Study Hall

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Helping The Story Shine Through: Behind The Scenes With A Production Of West Side Story

Working with wireless RF, microphone placement, on-stage sound effects and a full orchestra at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Putting It Together

Originally, I planned to mix the show on a Behringer X32 so the A2s could get some experience with a board they’d be likely to encounter early on in their careers. I built a showfile using James Holt’s excellent X32 Theater Control software, which allows line-by-line VCA-style mixing automation as utilized by Broadway and West End theater productions.

However, as the complexity of the show grew, I migrated to my Midas Pro1 so I could accommodate the show’s total 41 inputs as well as take advantage of more comprehensive automation abilities, digital snake redundancy, dynamic EQ for an actor with an unruly 1 kHz rasp, and POP groups to quickly access needed inputs and outputs. The main console structure had the show’s inputs being mixed into a stereo pit bus and a stereo vocals bus, which were then distributed to the various PA zones via matrices.

Although the pit orchestra was plenty loud enough and well balanced acoustically, I added two violin mics, a cello mic, and a stereo DI from the keyboards to allow me to bring some focus and clarity to the musical lines, as well as accentuate the natural swelling dynamics during certain passages.

Bringing the pit mics up in the mix spreads the perceived image of the orchestra both horizontally (the mains are spaced wider than the pit) and vertically (the mains are flown) so rather than simple level control, the pit mics allowed me to literally grow and shrink the audience’s perception of the orchestra to complement what was happening on stage. I also used a 1.8-second hall reverb on the string mics during key moments to provide a drippy, dreamy, romantic texture.

Problem Solving

Due to the brief tech schedule, my team and I only had two rehearsals of the show before opening night, and we had a problem: this cast had an unusual number of very strong singers, and I noted some serious distortion issues when actors were singing loudly or shouting (something that happens often in this show). An occasional clip never hurt anyone, but this was detracting from the performance in a big way.

After the dress rehearsal, I walked up to speak with director Mark Cryer about the problem. I hate having to do this, because my goal is never to have to bother a director with an audio issue. I aim to have everything taken care of, so the director can deal with other things.

Mark must have seen my frustration, and before I said anything, he said, “Hey, man. I know you’re working on it.” Mark was letting me know that he had confidence in me and was giving me the professional space to solve the problem – not a small gesture the night before opening.

The A2s and I went through the gain structure of the entire system, and after placing a call to Shure to confirm that I was correctly understanding the gain structure of the ULXD system, we arrived at the conclusion that the actors were overloading the mic elements themselves.

Cheating the placements slightly further back on the actors’ faces gave a slight improvement, at the cost of reduced gain before feedback and far more room bleed. In such a reverberant space, with a full orchestra just feet away, and with so many open mics during some moments, this was not a trade-off I was willing to make for some characters.

Tony’s body is carried off stage in the closing moments of the production. Note the mic positioning. (Credit: Nancy Ford)

In these situations, my job is simply to do the best I can with what I have, but I wasn’t happy with the sound of the show, especially since I felt that the sound of the overloaded elements was really interfering with the emotional moments of the performance. The mic elements we were using were common models from two reputable manufacturers, but I needed a better tool for this particular job.

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Celebrating over 50 years of audio excellence worldwide, Audio-Technica is a leading innovator in transducer technology, renowned for the design and manufacture of microphones, wireless microphones, headphones, mixers, and electronics for the audio industry.