possible, and in the rehearsal hall if time permits. You want to listen to the sounds on the actual speakers and as much as possible (given the schedule) within the show context. The biggest problem here is that orchestras do not get integrated until very late in the rehearsal process. You have as little as two days with the full orchestra until you go in front of an audience.
Trouble is, you won't really know if the sound is going to work until you hear it in place. Worse yet, the director has no idea. Some directors will try to second-guess you -- and with a musical to manage, they don't have time for discussion. They are liable to say "It isn't working, cut it" without giving it a chance to be heard in context. These are the times that professionalism, trust, and a soft touch are most necessary.
To get through a musical you have to work fast and stay fluid. It may work out best to have a bunch of sounds in progress and to play from the actual work files during rehearsal instead of from fully rendered cues. Because then you can make changes on the fly and even try it again if the rehearsal permits. Be prepared in the fast pace of tech for a musical to have days of work turn into a discarded file because the scene works better without the effect -- or to have last-minute requests for something new and ridiculous. (My favorite at the moment is the last-minute request for a sound of "..the snakes getting zapped by love.")
6) Installation. This is where you shift sounds from "stuff you are playing with during rehearsal" to actual numbered cues entered into the Stage Manager's book, called to an operator, and executed from show software.
I've done sound effects both ways. I like the control you have as designer to chose where exactly to hit a sound effect for best integration with the music and flow of the show, and pinpoint volume control to seat it into the mix, but running sound effects whilst mixing microphones can get rather exciting.
The best solutions I've had are using a MIDI keyboard or my MIDI button so I can hit the sound effect without having to move my hands too far from the faders I am mixing. Still, there are far too many times when you've got a complex scene with multiple actors getting into each other's microphones, a bunch of fast entrances, and a bad microphone you are trying to track down before it blasts the audience with noise, and the sound cues end up getting skipped in the fuss.
My second preference would be to have an operator running effects off their own copy of the script. They can then nuance their performance to the flow of the show, and they can be given "hot" buttons to fire off mickey-moused effects that would otherwise be too fast or too risky to design in implicitly. For instance, ad-lib train whistles, gunshots, thunder crashes.
However, basic theater politics holds that you will only get a volunteer or intern to do this, and they WILL be subservient to the Stage Manager, so it will be a very hard fight to get them off headset and given the freedom to take their own cues. As much as possible, theater will attempt to nail down any chance at spontaneity and will turn your sounds into discrete and distinct moments that will be fired at pre-determined moments linked only to the words in the libretto -- and not to any real sense of what is happening on stage.
Fortunately, a musical is generally tight enough in timing that this works for most of the cues. A good Stage Manager will slide the timing to make up for late entrances or a change in orchestration the pit just came up with or other changes in the flow of the moment that make the sound cue not work as well in the original spot.
What you have to do is (and this happens for sound design in straight plays as well) is to break into that mindset that says the words are everything, and that "Actor says the key word" equals "sound effect happens here." It is also true on lights -- sometimes it is a surprisingly uphill battle to get it understood that where the cue was designed to happen is as the actor crosses the threshold -- and the fact that they are saying their line a beat earlier then they had during rehearsal has nothing at all to do with where the CUE belongs.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Revisiting Sound Design: Tricks to Get You Through
I'm just finishing up something like a dozen shows nearly back-to-back. All of them were musicals, and on most of them I was the sole designer. Most were also children's or youth theater (which brings an additional set of constraints) and several were on extremely short tech schedules (which also introduces certain constraints).
When you are designing sound for musical theater, you are really doing three different (but intersecting) designs. You are designing sound effects (which for a straight play, would be the only thing you did), designing vocal reinforcement of the singers/actors (which for some musicals, is the only thing you do), and designing the reinforcement of the orchestra (which is basically the same job as doing sound for a live band).
Taking the last first, I work at a couple of rental facilities where it is not uncommon to have a band come in without their own sound guy. So as the house tech, I figure out how best to mic them up, work up some plausible settings, then mix them from the console during the performance. This you may be doing for stage musicals as well -- but for the musical, your primary requirement is to make it work for the combined performance. (Often as not, that means asking the band to turn down instead of mic'ing them to get them up.)
First step is learning what you've got to work with. Is it a small space and there are few or no wireless microphones for the cast? Then the task is control of the band -- getting them into a pit or behind a wall if anyone lets you do that! Is it a medium-sized house, the actors are on mic, but the band is tucked behind scenery far upstage? Then you may need to mic them, not for sheer volume, but for presence and intelligibility.
Often as not the first, last, and only thing you'll do is stick the piano into foldback monitors so the cast can hear the music while they are singing. You want this in place as soon as possible -- they'll be wanting it for rehearsals as well. Since we're not recording a concert grand playing Rachmaninoff here, an SM57 stuck in the lid of an upright, or (my new favorite) an SM/PG81 aimed at the soundboard from about six inches away is fine. Often the keyboard will be electronic. Here you will want a DI (Direct Box) for clean signal to the sound board. In many of the cheaper keyboards, though, there isn't even an audio out. And if you plug in to the headphone jack, it will cut off the onboard speakers and you'll have to drag out a monitor so the keyboard player can hear themselves again. It is a simple and stupid trick, but aim a small condenser mic at one of the speakers from a few inches away, looking straight into the speaker. It's good enough to send to foldback monitors.
Also in re that, try not to aim the monitors at the audience. The best monitor is front fill. I have a pair of FBT speakers (Jolly 5RA) that have a really tiny footprint and a really wide pattern. I also use (in bigger houses) a pair of Yamaha MSR-100's. I stick these on the front edge of the apron, or bolt them to the front edge of the stage even, so they are as much out of sight as possible and don't get in the way of dancing but cover the width of the stage.
Depending on the shape of the stage, you may need to bolster these with a second or even third set of speakers from the wings. I've used speakers aiming sideways from the wings, speakers sitting behind the proscenium arch pointing upstage and in at a 45 degree angle, and hanging overhead from the flies.
Walk the speakers. Get a keyboard player, or record some MIDI, or plug a laptop into the piano DI and play a CD and check your coverage. You want a nice smooth flat coverage across the prime playing areas, and as little as possible leakage into the audience. Also keep in mind that during the show there will be a whole chorus standing between the speakers and the rearmost singers -- this is where having additional coverage from sides and above can really help.
But on to the rest of the band. Again, you aren't recording. Most theaters are small enough that there will be a lot of direct sound already. In fact, in most cases the drums will be too loud already, and the bass "loud" enough to be heard from the back of the house as well. Plus, once you've turned up the monitors until the cast is happy, piano will also be quite loud. And if you've got a standard Broadway score and ten or more pieces in the pit, you'll already have enough brass to blast the socks off anyone in the front half of the audience.
Your aim is to achieve three things; to balance the orchestra with itself (aka make the soft instruments loud enough to seat correctly in the mix), to achieve flat coverage into the depth of the seating (aka to make sure the people in the back of the house hear the orchestra nearly as well as those in the front row), and to make the orchestra sound "good."
The latter is where the difference between loudness and presence comes in. I mic drums, for instance. And I put a DI on bases. Sure, you can hear the bass from the audience. But what you hear is undefined flabby mush. Left alone, the bass would sound like a truck passing outside; nothing but low frequency rumble. So you add to the existing low-frequency content with mid and high-frequency that defines and shapes the sound until it actually sounds like a string bass from out in the audience. That same remark is true of the drums.
There's a couple of different ways you can go about planning this. Me, I attend orchestra rehearsal/sitzprobe and take notes, and I try to have a chat with the conductor/music director to get an idea of where they are going. I find out where the band will be located. Usually I can get a pretty good guess of how much reinforcement will be needed, and at that point I can rough out a pit plot based on how many circuits I have available and what mics are in the building.
At one house I work at we usually have an orchestra of over twenty pieces, and they are often tucked away where they can't be heard as clearly. Unfortunately that same house has almost no microphone circuits. So there I've learned to mic by section. For "Into the Woods" I had a grand total of four microphones; a strings section (large diaphragm condenser positioned above the section), winds section (which also picked up a fair amount of brass), percussion overhead (mostly to boost vibes and marimba), and the piano mic.
Remember, your aim is to lift the soft instruments, and to bring presence to instruments that would otherwise sound muddy. You have to listen to the sound of the band in the building without the mics, and work from there. It rarely hurts to make an educated guess beforehand and have some mics already set up, but you really won't know what you need and what will work until you've heard the whole show in context -- and that includes the singers.
And this essay is long enough for the moment. Call this Part 1: in Part II I'll talk about sound effects for musical theater.
When you are designing sound for musical theater, you are really doing three different (but intersecting) designs. You are designing sound effects (which for a straight play, would be the only thing you did), designing vocal reinforcement of the singers/actors (which for some musicals, is the only thing you do), and designing the reinforcement of the orchestra (which is basically the same job as doing sound for a live band).
Taking the last first, I work at a couple of rental facilities where it is not uncommon to have a band come in without their own sound guy. So as the house tech, I figure out how best to mic them up, work up some plausible settings, then mix them from the console during the performance. This you may be doing for stage musicals as well -- but for the musical, your primary requirement is to make it work for the combined performance. (Often as not, that means asking the band to turn down instead of mic'ing them to get them up.)
First step is learning what you've got to work with. Is it a small space and there are few or no wireless microphones for the cast? Then the task is control of the band -- getting them into a pit or behind a wall if anyone lets you do that! Is it a medium-sized house, the actors are on mic, but the band is tucked behind scenery far upstage? Then you may need to mic them, not for sheer volume, but for presence and intelligibility.
Often as not the first, last, and only thing you'll do is stick the piano into foldback monitors so the cast can hear the music while they are singing. You want this in place as soon as possible -- they'll be wanting it for rehearsals as well. Since we're not recording a concert grand playing Rachmaninoff here, an SM57 stuck in the lid of an upright, or (my new favorite) an SM/PG81 aimed at the soundboard from about six inches away is fine. Often the keyboard will be electronic. Here you will want a DI (Direct Box) for clean signal to the sound board. In many of the cheaper keyboards, though, there isn't even an audio out. And if you plug in to the headphone jack, it will cut off the onboard speakers and you'll have to drag out a monitor so the keyboard player can hear themselves again. It is a simple and stupid trick, but aim a small condenser mic at one of the speakers from a few inches away, looking straight into the speaker. It's good enough to send to foldback monitors.
Also in re that, try not to aim the monitors at the audience. The best monitor is front fill. I have a pair of FBT speakers (Jolly 5RA) that have a really tiny footprint and a really wide pattern. I also use (in bigger houses) a pair of Yamaha MSR-100's. I stick these on the front edge of the apron, or bolt them to the front edge of the stage even, so they are as much out of sight as possible and don't get in the way of dancing but cover the width of the stage.
Depending on the shape of the stage, you may need to bolster these with a second or even third set of speakers from the wings. I've used speakers aiming sideways from the wings, speakers sitting behind the proscenium arch pointing upstage and in at a 45 degree angle, and hanging overhead from the flies.
Walk the speakers. Get a keyboard player, or record some MIDI, or plug a laptop into the piano DI and play a CD and check your coverage. You want a nice smooth flat coverage across the prime playing areas, and as little as possible leakage into the audience. Also keep in mind that during the show there will be a whole chorus standing between the speakers and the rearmost singers -- this is where having additional coverage from sides and above can really help.
But on to the rest of the band. Again, you aren't recording. Most theaters are small enough that there will be a lot of direct sound already. In fact, in most cases the drums will be too loud already, and the bass "loud" enough to be heard from the back of the house as well. Plus, once you've turned up the monitors until the cast is happy, piano will also be quite loud. And if you've got a standard Broadway score and ten or more pieces in the pit, you'll already have enough brass to blast the socks off anyone in the front half of the audience.
Your aim is to achieve three things; to balance the orchestra with itself (aka make the soft instruments loud enough to seat correctly in the mix), to achieve flat coverage into the depth of the seating (aka to make sure the people in the back of the house hear the orchestra nearly as well as those in the front row), and to make the orchestra sound "good."
The latter is where the difference between loudness and presence comes in. I mic drums, for instance. And I put a DI on bases. Sure, you can hear the bass from the audience. But what you hear is undefined flabby mush. Left alone, the bass would sound like a truck passing outside; nothing but low frequency rumble. So you add to the existing low-frequency content with mid and high-frequency that defines and shapes the sound until it actually sounds like a string bass from out in the audience. That same remark is true of the drums.
There's a couple of different ways you can go about planning this. Me, I attend orchestra rehearsal/sitzprobe and take notes, and I try to have a chat with the conductor/music director to get an idea of where they are going. I find out where the band will be located. Usually I can get a pretty good guess of how much reinforcement will be needed, and at that point I can rough out a pit plot based on how many circuits I have available and what mics are in the building.
At one house I work at we usually have an orchestra of over twenty pieces, and they are often tucked away where they can't be heard as clearly. Unfortunately that same house has almost no microphone circuits. So there I've learned to mic by section. For "Into the Woods" I had a grand total of four microphones; a strings section (large diaphragm condenser positioned above the section), winds section (which also picked up a fair amount of brass), percussion overhead (mostly to boost vibes and marimba), and the piano mic.
Remember, your aim is to lift the soft instruments, and to bring presence to instruments that would otherwise sound muddy. You have to listen to the sound of the band in the building without the mics, and work from there. It rarely hurts to make an educated guess beforehand and have some mics already set up, but you really won't know what you need and what will work until you've heard the whole show in context -- and that includes the singers.
And this essay is long enough for the moment. Call this Part 1: in Part II I'll talk about sound effects for musical theater.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Mic Station and Medical Dispensery
I've added to the stack of supplies kept in the room where we apply microphones to actors. In addition to transpore surgical tape, we've added toupee tape, Tegaderm, moleskin, latex exam gloves, rubbing alcohol, alcohol swabs, and a pair of suture scissors (for cutting the various tapes). Plus an assortment of Decocolor paint markers in various skin tones, bobby pins, barrettes, and wig clips.
I haven't tried the Tegaderm yet. I've learned how to use toupee tape, though. Nasty stuff to work with. It is double-sided flexible tape. Very flexible, very sticky. It's like trying to work with flypaper made of gauze. You stick the stuff to the actor, stick the microphone element on top of it, and then put some transpore tape on top of that so hair and fingers and random set pieces don't get stuck to the actor as well.
The moleskin, I am cutting narrow strips and putting around the heads of the elements just behind the grill. It absorbs incoming sweat and keeps it from dripping inside the microphone element.
The Decocolor markers are to paint elements up or down and get them closer to the actor's skin tone. The paint does rub off in time, and toupee tape will pull it right off, meaning frequent touch-ups. When choosing element colors or painting elements, work down; lighter colors will read as scars, but darker colors usually read as shadows, or stray hairs. Or so I am told!
Another fact of life for wireless microphones is some actors are mic-killers. It's not their fault. Just for whatever reason, microphones fail when put on their bodies. Many shows will have one. Just treat that actor's mic with extra care and suspicion and don't stint the microphone check.
And while we're on the subject: There seems to be this impression (including among board operators who should know better) that microphone check means bringing every actor on to the stage, asking them to sing as loud as they do in the show, and adjusting their trim.
Sorry, no. To be blunt; that's why you are on the board. Expecting the actor to perform cold, without accompaniment, and sound ANYTHING like they will for the show is no better than setting a number blind and expecting it to be good.
Once your mics are dialed in, microphone check is to confirm they are still working properly and working the way you set them. If they sound obviously different, or you had to change an element or transmitter or the actor needed to change placement, then you start messing with the gain and the EQ until you think the mic is dialed in again. And then you tweak again when you hear it in the context of the performance.
Barring that kind of obvious change, don't mess with them! It's stupid. You'll muck up a perfectly good set of mic settings based on what random thing the actors do during mic check and what your tired ears are telling you on a cold morning.
Many, many actors will attempt to do mic check by wandering out with the mic held on with their hand, because they haven't gotten to taping it down yet. They will of course give you mic check without the wigs, hats, glasses, false noses, or whatever will be coloring their voice during performance. Work with stage management to explain to them why this won't work.
But use your regular pre-show mic-check to listen for problems, listen to the sound of the mic, and get a leg up on a congested or hoarse actor or anything else that may have changed and will affect the performance. Don't use it to re-design the show.
I haven't tried the Tegaderm yet. I've learned how to use toupee tape, though. Nasty stuff to work with. It is double-sided flexible tape. Very flexible, very sticky. It's like trying to work with flypaper made of gauze. You stick the stuff to the actor, stick the microphone element on top of it, and then put some transpore tape on top of that so hair and fingers and random set pieces don't get stuck to the actor as well.
The moleskin, I am cutting narrow strips and putting around the heads of the elements just behind the grill. It absorbs incoming sweat and keeps it from dripping inside the microphone element.
The Decocolor markers are to paint elements up or down and get them closer to the actor's skin tone. The paint does rub off in time, and toupee tape will pull it right off, meaning frequent touch-ups. When choosing element colors or painting elements, work down; lighter colors will read as scars, but darker colors usually read as shadows, or stray hairs. Or so I am told!
Another fact of life for wireless microphones is some actors are mic-killers. It's not their fault. Just for whatever reason, microphones fail when put on their bodies. Many shows will have one. Just treat that actor's mic with extra care and suspicion and don't stint the microphone check.
And while we're on the subject: There seems to be this impression (including among board operators who should know better) that microphone check means bringing every actor on to the stage, asking them to sing as loud as they do in the show, and adjusting their trim.
Sorry, no. To be blunt; that's why you are on the board. Expecting the actor to perform cold, without accompaniment, and sound ANYTHING like they will for the show is no better than setting a number blind and expecting it to be good.
Once your mics are dialed in, microphone check is to confirm they are still working properly and working the way you set them. If they sound obviously different, or you had to change an element or transmitter or the actor needed to change placement, then you start messing with the gain and the EQ until you think the mic is dialed in again. And then you tweak again when you hear it in the context of the performance.
Barring that kind of obvious change, don't mess with them! It's stupid. You'll muck up a perfectly good set of mic settings based on what random thing the actors do during mic check and what your tired ears are telling you on a cold morning.
Many, many actors will attempt to do mic check by wandering out with the mic held on with their hand, because they haven't gotten to taping it down yet. They will of course give you mic check without the wigs, hats, glasses, false noses, or whatever will be coloring their voice during performance. Work with stage management to explain to them why this won't work.
But use your regular pre-show mic-check to listen for problems, listen to the sound of the mic, and get a leg up on a congested or hoarse actor or anything else that may have changed and will affect the performance. Don't use it to re-design the show.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Lessons Learned
My show opened. There were a few issues with the sound and I made a few stupid mistakes, but at least I didn't turn the knob:
In some facilities there is a regular post-mortem discussion about what happened, what went wrong, what went right, what can or should be done differently on the next show. The main trouble with these is they tend to come after everyone has put the horrors of Tech Week out of their memory, and are already working on the next production.
So mostly I have a few things I'll take home myself, and try to remember the next time I do a similar production.
Wireless: Nothing really new there. Elements die. I had six failures, of which only one happened in sound check before the show and could be corrected then. The others failed on stage, in front of the audience. I've learned a long time back that this happens, though, and having a smart and fast person backstage, and a clearly marked box of spares, is mandatory.
The worst loss we suffered is losing a mic just before a big solo. The others, I was able to compensate or kill until the replacement was put on the actor, and the worst hurt to the show was the burst of noise when the mic first died.
Also underlined was importance to check RF with the full show in operation. I tested a spare mic and had good signal, but when we put it on stage as a replacement during the show hetrodyne interference made it unusable. That poor actor spent a substantial part of his time between scenes in the dressing room with a technician taping new pieces of electronics to his skin.
My solution to the Countryman E6 "behind the ear" connector seems to be working out. I strip the heat shrink off, spray de-oxit on the connector, put a drop of solder on it to stop it from turning, and stick a single contiguous length of heat shrink over the join.
I've also now tried out toupee tape. It works quite well, although it is a pain to apply (you apply the tape to the actor, put the microphone on top, then put micropore tape over that.) Next up in my experimental substances is Tegaderm -- if I can find a cheaper alternative than a fifty-dollar box of it.
The Band: We had some ongoing keyboard issues...something was hitting something too hard and causing a slight crackle. So far we've been unable to track down where that clipping is happening (if it really is happening). Taking the gain down on the monitor sends helped the musicians a lot, though.
Switched out the basic DI on the bass for an ART one-channel "tube" jobby, and the change in sonic quality was immediately obvious.
My drum overheads didn't make me happy. They had a nice picture of the kit by themselves, but too much snare got in them and smeared the snare. If I had the ability to throw a few milliseconds delay on them maybe I could correct...but instead I re-purposed them, putting one over high-hat and crash, the other over ride and percussion toys. There's a moment in the show where I would love to have a pair of tom mics with a hard pan, but even with the other changes we made in the pit there's just not enough channels left on the board or even in the snake.
Snare is now a beta 57 aimed at the side of the snare. It still isn't tight -- even with a little compander action and some heavy EQ -- but it is better.
SFX: Playback hasn't had any problems other than the Stage Manager getting a couple wrong cue numbers in her book. My main issue has been the lack of an overall volume knob. Especially for ambiance effects, it helps so much to be able to adjust for the band volume, the actor's energy, the noise level in the house, etc. All of that changes too much to be really able to set a single level for a sound cue that will always work.
Although I started the show with sounds thrown mostly into speakers on the set, over the opening weekend I moved most of the ambiance underscore sounds to the house speakers instead -- especially when volume levels are getting extreme (and this is a VERY loud show, musically) -- it is better to move the effects out of where the actors are trying to hear, and push them out of speakers aimed directly at the audience instead.
I did manage to free up a single channel so several pre-recorded vocals (in one case, an actress who is unable to wear her wireless for one scene due to stage action) could be brought up on a fader grouped with the rest of the vocal faders and sent to the same vocal bus.
But what I really want is a single fader right by my master vocal fader and master orchestra fader that allows me to adjust sound playback levels for all cues on the fly. I've had that for other shows. I got talked out of it for this show. I was wrong -- I need it.
Added a quick back-stage monitor by sticking a Beta Green in the flies, running it to a Audio Buddy two-channel pre, and then running that out to a pair of daisy-chained JBL Eons. Dressing room monitor achieved, without costing any more board channels.
The main thing I noticed monitor-wise is that I really, really need a line of communication to the band. I need a system that doesn't hog cable and channels, that can be used in privacy without cast listening in, and that allows two-way communication and paging.
I'm looking around but I don't see anything obvious right now. Most people seem to be using walkie-talkies, cell phones, or setting up a second intercom. I'm thinking I may be able to find or build or re-purpose an intercom with integrated paging lights. And if I am really, really clever, set it up so I can patch it into my own phones and/or the band's monitor system (which is partially headphones also) -- if nothing else that will save fumbling around with multiple headsets.
In the best of all possible worlds this would be my personal kit, small enough to stick in my gig bag, and I'd set it up wherever I was to get through sound check and take it down after the show is up and running.
In some facilities there is a regular post-mortem discussion about what happened, what went wrong, what went right, what can or should be done differently on the next show. The main trouble with these is they tend to come after everyone has put the horrors of Tech Week out of their memory, and are already working on the next production.
So mostly I have a few things I'll take home myself, and try to remember the next time I do a similar production.
Wireless: Nothing really new there. Elements die. I had six failures, of which only one happened in sound check before the show and could be corrected then. The others failed on stage, in front of the audience. I've learned a long time back that this happens, though, and having a smart and fast person backstage, and a clearly marked box of spares, is mandatory.
The worst loss we suffered is losing a mic just before a big solo. The others, I was able to compensate or kill until the replacement was put on the actor, and the worst hurt to the show was the burst of noise when the mic first died.
Also underlined was importance to check RF with the full show in operation. I tested a spare mic and had good signal, but when we put it on stage as a replacement during the show hetrodyne interference made it unusable. That poor actor spent a substantial part of his time between scenes in the dressing room with a technician taping new pieces of electronics to his skin.
My solution to the Countryman E6 "behind the ear" connector seems to be working out. I strip the heat shrink off, spray de-oxit on the connector, put a drop of solder on it to stop it from turning, and stick a single contiguous length of heat shrink over the join.
I've also now tried out toupee tape. It works quite well, although it is a pain to apply (you apply the tape to the actor, put the microphone on top, then put micropore tape over that.) Next up in my experimental substances is Tegaderm -- if I can find a cheaper alternative than a fifty-dollar box of it.
The Band: We had some ongoing keyboard issues...something was hitting something too hard and causing a slight crackle. So far we've been unable to track down where that clipping is happening (if it really is happening). Taking the gain down on the monitor sends helped the musicians a lot, though.
Switched out the basic DI on the bass for an ART one-channel "tube" jobby, and the change in sonic quality was immediately obvious.
My drum overheads didn't make me happy. They had a nice picture of the kit by themselves, but too much snare got in them and smeared the snare. If I had the ability to throw a few milliseconds delay on them maybe I could correct...but instead I re-purposed them, putting one over high-hat and crash, the other over ride and percussion toys. There's a moment in the show where I would love to have a pair of tom mics with a hard pan, but even with the other changes we made in the pit there's just not enough channels left on the board or even in the snake.
Snare is now a beta 57 aimed at the side of the snare. It still isn't tight -- even with a little compander action and some heavy EQ -- but it is better.
SFX: Playback hasn't had any problems other than the Stage Manager getting a couple wrong cue numbers in her book. My main issue has been the lack of an overall volume knob. Especially for ambiance effects, it helps so much to be able to adjust for the band volume, the actor's energy, the noise level in the house, etc. All of that changes too much to be really able to set a single level for a sound cue that will always work.
Although I started the show with sounds thrown mostly into speakers on the set, over the opening weekend I moved most of the ambiance underscore sounds to the house speakers instead -- especially when volume levels are getting extreme (and this is a VERY loud show, musically) -- it is better to move the effects out of where the actors are trying to hear, and push them out of speakers aimed directly at the audience instead.
I did manage to free up a single channel so several pre-recorded vocals (in one case, an actress who is unable to wear her wireless for one scene due to stage action) could be brought up on a fader grouped with the rest of the vocal faders and sent to the same vocal bus.
But what I really want is a single fader right by my master vocal fader and master orchestra fader that allows me to adjust sound playback levels for all cues on the fly. I've had that for other shows. I got talked out of it for this show. I was wrong -- I need it.
Added a quick back-stage monitor by sticking a Beta Green in the flies, running it to a Audio Buddy two-channel pre, and then running that out to a pair of daisy-chained JBL Eons. Dressing room monitor achieved, without costing any more board channels.
The main thing I noticed monitor-wise is that I really, really need a line of communication to the band. I need a system that doesn't hog cable and channels, that can be used in privacy without cast listening in, and that allows two-way communication and paging.
I'm looking around but I don't see anything obvious right now. Most people seem to be using walkie-talkies, cell phones, or setting up a second intercom. I'm thinking I may be able to find or build or re-purpose an intercom with integrated paging lights. And if I am really, really clever, set it up so I can patch it into my own phones and/or the band's monitor system (which is partially headphones also) -- if nothing else that will save fumbling around with multiple headsets.
In the best of all possible worlds this would be my personal kit, small enough to stick in my gig bag, and I'd set it up wherever I was to get through sound check and take it down after the show is up and running.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Too Many Wires
Sometimes it is nice to step back. Instead of each time pushing the boundaries a little, and doing a show that is even more ambitious than the last, you simplify a little and do a show that is entirely within your comfort level. One learns doing these, too; when you aren't to accomplish the near-impossible, you can actually spare a few neurons to look around and deal instead with finessing things a little.
This is not one of those shows.
I've maxed out the LS9-32 I'm using. Of course, I did this once before and used a sub-mixer on drums. But this time I'm achieving it by running almost all of my sound effects on a completely secondary system of speakers. The only connection between the two is a single pair on S-PDIF that comes out of my Firewire and into the two track digital input on the board.
Over at another house, I have a Dante card allowing the sound effects computer to send 16 channels in digital to the sound board -- without tying up head amps and the physical input jacks. At several other theaters, an ADAT card is used instead, with venerable old firewire interfaces being used as translators.
On at least one previous show, I just dealt with having sound effects limited to a simple two-channel playback. I'm still toying with the idea of using associated scenes in the sound board to reset the input routing on the fly, but although this would allow me to place individual sound effect cues in specific speakers/buses, it would not allow simultaneous multi-track playback.
For instance, in this show I have one moment where I am playing an ambience as a multi-channel surround, and on top of that I add a cell phone ring placed into one specific speaker near the actor.
Anyhow, Ood Laptop is happy playing back the cues from Qlab. My battered Korg Nano-key is used as a controller, with the keys labeled tape player style (play, stop, forward, rewind). A firewire cable feeds an FP10 interface, giving Qlab a potential 10 output channels to play with. At the moment all of my sounds are 2-channel or even 1-channel effects, but I mean to add a couple of layers using Qlab's Sound Group function to play extra effects into the surround speakers.
The FP10 sends two channels up to the mixer on S-PDIF. Two channels are routed directly to a pair of JBL Eons I've set up in the back of the house as surround speakers. The remaining active pair goes to what had been the theater's hard-wired side fill monitors.
For those, I had to splice into one cable (the monitors are on Speakon connectors and we don't have any of that in cable form. Actually, we are pretty shy of any audio cable in the theater). I shifted the position of the monitors to make them effects playback speakers. Also, since I was bypassing all the usual processors, I re-purposed the theater's old Quadraverb in order to use the five-band EQ function. This added a tremendous ground loop until I ran through a couple of inline balancing transformers. Also, one of the speakers is out of phase; rather than trace wires I added an XLR in-line phase reverser too.
The brunt of the show is the wireless microphones. 18 channels, a couple channels spare which are left unpatched (I'll have to physically patch them in to use them), plus one wireless taped to a moving set-piece and used to pick up an ensemble there. The latter is an old Shure, and to get it through the unfriendly RF environment I stuck the receiver under the apron and ran it though the snake.
Because it is a digital board we are able to put parametric EQ and compression on each individual microphone, plus some light reverb to seat them in the space. Between board and the Galileo speaker processor and the Meyer speakers is various levels of corrective EQ, contouring, phase correction, and time correction; the microphones are routed to a combined mono patch of center cluster, house mains, and house delays (a set of speakers 2/3 of the way back from the front of the stage).
To dial this all in we set up three laptops running Studio Manager, SMART, and a link into the Galileo. Plus of course reference microphones at various places around the house. I did not do this dialing myself -- I just looked over the shoulder of a more experienced person who did it.
Yamaha DSP isn't wonderful at this price range, but it is okay for what we are doing. Except for one mic, that needs some processing I can't achieve on the board. That is tying up additional channels and outputs, and adding more wires plus possibly a stomp switch to turn on and off the outboard effect.
I've been tempted several times to just stream the channels into my laptop, process them there with VST plug-ins, and take those back out. But real-time sound going through a laptop is a little scary. People do it. I've also seen people with laptops that crashed in the middle of a show. At least in the case of the sound effects playback I can add a second laptop that could be switched into the circuit in a handful of seconds.
There's also an ensemble mic tucked backstage. Our teen cast is vocally doubling the little kids who appear in a couple of scenes. The illusion is not bad; the off stage ensemble strengthens the sound (and the pitch centers!) and yet is still vaguely believable as issuing from the visible actors. This is my tried and true off-stage ensemble technique; a large-diaphragm condenser set high, well above head level, on a sturdy tripod, and an ensemble instructed carefully to look at the conductor and sing to the audience (instead of trying to crowd around the microphone and sing to it).
And the God Mic, a wireless handheld, which due to less robust circuitry tends to cut out when you get it too close to other active transmitters. Right now it is being used by the director and thus the receiver is stuck on a seat in the middle of the house on a long cable. When we clear the house and shift everyone into the booth I'll drag the receiver back up to the FOH position and find a space for it there amongst all the other equipment.
Finally we come to the "pit," which is on stage. I could easily run more on the pit. Oddly, for all the time I've spent with live music acts, I have yet to really mic up a standard drum kit. I have probably hung a great many mics on tabla than I have on kick and snare. The full rock setup is mics on every tom, mics top and bottom of the hat and snare, two mics on the kick. Well, this isn't quite that. Two overhead condensers (the good trick with them is to get them equidistant from the snare), a mic just inside the port (only the third time I've actually had my hands on a mic designed for kick -- this one's a D6) and one on snare. There isn't room for a 57 in there so I'm making do with a small condenser. At them moment processing is near nil. I'm messing around with a gate on the snare is all. IF we ever get an actual sound check with the band we'll be able to dial it in some.
Keyboard on dual DI, electric base with DI only (he didn't want to bring his cab to this gig), 'cello on condenser mic (unless he remembers his personal DI for the built-in pick-up), and a multi-guitarist with a full laptop-oriented rig and a Behringer board (and a separate condenser he supplied for acoustic guitar).
We're doing a poor-man's hybrid version of IEMs on this show; four tailored mixes are sent backwards through the snake to the band, which terminate in a pair of mixing boards (the Behringer and my old Mackie 1202). From these, monitor mixes are created for a pair of headphones and one (or possibly more) powered speakers. At least this show the conductor is on headphones, and he can tailor the amount of vocal feed he gets by just reaching below his keyboard to the mixer there. This seriously cleans up the usual monitor hash. However, the piano in the drummer's monitor is still howlingly loud; there is almost no drop in keyboard level as heard in the back of the house when I mute the rest of the system!
I think my preferences would be to snake out each wanted instrument to band in a situation like this; using pre-made mixes is asking for trouble, as there is no hardwired communication between FOH and band on this show -- and no sound check to really dial in and lock down the monitor settings.
As a last wrinkle there's yet another monitor mix sent out to a remote dressing room. Before we had the cast on wireless this was driven by a microphone in the house. For this application I've made very successful use of something as simple as a beta 57 in the grid. In this case, I had a CAD multi-pattern condenser set to omni, on a stand in the second row of the house. I may end up rigging something for the actual performance, but down the road we are going to add more of a semi-permanent solution -- and one that doesn't task the increasingly limited channels on the FOH sound board.
Because of the fluid nature of rehearsal, the band already added a PCC at the foot of the apron so they wouldn't be in complete dark when the actors weren't using their body mics. The problem with general pick-up is, as always, that you get lots of foot scuffling and scenery moving and off-stage chatter and air conditioning noise, and it isn't necessarily that easy to hear the action on stage properly. At least for this sort of use, there is essentially no feedback issue (which there would be if you were trying to use area mics for re-inforcement).
During rehearsal I also hijacked the kick mic's input for a conductor talk-back mic, and something else for a talk-back for myself from FOH. Plus I ran MIDI back through the snake so the conductor could "try out" two different keyboards from out in house and hear what they sounded like from there. I need a better solution for communications with band. The problem is, they want to talk to me without the whole building hearing them, and I can't be wearing a headset just waiting for that moment. For this show, it might be simplest just to drag a Clear-Com headset out to them.
I have five different snakes running, and a whole spool of individual cable. My circuit plan is almost unreadable. Because of various compromises of available channels, available circuits, and which direction an individual snake may be running, most of the numbers do not line up. The band monitors, for instance; they come from mix buses 9-12, are sent from omni outs 5-9, are picked up on the main stage snake channels 13-16, and miracle of miracles, are actually channels 13-16 on the band snake as well. The off-stage mic, on the other hand, changes identity numerous times. And I haven't set up the custom fader layer yet! (Plus I am very tempted to throw the entire band into layer 2, and then flip a few elements back to the custom fader layer from that...which means fader 31 will be channel 40 will be input 28 will be snake 14....)
The routing inside the board is a similar monstrosity, to the point where I can't even remember how I set up the dressing room monitor. And this is where the real downside of complex, pushing-the-envelope setups is; if anything throws a wheel during performance, it is going to take just that much longer to get to the appropriate element and switch it off, fix it, or swap it. Already there is a 19th wireless receiver tottering on top of the racks, dealing with a transmitter that crashed during rehearsal (with no spare in the same frequency band, of course!)
This is not one of those shows.
I've maxed out the LS9-32 I'm using. Of course, I did this once before and used a sub-mixer on drums. But this time I'm achieving it by running almost all of my sound effects on a completely secondary system of speakers. The only connection between the two is a single pair on S-PDIF that comes out of my Firewire and into the two track digital input on the board.
Over at another house, I have a Dante card allowing the sound effects computer to send 16 channels in digital to the sound board -- without tying up head amps and the physical input jacks. At several other theaters, an ADAT card is used instead, with venerable old firewire interfaces being used as translators.
On at least one previous show, I just dealt with having sound effects limited to a simple two-channel playback. I'm still toying with the idea of using associated scenes in the sound board to reset the input routing on the fly, but although this would allow me to place individual sound effect cues in specific speakers/buses, it would not allow simultaneous multi-track playback.
For instance, in this show I have one moment where I am playing an ambience as a multi-channel surround, and on top of that I add a cell phone ring placed into one specific speaker near the actor.
Anyhow, Ood Laptop is happy playing back the cues from Qlab. My battered Korg Nano-key is used as a controller, with the keys labeled tape player style (play, stop, forward, rewind). A firewire cable feeds an FP10 interface, giving Qlab a potential 10 output channels to play with. At the moment all of my sounds are 2-channel or even 1-channel effects, but I mean to add a couple of layers using Qlab's Sound Group function to play extra effects into the surround speakers.
The FP10 sends two channels up to the mixer on S-PDIF. Two channels are routed directly to a pair of JBL Eons I've set up in the back of the house as surround speakers. The remaining active pair goes to what had been the theater's hard-wired side fill monitors.
For those, I had to splice into one cable (the monitors are on Speakon connectors and we don't have any of that in cable form. Actually, we are pretty shy of any audio cable in the theater). I shifted the position of the monitors to make them effects playback speakers. Also, since I was bypassing all the usual processors, I re-purposed the theater's old Quadraverb in order to use the five-band EQ function. This added a tremendous ground loop until I ran through a couple of inline balancing transformers. Also, one of the speakers is out of phase; rather than trace wires I added an XLR in-line phase reverser too.
The brunt of the show is the wireless microphones. 18 channels, a couple channels spare which are left unpatched (I'll have to physically patch them in to use them), plus one wireless taped to a moving set-piece and used to pick up an ensemble there. The latter is an old Shure, and to get it through the unfriendly RF environment I stuck the receiver under the apron and ran it though the snake.
Because it is a digital board we are able to put parametric EQ and compression on each individual microphone, plus some light reverb to seat them in the space. Between board and the Galileo speaker processor and the Meyer speakers is various levels of corrective EQ, contouring, phase correction, and time correction; the microphones are routed to a combined mono patch of center cluster, house mains, and house delays (a set of speakers 2/3 of the way back from the front of the stage).
To dial this all in we set up three laptops running Studio Manager, SMART, and a link into the Galileo. Plus of course reference microphones at various places around the house. I did not do this dialing myself -- I just looked over the shoulder of a more experienced person who did it.
Yamaha DSP isn't wonderful at this price range, but it is okay for what we are doing. Except for one mic, that needs some processing I can't achieve on the board. That is tying up additional channels and outputs, and adding more wires plus possibly a stomp switch to turn on and off the outboard effect.
I've been tempted several times to just stream the channels into my laptop, process them there with VST plug-ins, and take those back out. But real-time sound going through a laptop is a little scary. People do it. I've also seen people with laptops that crashed in the middle of a show. At least in the case of the sound effects playback I can add a second laptop that could be switched into the circuit in a handful of seconds.
There's also an ensemble mic tucked backstage. Our teen cast is vocally doubling the little kids who appear in a couple of scenes. The illusion is not bad; the off stage ensemble strengthens the sound (and the pitch centers!) and yet is still vaguely believable as issuing from the visible actors. This is my tried and true off-stage ensemble technique; a large-diaphragm condenser set high, well above head level, on a sturdy tripod, and an ensemble instructed carefully to look at the conductor and sing to the audience (instead of trying to crowd around the microphone and sing to it).
And the God Mic, a wireless handheld, which due to less robust circuitry tends to cut out when you get it too close to other active transmitters. Right now it is being used by the director and thus the receiver is stuck on a seat in the middle of the house on a long cable. When we clear the house and shift everyone into the booth I'll drag the receiver back up to the FOH position and find a space for it there amongst all the other equipment.
Finally we come to the "pit," which is on stage. I could easily run more on the pit. Oddly, for all the time I've spent with live music acts, I have yet to really mic up a standard drum kit. I have probably hung a great many mics on tabla than I have on kick and snare. The full rock setup is mics on every tom, mics top and bottom of the hat and snare, two mics on the kick. Well, this isn't quite that. Two overhead condensers (the good trick with them is to get them equidistant from the snare), a mic just inside the port (only the third time I've actually had my hands on a mic designed for kick -- this one's a D6) and one on snare. There isn't room for a 57 in there so I'm making do with a small condenser. At them moment processing is near nil. I'm messing around with a gate on the snare is all. IF we ever get an actual sound check with the band we'll be able to dial it in some.
Keyboard on dual DI, electric base with DI only (he didn't want to bring his cab to this gig), 'cello on condenser mic (unless he remembers his personal DI for the built-in pick-up), and a multi-guitarist with a full laptop-oriented rig and a Behringer board (and a separate condenser he supplied for acoustic guitar).
We're doing a poor-man's hybrid version of IEMs on this show; four tailored mixes are sent backwards through the snake to the band, which terminate in a pair of mixing boards (the Behringer and my old Mackie 1202). From these, monitor mixes are created for a pair of headphones and one (or possibly more) powered speakers. At least this show the conductor is on headphones, and he can tailor the amount of vocal feed he gets by just reaching below his keyboard to the mixer there. This seriously cleans up the usual monitor hash. However, the piano in the drummer's monitor is still howlingly loud; there is almost no drop in keyboard level as heard in the back of the house when I mute the rest of the system!
I think my preferences would be to snake out each wanted instrument to band in a situation like this; using pre-made mixes is asking for trouble, as there is no hardwired communication between FOH and band on this show -- and no sound check to really dial in and lock down the monitor settings.
As a last wrinkle there's yet another monitor mix sent out to a remote dressing room. Before we had the cast on wireless this was driven by a microphone in the house. For this application I've made very successful use of something as simple as a beta 57 in the grid. In this case, I had a CAD multi-pattern condenser set to omni, on a stand in the second row of the house. I may end up rigging something for the actual performance, but down the road we are going to add more of a semi-permanent solution -- and one that doesn't task the increasingly limited channels on the FOH sound board.
Because of the fluid nature of rehearsal, the band already added a PCC at the foot of the apron so they wouldn't be in complete dark when the actors weren't using their body mics. The problem with general pick-up is, as always, that you get lots of foot scuffling and scenery moving and off-stage chatter and air conditioning noise, and it isn't necessarily that easy to hear the action on stage properly. At least for this sort of use, there is essentially no feedback issue (which there would be if you were trying to use area mics for re-inforcement).
During rehearsal I also hijacked the kick mic's input for a conductor talk-back mic, and something else for a talk-back for myself from FOH. Plus I ran MIDI back through the snake so the conductor could "try out" two different keyboards from out in house and hear what they sounded like from there. I need a better solution for communications with band. The problem is, they want to talk to me without the whole building hearing them, and I can't be wearing a headset just waiting for that moment. For this show, it might be simplest just to drag a Clear-Com headset out to them.
I have five different snakes running, and a whole spool of individual cable. My circuit plan is almost unreadable. Because of various compromises of available channels, available circuits, and which direction an individual snake may be running, most of the numbers do not line up. The band monitors, for instance; they come from mix buses 9-12, are sent from omni outs 5-9, are picked up on the main stage snake channels 13-16, and miracle of miracles, are actually channels 13-16 on the band snake as well. The off-stage mic, on the other hand, changes identity numerous times. And I haven't set up the custom fader layer yet! (Plus I am very tempted to throw the entire band into layer 2, and then flip a few elements back to the custom fader layer from that...which means fader 31 will be channel 40 will be input 28 will be snake 14....)
The routing inside the board is a similar monstrosity, to the point where I can't even remember how I set up the dressing room monitor. And this is where the real downside of complex, pushing-the-envelope setups is; if anything throws a wheel during performance, it is going to take just that much longer to get to the appropriate element and switch it off, fix it, or swap it. Already there is a 19th wireless receiver tottering on top of the racks, dealing with a transmitter that crashed during rehearsal (with no spare in the same frequency band, of course!)
Friday, July 1, 2011
Running on (Soldering) Fumes
I'm a bit under the weather this week. Did get a lot of soldering done, though; repaired...
Two laptop computers
A power supply for same
A pair of headphones
A half-dozen wireless microphone elements
A portable heater
Just got some more parts in the mail and the next half-dozen wireless microphone elements are on the table. If I can find time around making microphone bags, creating sound effects, setting up speakers, programming the sound board...
As I struggle to make the new novel move foreword, I realize the DIY philosophy is important to me, and is going to be a part of it. Heck...the protagonist of my first novel was a machinist, and even though it wasn't that kind of story she managed a couple of nice hacks (including a McGuyverish improvisation at the climax that almost got her killed but ended up saving the day.) And this works in with my desire to show some of the Bay Area, where I live, and some of the circles of people that interest me. Maker's Faire. The Crucible. Boutique stomp-box makers. Luthiers and Early Instrument builders. Experimental music.
Theater is after all my vocation and there has always been an element of improvisation and re-purposing and dumpster diving in it. It is not at all unusual to have to do something that properly belongs in a trade or craft -- bending wrought iron, painting in oils, running plumbing, making hair appliances, etc. -- and not having the funds to get a professional. So we end up being self-taught stitchers, electricians, welders, woodworkers, and so on. And not infrequently a show will bring you in contact with new materials and new skills you have to pick up (usually quickly!)
I am not up to writing an essay on the DIY philosophy right now. I've got a cold, collapsed on the sofa after a meeting and only woke up because I am starving. I have until the saffron rice is ready to write this.
But let me try to share a couple of things you should have to be a Maker.
1) A careful confidence. You start with assuming the thing is possible. That you have the mind to learn the skills, that your fingers are sensitive enough to carry them out. The more different kinds of things you learn to do, the more this confidence that you CAN pick up a new skill will grow.
2) I said "careful" for a reason. You also need humility. You respect that there are people with skills and you commit to learn from them. You also must have a healthy doubt in your own ability. Recognize your limitations, recognize your comfort zone, and more than anything else be aware that many of these things can maim or kill you. It is not saying too much that you must assume there are hidden dangers you haven't even imagined, and you treat the process with respect and look for mentors to try to show you where those dangers are.
3) Look forward to failure. Many people never attempt things because they don't want to fail. Many people will hang on to a broken thing, never daring to try to fix it for fear they'll make it worse. Word; if it don't work, and it's too expensive to take it to the shop, YOU CAN'T MAKE IT WORSE. You can't get less than useless. At the absolute worst case you will still learn something from opening it up (even if the thing you learn is "Hey, those things can't be repaired, can they!" Be aware of failure, be prepared for it, intend to learn from it. Maybe the first throw will be awful. If you studied why it went bad, the next throw is merely bad. And, eventually, you either make a pot you like...or you realize pots aren't for you, but in the process you've added more general knowledge and manual dexterity. Which brings us to:
4) The more you do, the better you get. You will never be perfect. You will never know it all. Start small if you can, work up. With each project you will not only get better, you will become a better judge of how big a project you can attempt.
And this essay is already longer than I intended, but some examples from this week:
The power supply. It had a loose wire. It sometimes worked if you jiggled it. It was long out of warranty, and expensive enough to be worth investing a few hours trying to repair. The fact that it sometimes worked meant that, in all probability, it was all in good working order (except for the one loose connection.) So the first step is, as with all repairs, crack the case and look inside.
I don't think that case was supposed to be opened. But since it was broken already, I couldn't make it worse. I took a razor saw and cut it apart. Inside, the problem was nicely obvious; the plug wiggled, and there was a nasty black mark of the sparks from a loose connection. Clean with some emery paper, re-solder, squeeze the case back together along the cut line, and drip CA glue into the crack. It may not look quite as nice, but it works as well as if it just came from the factory.
Actually, better. While I was inside, I slapped a meter on it and verified it put out 24 VDC in operation. Looked up the right ballast resistor and purchased a bright green LED. Soldered up the LED and confirmed you could see it through the case when lit. And soldered it inside before sealing the case. Now the power supply has a light to tell me if it is plugged in or not.
Headphones. One muff stopped working. Manipulated it, and it worked for a moment then stopped again. Again, obviously a loose wire. Plugged them in, turned up the volume, and carefully felt along the entire exposed wire that went from one side to the other. The bad spot was inside a swivel. Fortunately, I have a bunch of scraps of similar wire around from repairing all those wireless microphones. The only issue was feeding the new wire through all the little plastic parts.
Heater. Stopped giving heat, but the fan still works. Had a three-position switch; fan only, low heat, high heat. Pulled it apart. On visual examination the heater element looks fine. No loose wires, no discoloration. Traced the circuit; the thermostat and safety switch are "upstream" of the fan. That is; there is nothing specific to the heater element that might be broken. Except for the switch. So as an experiment, cut the wires and wired the element in parallel with the fan. It works. So went back, spliced the heater on to the first switch position (I don't need a "fan only" setting anyhow) and boxed it back up.
Laptops. My working laptop went dark suddenly. Tried to restart, wiggled the power cord. Magic smoke came out. This is not a good sign. The thing about the laptop is, I worked my way up to it. I did RAM a long time ago -- that's easy. Getting to the HD is a little tougher; you have to open up the back. Swapping the optical drive was next; that's even more connections you have to remove. Each time, you see, was a small step beyond my current comfort level.
Popped the keyboard and, yes, a nice scorched area on the motherboard and several of the SMD components are toast. This is not going to start again. Assuming the HD and other parts are still good, I went on eBay and found a "stripped" laptop of similar model (no HD, no RAM, etc.)
Swap the parts over, including my good optical drive. Lights up, goes into boot cycle but can't find the drive. Hrm. Stick a boot CD in. It boots. Drive is still invisible. Pull the drive, stick it in an external case. Drive reads good. Just for a lark, see if the laptop will boot from the external drive. It does. Stick it back in. No boot. But now there's an error message, and the system profile has an unknown device on the SATA bus.
Pry the drive out again. And THIS time I notice the other side of the connector, on the new mobo, is loose.
So I tried to re-solder it (and I am NOT set up for soldering SMDs). No joy, but remember...it doesn't work, and I really can't make it worse at this point. So back to eBay, order a new mobo, and stick the drive back in the external case again to boot from that and rescue some files I needed to work on.
New mobo shows up. Now I'm really out of my comfort zone...have to pull and swap a laptop motherboard. But as it turns out, it is just like a drive....just even more screws, even more connectors, even more little things that get caught and have to be carefully wiggled free. The boot CD is still in the drive and when I power up, it boots from that. But still no HD!
At this point I'm firmly in repair mode, though; I booted with the back off, half the component still uninstalled, and bits of sticky tape holding it together in lieu of putting all those fumbly little torx screws back in. So...the one thing I haven't swapped recently is the bit of cable that leads from the HD to the mobo. I swap this. It boots! Finish the smoke test, box it back up.
And since I've got a pretty good idea what's going on now, I stick the mobo from the second computer (the one with a busted SATA connector) into the original laptop (the one with the charcoal-colored motherboard from which all the magic smoke has leaked). Stick a spare HD I have lying around into the external case...and after some struggled, convince the boot CD to install a clean system on to it. I promptly christen the reborn laptop "Ood Laptop," as it is now carrying its brains outside its head, on the end of a gray USB cable.
And it is now time to eat.
Two laptop computers
A power supply for same
A pair of headphones
A half-dozen wireless microphone elements
A portable heater
Just got some more parts in the mail and the next half-dozen wireless microphone elements are on the table. If I can find time around making microphone bags, creating sound effects, setting up speakers, programming the sound board...
As I struggle to make the new novel move foreword, I realize the DIY philosophy is important to me, and is going to be a part of it. Heck...the protagonist of my first novel was a machinist, and even though it wasn't that kind of story she managed a couple of nice hacks (including a McGuyverish improvisation at the climax that almost got her killed but ended up saving the day.) And this works in with my desire to show some of the Bay Area, where I live, and some of the circles of people that interest me. Maker's Faire. The Crucible. Boutique stomp-box makers. Luthiers and Early Instrument builders. Experimental music.
Theater is after all my vocation and there has always been an element of improvisation and re-purposing and dumpster diving in it. It is not at all unusual to have to do something that properly belongs in a trade or craft -- bending wrought iron, painting in oils, running plumbing, making hair appliances, etc. -- and not having the funds to get a professional. So we end up being self-taught stitchers, electricians, welders, woodworkers, and so on. And not infrequently a show will bring you in contact with new materials and new skills you have to pick up (usually quickly!)
I am not up to writing an essay on the DIY philosophy right now. I've got a cold, collapsed on the sofa after a meeting and only woke up because I am starving. I have until the saffron rice is ready to write this.
But let me try to share a couple of things you should have to be a Maker.
1) A careful confidence. You start with assuming the thing is possible. That you have the mind to learn the skills, that your fingers are sensitive enough to carry them out. The more different kinds of things you learn to do, the more this confidence that you CAN pick up a new skill will grow.
2) I said "careful" for a reason. You also need humility. You respect that there are people with skills and you commit to learn from them. You also must have a healthy doubt in your own ability. Recognize your limitations, recognize your comfort zone, and more than anything else be aware that many of these things can maim or kill you. It is not saying too much that you must assume there are hidden dangers you haven't even imagined, and you treat the process with respect and look for mentors to try to show you where those dangers are.
3) Look forward to failure. Many people never attempt things because they don't want to fail. Many people will hang on to a broken thing, never daring to try to fix it for fear they'll make it worse. Word; if it don't work, and it's too expensive to take it to the shop, YOU CAN'T MAKE IT WORSE. You can't get less than useless. At the absolute worst case you will still learn something from opening it up (even if the thing you learn is "Hey, those things can't be repaired, can they!" Be aware of failure, be prepared for it, intend to learn from it. Maybe the first throw will be awful. If you studied why it went bad, the next throw is merely bad. And, eventually, you either make a pot you like...or you realize pots aren't for you, but in the process you've added more general knowledge and manual dexterity. Which brings us to:
4) The more you do, the better you get. You will never be perfect. You will never know it all. Start small if you can, work up. With each project you will not only get better, you will become a better judge of how big a project you can attempt.
And this essay is already longer than I intended, but some examples from this week:
The power supply. It had a loose wire. It sometimes worked if you jiggled it. It was long out of warranty, and expensive enough to be worth investing a few hours trying to repair. The fact that it sometimes worked meant that, in all probability, it was all in good working order (except for the one loose connection.) So the first step is, as with all repairs, crack the case and look inside.
I don't think that case was supposed to be opened. But since it was broken already, I couldn't make it worse. I took a razor saw and cut it apart. Inside, the problem was nicely obvious; the plug wiggled, and there was a nasty black mark of the sparks from a loose connection. Clean with some emery paper, re-solder, squeeze the case back together along the cut line, and drip CA glue into the crack. It may not look quite as nice, but it works as well as if it just came from the factory.
Actually, better. While I was inside, I slapped a meter on it and verified it put out 24 VDC in operation. Looked up the right ballast resistor and purchased a bright green LED. Soldered up the LED and confirmed you could see it through the case when lit. And soldered it inside before sealing the case. Now the power supply has a light to tell me if it is plugged in or not.
Headphones. One muff stopped working. Manipulated it, and it worked for a moment then stopped again. Again, obviously a loose wire. Plugged them in, turned up the volume, and carefully felt along the entire exposed wire that went from one side to the other. The bad spot was inside a swivel. Fortunately, I have a bunch of scraps of similar wire around from repairing all those wireless microphones. The only issue was feeding the new wire through all the little plastic parts.
Heater. Stopped giving heat, but the fan still works. Had a three-position switch; fan only, low heat, high heat. Pulled it apart. On visual examination the heater element looks fine. No loose wires, no discoloration. Traced the circuit; the thermostat and safety switch are "upstream" of the fan. That is; there is nothing specific to the heater element that might be broken. Except for the switch. So as an experiment, cut the wires and wired the element in parallel with the fan. It works. So went back, spliced the heater on to the first switch position (I don't need a "fan only" setting anyhow) and boxed it back up.
Laptops. My working laptop went dark suddenly. Tried to restart, wiggled the power cord. Magic smoke came out. This is not a good sign. The thing about the laptop is, I worked my way up to it. I did RAM a long time ago -- that's easy. Getting to the HD is a little tougher; you have to open up the back. Swapping the optical drive was next; that's even more connections you have to remove. Each time, you see, was a small step beyond my current comfort level.
Popped the keyboard and, yes, a nice scorched area on the motherboard and several of the SMD components are toast. This is not going to start again. Assuming the HD and other parts are still good, I went on eBay and found a "stripped" laptop of similar model (no HD, no RAM, etc.)
Swap the parts over, including my good optical drive. Lights up, goes into boot cycle but can't find the drive. Hrm. Stick a boot CD in. It boots. Drive is still invisible. Pull the drive, stick it in an external case. Drive reads good. Just for a lark, see if the laptop will boot from the external drive. It does. Stick it back in. No boot. But now there's an error message, and the system profile has an unknown device on the SATA bus.
Pry the drive out again. And THIS time I notice the other side of the connector, on the new mobo, is loose.
So I tried to re-solder it (and I am NOT set up for soldering SMDs). No joy, but remember...it doesn't work, and I really can't make it worse at this point. So back to eBay, order a new mobo, and stick the drive back in the external case again to boot from that and rescue some files I needed to work on.
New mobo shows up. Now I'm really out of my comfort zone...have to pull and swap a laptop motherboard. But as it turns out, it is just like a drive....just even more screws, even more connectors, even more little things that get caught and have to be carefully wiggled free. The boot CD is still in the drive and when I power up, it boots from that. But still no HD!
At this point I'm firmly in repair mode, though; I booted with the back off, half the component still uninstalled, and bits of sticky tape holding it together in lieu of putting all those fumbly little torx screws back in. So...the one thing I haven't swapped recently is the bit of cable that leads from the HD to the mobo. I swap this. It boots! Finish the smoke test, box it back up.
And since I've got a pretty good idea what's going on now, I stick the mobo from the second computer (the one with a busted SATA connector) into the original laptop (the one with the charcoal-colored motherboard from which all the magic smoke has leaked). Stick a spare HD I have lying around into the external case...and after some struggled, convince the boot CD to install a clean system on to it. I promptly christen the reborn laptop "Ood Laptop," as it is now carrying its brains outside its head, on the end of a gray USB cable.
And it is now time to eat.
Monday, June 20, 2011
The "Cert"
In Evan S. Connel's book "The White Lantern" he mentions an old medieval ship-building document called a "Cert." According to Connel, this was a chunk of wood with the basic dimensions of the ship on it, which also functioned as a contract to build.
I have not been able to find verification of this, but it is such a handy concept I've used it since. To wit; the idea of boiling down a complex project to a set of numbers that, if executed according to the ordinary standards and practices of the craft, are sufficient expression of the artistic intent.
As an antithesis, let me quote from Howard Bay (Stage Design, Drama Book Publishers 1974):
Lighting folk accumulate too many pieces of paper. Frustrated engineers unable to find an excuse for flashing a slide rule, they make up for it with complicated documents. This pseudo-organization leads to chaos at dress rehearsal time. With a full complement of actors, singers, dancers, musicians and stagehands in suspended animation, the light designer amidst his squawk box, headphones, and little beaver assistants with containers of coffee, is scrambling between blueprints, board diagrams, focusing charts, clipboard and cue sheets struggling to find one light and match it up with the one switch that turns it on and off.
Paperwork is good. Paperwork is indeed a great thing. But the worst error of confusing map with territory is thinking that lots of paperwork is a substitute for lots of actual work. And the second error is trying to make the map too detailed, too filled with what should be clear in context.
If it is sanely possible, there should be a few, even one, key piece of paper that is small enough to fold into a pocket and take on stage, and simple enough so a single glance is enough to tell you which microphone is which (or which light, or whatever). In the middle of a song is not a good time to be squinting at fine print on an elaborate diagram!
The other thing we are trying to do here is leverage skills (of your A2, of yourself), and contextual knowledge, and to thus escape duplicative effort. What you want is not a sheet that tells a completely inexperienced hand how to screw a mic clip onto a stand, but a sheet that will either remind you of what you planned (or what you already did but already forgot), or tell an experienced hand the basics of what you want done.
Much depends in the latter on the actual experience and rapport your A2 shares with you. Some wireless microphone wranglers, I can just say "ear, hair, hair, ear" and they'll put the mics where I want them. Others, I have to instruct them more; they may have learned bad habits of taping mics too low, for instance, so I need to train them to my preferences before I can say "My usual ear position" to them.
And some depends on the flow of the gig itself. Plenty of times I've been at one end or the other of the signal chain and the only thing we've shared is "I put a mic on the kick and there's one overhead on the hihat side." We basically hope that the other person will have either done about what we would have done, OR will have done something that their experience tells them works. And when we hit sound check, a bit of EQ will probably be enough to make it work for this show.
Because at least when it gets to paperwork, sure you can try to spell things out, but describing exactly how a kick mic is aimed is something you really have to see. So the most detailed I will normally get is "Oktava on the fiddle, looking down at the face 6-8" just above the bridge."
And when I put it on the "cert," on the diagram I will refer to during the performance and also the next time I set up that act, this is what I will put:
Okay: The above is a fake; I drew that one for this blog entry. But that is the basic principle. The numbers are usually channel numbers, and when possible my channel numbers match snake numbers as well (if not, I might notate it on the rough plot as well).
I've identified the microphones that matter most; anything else is probably pulled as needed. But let's look at the IMPLIED data. First off, the mic'd cab means we probably need a short mic stand. The overheads, on the other hand, are going to require tripod boom stands for stability and placement. The DI will require a pair of quarter-inch cables to connect to the keyboard.
And, really, a good audio person would probably guess that we wanted the only dedicated kick mic in the house, so would put the D6 there unless I specified something different. Same logic for the cab mic.
This doesn't show the exact placement, of course, or settings on the DI (ground lifted? Pad in or out?) or whether roll-off or pad is engaged on the mics. But this is the glory of standards, again. A good A2 can guess, and I will probably remember, and even if we get it wrong the default is good enough and probably won't kill the show.
But now for something completely different:
This is what I call a "Rose" diagram, after the compass rose found on a map. This is a diagram that encapsulates the heart of a lighting design. Although there are many nuances of specials, of area plot, of cuts and edge and so forth, this is where to me the heart of the concept lies; in the interaction of colors and angles.
I grew up on the Rosco book so most of these are Rosco colors. Why X as a prefix? Because when I started, the last sheets of Roscolene were leaving inventory, and Roscolux was taking over! Fortunately, this happened long before the Lee and Gam books (and the even less-used Cinecolor book) needed to have unique prefixes.
While I am working out the lighting scheme I'll often have several different roses, one for each basic "look." This is a combined rose. The lavenders from the left are always balancing the key, but daytime scenes are in the Rosco 08 and darker scenes are in the Rosco 61. Same for the twin back lights; the Lee 119 for night, the Rosco 14 for day. The x66 comes slanting across as moonlight in one scene, and the x35 in an extremely low angle for dawn in another.
The angles of the diagram are the angles relative to the acting areas. The length of the lines has a rough correspondence with the height angle (the angle to the floor). Notations are given on a couple of them for potentially unusual instrument choices.
With nothing but this rose, I could re-create 80% of a lighting design I'd completely forgotten about. And a different designer, given this to work from, could still get within 60-70% of my original intent. Because matters such as how much coverage per instrument -- hence how many areas in the area plot -- are as much photometrics as they are design. Hang positions are dictated by available pipes and position of scenery.
Not to say there isn't a great deal of artistic choice in all of these matters, but the fact remains that the essentials are in this diagram. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy at the moment of an even more useful scribble; the Magic Sheet. This is the sheet that, in conjunction with the rose as a key, links the area hit by each light in a system with the channel controlling it.
(As an aside...I used to have strange conversations at one house when a designer hadn't provided detailed paperwork and they realized during dimmer check that a light wasn't working. The point I could never get across is that if the rest of the lights are working, you know what the system should look like. Since you know that, you should have a good idea where the bad light physically is. Or, easier; since you know the channel that isn't coming up, and the dimmer number is in the physical patch, all you have to do is trace the cable from that dimmer to find the light you wanted.)
((Or, to make things even simpler, do a Broadway check and fix the one light that isn't lit!))
When I'm working out details of a design there are some elements the rose is not as suited for. It still is the best place to refer back to solve problems, but sometimes a different diagram makes it easier to visualize the solution in the first place:
In this simulated diagram, the left side shows how I wanted a rim light effect on the actors, with their shadow sides filled somewhat with diffuse lavender light (the x54) and an overall fill of deep blue (the Lee 119). The greenish-blue x66 also shines through a gobo to cast window patterns on the floor.
In the outdoor scenes, no gobos, but the street lamps are given practical bulbs and have boosters that throw pools of amber at their feet.
And some time, I'll have more to say about lighting design. I'm missing it a bit myself; haven't had a show for about a year.
I have not been able to find verification of this, but it is such a handy concept I've used it since. To wit; the idea of boiling down a complex project to a set of numbers that, if executed according to the ordinary standards and practices of the craft, are sufficient expression of the artistic intent.
As an antithesis, let me quote from Howard Bay (Stage Design, Drama Book Publishers 1974):
Lighting folk accumulate too many pieces of paper. Frustrated engineers unable to find an excuse for flashing a slide rule, they make up for it with complicated documents. This pseudo-organization leads to chaos at dress rehearsal time. With a full complement of actors, singers, dancers, musicians and stagehands in suspended animation, the light designer amidst his squawk box, headphones, and little beaver assistants with containers of coffee, is scrambling between blueprints, board diagrams, focusing charts, clipboard and cue sheets struggling to find one light and match it up with the one switch that turns it on and off.
Paperwork is good. Paperwork is indeed a great thing. But the worst error of confusing map with territory is thinking that lots of paperwork is a substitute for lots of actual work. And the second error is trying to make the map too detailed, too filled with what should be clear in context.
If it is sanely possible, there should be a few, even one, key piece of paper that is small enough to fold into a pocket and take on stage, and simple enough so a single glance is enough to tell you which microphone is which (or which light, or whatever). In the middle of a song is not a good time to be squinting at fine print on an elaborate diagram!
The other thing we are trying to do here is leverage skills (of your A2, of yourself), and contextual knowledge, and to thus escape duplicative effort. What you want is not a sheet that tells a completely inexperienced hand how to screw a mic clip onto a stand, but a sheet that will either remind you of what you planned (or what you already did but already forgot), or tell an experienced hand the basics of what you want done.
Much depends in the latter on the actual experience and rapport your A2 shares with you. Some wireless microphone wranglers, I can just say "ear, hair, hair, ear" and they'll put the mics where I want them. Others, I have to instruct them more; they may have learned bad habits of taping mics too low, for instance, so I need to train them to my preferences before I can say "My usual ear position" to them.
And some depends on the flow of the gig itself. Plenty of times I've been at one end or the other of the signal chain and the only thing we've shared is "I put a mic on the kick and there's one overhead on the hihat side." We basically hope that the other person will have either done about what we would have done, OR will have done something that their experience tells them works. And when we hit sound check, a bit of EQ will probably be enough to make it work for this show.
Because at least when it gets to paperwork, sure you can try to spell things out, but describing exactly how a kick mic is aimed is something you really have to see. So the most detailed I will normally get is "Oktava on the fiddle, looking down at the face 6-8" just above the bridge."
And when I put it on the "cert," on the diagram I will refer to during the performance and also the next time I set up that act, this is what I will put:
Okay: The above is a fake; I drew that one for this blog entry. But that is the basic principle. The numbers are usually channel numbers, and when possible my channel numbers match snake numbers as well (if not, I might notate it on the rough plot as well).
I've identified the microphones that matter most; anything else is probably pulled as needed. But let's look at the IMPLIED data. First off, the mic'd cab means we probably need a short mic stand. The overheads, on the other hand, are going to require tripod boom stands for stability and placement. The DI will require a pair of quarter-inch cables to connect to the keyboard.
And, really, a good audio person would probably guess that we wanted the only dedicated kick mic in the house, so would put the D6 there unless I specified something different. Same logic for the cab mic.
This doesn't show the exact placement, of course, or settings on the DI (ground lifted? Pad in or out?) or whether roll-off or pad is engaged on the mics. But this is the glory of standards, again. A good A2 can guess, and I will probably remember, and even if we get it wrong the default is good enough and probably won't kill the show.
But now for something completely different:
This is what I call a "Rose" diagram, after the compass rose found on a map. This is a diagram that encapsulates the heart of a lighting design. Although there are many nuances of specials, of area plot, of cuts and edge and so forth, this is where to me the heart of the concept lies; in the interaction of colors and angles.
I grew up on the Rosco book so most of these are Rosco colors. Why X as a prefix? Because when I started, the last sheets of Roscolene were leaving inventory, and Roscolux was taking over! Fortunately, this happened long before the Lee and Gam books (and the even less-used Cinecolor book) needed to have unique prefixes.
While I am working out the lighting scheme I'll often have several different roses, one for each basic "look." This is a combined rose. The lavenders from the left are always balancing the key, but daytime scenes are in the Rosco 08 and darker scenes are in the Rosco 61. Same for the twin back lights; the Lee 119 for night, the Rosco 14 for day. The x66 comes slanting across as moonlight in one scene, and the x35 in an extremely low angle for dawn in another.
The angles of the diagram are the angles relative to the acting areas. The length of the lines has a rough correspondence with the height angle (the angle to the floor). Notations are given on a couple of them for potentially unusual instrument choices.
With nothing but this rose, I could re-create 80% of a lighting design I'd completely forgotten about. And a different designer, given this to work from, could still get within 60-70% of my original intent. Because matters such as how much coverage per instrument -- hence how many areas in the area plot -- are as much photometrics as they are design. Hang positions are dictated by available pipes and position of scenery.
Not to say there isn't a great deal of artistic choice in all of these matters, but the fact remains that the essentials are in this diagram. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy at the moment of an even more useful scribble; the Magic Sheet. This is the sheet that, in conjunction with the rose as a key, links the area hit by each light in a system with the channel controlling it.
(As an aside...I used to have strange conversations at one house when a designer hadn't provided detailed paperwork and they realized during dimmer check that a light wasn't working. The point I could never get across is that if the rest of the lights are working, you know what the system should look like. Since you know that, you should have a good idea where the bad light physically is. Or, easier; since you know the channel that isn't coming up, and the dimmer number is in the physical patch, all you have to do is trace the cable from that dimmer to find the light you wanted.)
((Or, to make things even simpler, do a Broadway check and fix the one light that isn't lit!))
When I'm working out details of a design there are some elements the rose is not as suited for. It still is the best place to refer back to solve problems, but sometimes a different diagram makes it easier to visualize the solution in the first place:
In this simulated diagram, the left side shows how I wanted a rim light effect on the actors, with their shadow sides filled somewhat with diffuse lavender light (the x54) and an overall fill of deep blue (the Lee 119). The greenish-blue x66 also shines through a gobo to cast window patterns on the floor.
In the outdoor scenes, no gobos, but the street lamps are given practical bulbs and have boosters that throw pools of amber at their feet.
And some time, I'll have more to say about lighting design. I'm missing it a bit myself; haven't had a show for about a year.
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