From what I have heard about The Georgetown Palace, they have steadily increased their production value over the years. Each new conquest must have lead them to take on ever bigger challenges. While the productions have grown, the physical and technical confines of their theatre have remained the same. As an end user, a sound designer and operator, it was a shock to hear that they were working on Man Of La Mancha, a play which calls for 19 actors and a 19 piece orchestra. The work draws me in and I lose perspective, but looking back at the two pieces I have done for The Palace I realize that they were both too large, production wise, for the space.

At the same time, I respect them for setting big goals. It forces everyone to grow and learn at an exponential rate. For me, it was a chance to test out new show control technology that I had been interested in. This would allow me to automate the mixing of the entire show.

See photos of the show here.

When I first accepted the job I knew that I would have to come up with a smart solution to 1) bring all elements under control and 2) enjoy my work. My idea for show automation came from two places. At the end of August I was working at The Vortex on Dragonfly Queen. Their normal mode of operation is to hire a sound designer and then find a volunteer untrained operator for the run. This seemed fine for 8 inputs, but Man Of La Mancha would have 26 inputs of actors, musicians, and playback. The answer came while reading an article by Richard Ingraham about his sound design for Evil Dead. He had used a piece of software called Software Audio Console to setup a digital mixing environment within a computer with a series of scenes that an operator could simply recall at the right time to effectively automate the mix. Obviously show control technology has been around for a while and he must not have been the first person to attempt such a design, but the piece of software that made it all happen was the big find for me. It provided me with the solutions I needed to 1) Automate all parameters of the mix and thus bring a high level of control and consistency to the show and 2) work from any location with a wirelessly connected laptop.

The Setup

Once I got the OK from Ron Watson, the director, I setup a system combining my own material with that of the theatre's to run the show. I contemplated completely removing the mixing console from the chain, but thought better not to shock people too much. This also left the operator with some means for level correction from show to show. Contact me if you want to know about exactly how I did this.

I knew I wouldn't be able to write the 120 mix scenes I needed to automate the show during tech rehearsals so I planned to record a run through on multi-track and use it as a kind of virtual sound check. At first I planned to rent a stand alone 24-track recorder, but later discovered that the same company that made SAC (Software Audio Console) also made a recording program called SAW (Software Audio Workshop). It could link with SAC through internal buffers and thus I was able to record, playback, and mix between the two pieces of software on the same computer. It worked great.

I used the first recording to set all of my channel mutes as actors entered and exited and musicians started and stopped. The sound operator then stepped in and I was able to focus on setting levels using a second computer as he recalled the channel mutes during tech rehearsals. I then recorded another rehearsal and used that to add level and FX automation to each scene. It took 10 hours, but it was really nice to be able to go over and over a particular scene without anyone in the theatre. Also, I didn't loose a tech rehearsal to the second recording because SAW is not only able to feed SAC, but also record from it. That means I was running the show with SAC, but also recording with SAW, neither one affected by the other.

By the time dress rehearsals started I was able to sit back and take notes. I am simplifying a lot, because there was lots of other work going on, but I am focusing on this because it was such a nice change to be able to make daily critical advancements in a show's sound without needing to memorize all the nuances of the entire play over the course of weeks.

Technical Difficulties

This production was fraught with technical problems. I won't list every one, but they ranged from wireless microphone hiss and pop to complete mixing board failure. Instead I would just like to write about the three main problems that affected the show control I had setup. They were a bad firewire card, a bad audio interface, and bad communication.

Windows doesn't play nice with firewire, called 1394 in PC land. It is rare to find PCs with firewire ports. I need them to connect to my RME Fireface 800. My solution was a PCI-express to firewire card from Syba. It worked fine for the first week, but as processing demands increased with the complexity of the show, errors began to occur. I blamed the computer's performance and decided to buy an additional audio interface and move some processing onto another computer.

My original plan was to use the same computer for mixing and playback. I accomplished this with a piece of software called SoundMan-Designer from Richmond Sound Design and by looping the SMPTE ports on the Fireface. When memory errors started to occur I decided to move playback to a separate system, which is a better idea anyway. This did not solve the memory errors and lead to new problems because the Tascam U-144 interface I bought had very unstable drivers and would cause playback to quite unexpectedly. I didn't know this at the time, though, and decided that is was the fault of SoundMan-Designer. I harassed their technical support person with questions and eventually decided to buy new software and redo the playback cues. So I bought Show Cue System during an all-nighter at the theatre and hoped for the best. The next day I was still having problems. Fail. (Note: SoundMan-Designer is a great piece of software and was not the cause of any problems)

To make a long story short, a week after the play opened I bought a replacement firewire card from Belkin, moved the playback software back onto the original computer with the mixing software, and everything worked fine. Beware using firewire in windows, but also beware buying computer hardware with many varying reviews. No amount of driver swapping can fix crap hardware.

The third problem, bad communication, took me a little while longer to figure out. I realize now that I should have been able to predict this, because I've been working with musicians for a long time, but I suppose I had stars in my eyes. I thought that maybe everything would go so smoothly with the show automation that no one would even know that someone wasn't manually mixing it every night. My hopes were too high, though, because I failed to communicate to everyone exactly what was going on.

During the first week I said, “This will lead to a more consistent show.” What I should have said is, “This will lead to a more consistent show because every setting will be exactly the same every night and you won't be able to change anything.” What I forgot is that musicians are used to being able to ask for changes at any time. During the course of a show the musicians continue to develop their performance. Surprise, during the second week they began asking for changes in the monitor mixes. They were pretty surprised when I said, “No, everything is set. I can't change it anymore.”

Of course I could have made changes, but there is such little headroom in the mix in a small room like The Palace that any changes would really have called for an additional tech rehearsal to be sure of no adverse consequences.

Conclusion

In the end it was the right decision, but it might have gone more smoothly without those technical problems and if I had communicated more clearly from the beginning. While it feels like success for me because I was able to implement so many new technologies and complete a large production on a tiny budget, I failed to regain trust from the cast and crew in the audio as a whole.

From an audience perspective, The Palace's production of Man Of La Mancha was a success. The set and lighting look great and we have some excellent actors and musicians. Reviews have been favorable and most people have had a good time. The automation of the mix took the sound to a new level. If something wasn't right one day, it was fixed the next, in most cases, and less susceptible to daily prejudice. Also, with the difficulty of mixing the show out of the way, all energy was focused on the the few problems that did occur and magnified them greatly. No one was worrying whether or not the operator would remember to turn them up for their solo or off for their exit, only whether or not that one technical problem would be fixed tonight.

If you are a theatre professional yourself and are thinking of using similar forms of show control in your production, consider carefully the communication needed before hand so that everyone is on the same page.

Thank you very much to the Man Of La Mancha production team, Bob Lentini for invaluable tech support on SAC, and Loren Wilton and Charlie Richmond for tech support on Sound-Man Designer.

A new work of opera called Dragonfly Queen by Chad Salvata just opened at The Vortex. I would call it a fantasy Gothic opera. It could have gone several different ways but a strong design team and a great director were what made it a great piece to watch. Even if the play were in a foreign language I would still enjoy it. Here is a clip.
Victory Wings Sample by NathanDoFrangos

This was my first position as an Assistant Sound Designer. My job was to implement design by Roy Taylor, resident Sound Designer at The Vortex. One of his goals was envelopment. He wanted the audience to feel like they were surrounded. This was new for me since my goals for the last couple of years in sound design have almost always centered around direct sound. I put up a tiny fight at the beginning because this seemed like a mistake to me for such a small venue, but didn't have much to say since it was my first time working with them.

The first direction I received at production meetings was that I should install a stereo system in the set that would play the backing tracks for the actors to sing along with. If you read my last post about stereo systems then you have already predicted what came out of my big mouth, “But do you think the two halves of the audience in this L-shaped seating area will hear in stereo?” By the time we had hung speakers behind the audience and put playback material into those as well, I realized Roy was going for envelopment. Depending on the music, sometimes it would sound like it was coming from the back or in front.

My next concern was with the omni-directional microphones on the foreheads of each of the singers, who you can see here (Photography by Kimberley Mead). Not only were they singing in front of the main speaker system, but they were often in close proximity to one another and the vocal PA. Later their voices were even sent to the rear hanging speakers that were pointed right at the stage! What I discovered is that this is the method that The Vortex has been using to amplify voices for some time now and that they have a system of dressing and hiding the mic and transmitter. I often spend a lot of time in my work trying to get finicky mics to stay on people's faces, but in this production I hardly had to lift a finger is this regard. The actors themselves discovered the best way to dress and secure the mics from the beginning.

One of my favorite parts of Roy's design was keeping the backing tracks low. Although everyone wanted it to feel like a Rock Opera, pumping up the volume would have severely affected vocal clarity. This was due to the fact that the composer had a lot of activity in the tracks in the same frequency area as the vocal range. Since the vocalists were so dynamic they would have dropped in and out of the mix.

This was also my first time to train a sound board operator. I did my best to setup all of the equipment so that it would be easy to understand. I wish I could have provided more direction, but in the end all I could say was, “Mix it so it sounds good.” I'm not really sure how to explain to someone how to mix music from the ground up so I just threw her into the water and made corrections as she swam along.

In the end it turned out well and while there were things I would have changed, I think Roy was happy with the result. My next show will be Man Of La Mancha in Georgetown and I am working on a show control and automation system to provide for an easy to operate consistent show. More on that later.

What's wrong with stereo?

After my recent post where I demonized stereo speaker installations I received a whirlwind of backlash from... Travis. During our conversation I was unable to clearly express to him why the most common speaker array in the world is not the most best for every application.

After referring to Sound Systems: Design and Optimization I came up with a better answer, taken directly from the book.

The problem I have with stereo is not artistic in nature. My goal is 'same sound' throughout the audience. Any overlap of sources creates variance throughout that space. Stereo requires overlap and increases variance. It is actually a form of desirable variance, for those people in the central area. So the question I'm always asking when I see these systems is, "Do the benefits of the center outweigh the costs of the sides?"

In the first diagram you see several plots of rooms with different dimensions with the blue triangle representing the central areas of the room that experience the stereo effect.

The second diagram shows a 80x50m room with a stereo speaker installation. As you can see, instead of experiencing stereo, the people off center experience two separate speakers.

Thanks to Bob McCarthy for the use of the diagrams from his book.

I'm bad with names. Lots of people say that, but I'm pretty bad with the ones that count, like family members and artists. I can remember everyone's name in a theatre that I go to work at every day, but when I was asked about my favorite sound designer at a job interview recently, I couldn't remember! Que vergonha!

Favorite Sound Designer – João Lucas

Even though I worked for a year and a half at a large theatre with many productions, I have only worked with two sound designers in my entire career. Unlike lighting and scenic design, sound design is still often seen as an option instead of “the creative and technical process resulting in the complete aural environment for live theatre” (Deena Kaye, James LeBrecht). When I worked at Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II, they never hired sound designers, but on their production of Medeia, the composer and musical director also acted as sound designer. This became apparent the day he came in and said, “Where is the speaker I asked you to install here in the set? Are we playing games here?”

João Lucas wrote beautiful and intense original music for this classic from Euripides. Though originally planned for a live orchestra, we ended up using a recording that the chorus of actresses on stage sang on top of.

In this photo you can see Medeia on the second floor. At the end, during the climax, a disturbing amount of blood ran down the stairs. Here is a sample from a particularly beautiful section. The mix isn't great because it is just a direct recording from the board, but still enjoyable.
Medeia sample by NathanDoFrangos

Favorite Production – Two Little Indians by Frank Donnelly

This is my favorite production because the play was great and it is about as close to feeling like a rock star as I have gotten. Every night people would listen to my original music and every night I would get really excited because it felt like performing. I realize now that I was very lucky to work with Lee Breuer and some really good actors. I think I got the job because I my second cousin was friends with his girlfriend. Ha! More photos here.

You can here the piano theme I wrote at the end of my showreel. I created it by playing the same piece of music twice with the old Wurlitzer electric piano that we had at City College, panning them left and right, and then reversing one side. And here is a sample of one of the voice over cues we used.
Sample from Two Little Indians by NathanDoFrangos

This week I worked on a two day production of 12 new pieces of dance called 10 Minute Max. Most of the pieces were modern dance and were limited to 10 minutes. My responsibilities were all of 1) Push Play and 2) Watch good looking women dance. Sometimes you're hanging sound systems in the heat for 12 hours and sometimes... Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit. There were a few instances of actual sound reinforcement, but what was more notable about the whole event was this theatre. The Boyd Vance Theatre at The George Washington Carver Cultural Center is a proscenium stage with stadium seating to fit 134 patrons. Most interesting for me were two things that I had recently been suggesting for The Palace in Georgetown.

1. A center speaker for vocal clarity

When should a theatre use a stereo system (MainA+MainB)? I am always a little confused when I see people using stereo systems. And as you can imagine, I'm confused a lot, cause they are everywhere! I can't stop having a conversation in my head with the person who installed it asking, “What were your goals with this setup?” It couldn't have been to create a stereo field, because there is only a small triangle of people near the center that are in it. It couldn't have been for coverage because one speaker is basically playing into the wall and then you have a whole balcony without coverage. Whoa, rant alert!

I've worked on plays where sound designers have wanted a stereo system for actor location (following them around stage) or stereo FX. Those were special cases. The focus on vocal clarity comes way before FX. Here is a photo of the central cluster at The Boyd Vance Theatre. You can't really see anything. It is covered with some acoustically transparent fabric that blends in with the ceiling. I appreciate that they are covering the room from a central location, probably with a point-source array, and close to the audience. Stereo FX can be created by auxiliary speakers stacked on stage that the theatre keeps in reserve.

2. Acoustic absorption on the walls.

In the case of The Boyd Vance Theatre they have broad-band acoustic panels covering almost every wall. These make the space quiet, less reflective, and serve to hide lighting instruments. I don't have a photo yet, but will update this post soon. One more amazing part of the the installation there that I need to report on is the fact that the entire sound system can be turned on with a single button at FOH. No system startup instructions or running around backstage to find amplifiers. There is a little micro-controller that turns everything on in the right order. Hurray!

This past weekend I opened my first play since moving back to the US. I am sound operator for Big River that will run for 5 weeks at The Palace in Georgetown, TX. It's a musical based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Problem #1: Too many actors, Too few mics

The Palace is a community theatre located in a beautifully renovated 1920s era cinema. It is a shoe box approximately 111' x 35' (33.8m x 10m) with one balcony and a capacity of 300. There are obvious problems with doing theatre in a cinema from 1927, but the first challenge was getting the actors on mic. In order to amplify the entire 30 member cast the stage manager and technical director set up a mic sharing system between actors who were not on stage simultaneously. This sounded difficult from the beginning because I would need to make manual EQ and level changes with each mic trade-off, but aside from that they are very fragile. Connectors can come loose and create loud popping noises and cables can get pinched and tear. This is why principle actors in large productions often wear two sets of microphone + transmitter.

As rehearsals began and actors put on and off the wireless mics throughout the play, connections and mic placement were compromised and I felt sadly unable to guarantee quality. I could have gone to the technical director at the beginning and told him that their plan was bad, but I didn't. One day during rehearsal I lost the mic for one of the main characters. I called for the spare hand-held kept backstage to be delivered, but it was too late. As he began to sing I turned off everyone else's mic and brought the music down. No one noticed. It turns out that no one needs a mic!

Now my work there seems a little trivial since they could probably get by without all of the effort that goes into amplifying actors, but that kind of thing happens a lot in theatres. You just hope that it doesn't happen too often to make you crazy. A better solution for this play would be to have given mics only to principle actors and singers.

Problem #2: Optimizing The Sound System

The previous sound operator suggested I use an automatic EQ to deal with microphone feedback, but I knew that the first thing to do was to aim the speakers correctly. The delay speakers for the balcony, for example, were pointed at the back wall of the plateau. Great for bouncing sound back at the stage! We lifted those up to be on axis with the last row of the balcony. The horizontal position is not great, but that's the best I could do without scaffolding. One of the weirdest things I had to deal with in this entire day were these boxes. They had no information labeled externally and no built-in spectral divider (crossover) between the low and high frequency drivers. I had never encountered this before and hoped that I would be able to discover the proper frequency through empirical measurements.

Wrong. It may have been to someone with more experience, but with the measurements in the picture below in SATlive, I saw no clues. Instead I listened to pink noise and adjusted the dividing frequency to a point that sounded natural.I finally got to use the clinometer app on my iphone. This helped me match angles between the Left and Right boxes. Lastly I pushed together the subs and leveled the center cluster that was hanging awkwardly. Optimization proceeded systematically with each driver's polarity, phase, and level. Unfortunately I didn't have time to check all of the electronics in the chain between the microphone and the speaker.

I then moved onto knitting them all together with delay and EQ. The biggest surprise when rehearsal started that night was that I had forgotten to include the stage monitors. The actors needed such high volumes that I should have optimized the monitors into the system as separate sources for the house. Fortunately I was mainly optimizing for vocal clarity, which does not enter into the monitors.

Conclusions

The biggest problems with audio at The Palace are the acoustics of the room, speaker placement, and speaker quality. The technical director mentioned that they were thinking of replacing their board with an LS-9, which would definitely help with operating shows, but $17,000 would be more effectively spent on acoustic treatments to get rid of some of the echo, one really good speaker, and rigging hardware to hang it in front of the proscenium. It's a tough sale, though. The digital mixing board has lots of nice flashing lights and who wants to spend money on a $10,000 black box that doesn't do anything?

"How to move to a new country and get a job in audio."

This will be the title of my book someday in the future. Or better, I wish someone had written it already!

I had my first job last night since moving back to Austin. That's me on the right with Sir Richard Bishop. It was just a one-time gig to sub for another sound engineer at The Mohawk, but I still think it's significant because each time I move it takes less and less time to find work.

Lisbon - 6 months
Bratislava - 3 months
Austin - 2 months

What I can't do is explain why. I know it has a lot to do with experience. I want to find work doing Sound Design for theatres, but this time I went straight to a club, spoke with the head sound engineer, and was honest about what I wanted.

Connections are the key to getting jobs. If I could push a magic button and let everyone in the Austin area know about who I am and what I do, the phone would be ringing off the hook. I looked back at all of the successful methods of communication I had used in the past to get jobs and found that there was no one solution. No matter whether I had gone door to door, made phone calls, sent emails, or mailed letters, the key had always been timing. To arrive when you are sought. It was important that I was communicating, but not really how I was doing it.

I should also note that having a presence on twitter, facebook, Pro Sound Web Forum, and Gearslutz has never brought me work. Having my own website and writing blog posts is fun, but no one has ever emailed me because of it. Reminds me of a recent quote by Derek Sivers - "Turn off your computer and focus on value."

Back in January I applied for about 30 jobs online through job boards I found in AUDIO EMPLOYMENT – BEYOND THE STUDIO by Todd Kinsley. They were all great positions on interesting productions, but I got zero interviews out of it. I suspect that it had a lot to do with the lack of personal connection. They had never heard of me and I'd been out of the US for 6 years. Compare that process to walking into an unknown venue without a CV or letter of recommendation and immediately getting a job, which is what happened to me this week. Fast digital communication and online social networking are great, but they don't get jobs.