Mixing a Musical

Broadway Theatrical Sound Techniques

Shannon Slaton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351033046
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Akustiktechnik

Mixing a Musical: Broadway Theatrical Sound Techniques, Second Edition pulls the curtain back on one of the least understood careers in live theatre: the role and responsibilities of the sound technician.

This comprehensive book encompasses every position from shop crew labor to assistant designer to sound board operator and everything in between. Written in a clear and easy to read style, and illustrated with real-world examples of personal experience and professional interviews, Slaton shows you how to mix live theatre shows from the basics of equipment and set ups, using sound levels to creating atmosphere, emotion and tension to ensure a first rate performance every time.

This new edition gives special attention to mixing techniques and practices. And, special features of the book include interviews with some of today's most successful mixers and designers.

Part
1

The Career Path

1. 1. What Does It Mean to Be a Theatrical Mixer?
2. 2. History of Theatrical Sound
3. 3. Different Positions in Theatrical Sound
4. 4. Different Levels of Theatrical Sound

1

What Does It Mean to Be a Theatrical Mixer?

It is late in the second act. The story has been well established and the characters are now very familiar to the audience. We are way past exposition and just past the climax. The helicopter has already flown over the audience and the cast has stormed the Bastille and the guy in the half mask has already driven his fake boat through the sewers. And it has all been very magical. The lighting and the smoke and the projection have fleshed out the scene and the orchestra has played at full tilt until the room is ready to blow. Then the stage goes to a blackout. The fireworks and spectacle of the show are over and the audience applauds wildly at the end. The lights slowly creep up and it takes a while for the audience’s eyes to adjust. A small pool of light appears upstage left and in that pool of light is one actress. It is the female lead and it is her big solo, in which she accepts her fate or decides to turn it around and change her fate. Just about every show has a moment like this, and this show is no exception.

The song starts off as a whisper. The orchestration is thin, no more than two violins and a cello. Then it starts to grow. More instruments are added. She stands up. She hits a big note as the orchestra swells and then it all immediately shrinks back down to a couple of strings. Then it starts to build again, but this time there are more instruments, and now she is walking downstage. Lights are coming up all over the stage and the scenery is quickly removed, leaving nothing more than this one actress belting out her song with the orchestra of 24 musicians supporting her. She hits a crescendo note, then a second of silence, and then she explodes into a huge crescendo. The orchestra follows her and the song ends to thunderous applause. It is massive and ear-crushing applause. This is the release of all the emotion in the show. It is bigger than any spectacle in the show, but it also depends on that spectacle to get the audience to the right emotional place. And their reaction is huge.

But there is a problem. At the back of the house, in the mix position, the sound board operator for the show sits in absolute silence with his hands on the faders. He is mentally beating himself up over the last song. Sure, the crowd reaction was huge, but he knows it was off. He knows that on a night when it is perfect, he can hear people quietly start to cry after the first crescendo. He knows that when it all goes right, there is a standing ovation at the end of the number. He knows that the applause normally goes on long enough for him to stretch for a second and drink some water before the next scene. But tonight, even though the audience went nuts at the end, he knows he didn’t hear anyone get choked up, the audience didn’t stand at the end, and he didn’t get a sip of water. And he is not happy about it.

As he mixes the next scene, he goes back over it in his head. The audience is completely satisfied and they have no idea that anything was wrong, but the mixer has mixed the show over 200 times and he knows. He wants to know what he did or did not do that changed the response. Did he push the big spectacle scene too loud? If he did, that could’ve left patrons with fatigued ears not ready for the song. Did he start her too quietly? If he did, the audience might have had trouble hearing her at the top, and that may have thrown them out of the moment. Was she too loud at the top? If so, it wouldn’t have been enough of a change to set the audience up for the rest of the song. After going over it again and again, he realizes what went wrong. After the first big crescendo he didn’t pull everything down enough, so that left him with nowhere to go for the big finale of the song. The audience has no clue, but he knows their reaction could have been bigger.

That is what it is like to be a live theatrical mixer. It has almost nothing to do with knowing the model numbers of every speaker and microphone. It has almost nothing to do with speaker placement and system equalization (EQ). It is about the symbiotic relationship between the amplified sound of the show and the audience reaction. It is about understanding the arc of a show and the arc of a song. It is about manipulation. There are mixers who cannot program a Lexicon 480L reverb unit but can mix with such emotion and ease that you forget the mics and speakers even exist. There are also amazing sound people who can program that Lexicon and field strip it and rebuild it, and yet have no interest in mixing.

Mixing is an art like no other technical aspect of technical theater. It cannot be simplified to a push of the button. Mixing is dependent on several shifting factors. An actor is not feeling well, so she sings differently. A substitute, or sub, musician is in the pit and he plays louder. The audience is smaller than normal. The weather has changed and the room sounds different. It has been said that mixing is like playing a piano in which the notes are not linearly arranged, you have no clue where middle C is, and you have to walk up to it and play it perfectly. Francis Elers, who has mixed on Broadway for the last 15 years and has mixed shows including Rent, says mixing is like freestyle rock climbing with no safety in place. One wrong move and you are going to fall hard. Jordan Pankin, another long-time Broadway mixer who is currently mixing Wicked, explained mixing as a boxing match. He said you walk up to the desk, stand toe to toe with it for three hours, and see who wins.

The best mixers out there are the ones who embrace the idea that the job of the mixer is to become part of the story and to manipulate the audience as much as possible. You still need to understand a sound system and all of the basic physics of sound, but your real assets as a mixer are your ears and your ability to move faders. Some call it being a “fader jockey,” and that term is not disrespectful. If you develop these skills you will be very valuable, especially to designers. Designers have to be very selective when choosing their mixers. When a designer is doing a musical, he knows that his design, in the end, will only sound as good as the person moving the faders around can make it sound. There will always be a very human element involved with the sound of a musical.

Actors are just as aware of the importance of having a highly skilled mixer. My first Broadway mixing position was for Man of La Mancha starring Brian Stokes Mitchell at the Martin Beck Theater, which is now the Al Hirschfeld Theater. Mr. Mitchell is an absolutely incredible actor with an amazing voice. He won a Tony in 2000 for his role in Kiss Me, Kate and is also currently the chairman of the board of the Actors Fund. Mixing him singing “The Impossible Dream” is one of the highlights of my career. I was being trained to be a sub mixer by Jordan Pankin, who was the full-time mixer. A sub mixer is the emergency cover mixer and the sub usually mixes one to two shows a week. Every musical on Broadway has at least one sub, and some shows have two or three subs. On my first day, Jordan took me to introduce me to Mr. Mitchell. Jordan told me that Mr. Mitchell had final approval over the mixer. Basically, if he did not like the way I mixed the show, I would be out of a job. Mr. Mitchell was very nice and, luckily, I kept my job.

It is an important lesson to learn. Your job as a mixer is not relegated to the sound in the house. I have worked on shows in which the sound in the house was absolutely fantastic, but the sound onstage was not working for the actors. On one show in particular there was nothing but compliments in the house and nothing but complaints backstage. No matter what we tried, we just could not make the actors happy. It is a tough balance to find settings for the foldback that make the actors happy and don’t sacrifice the sound in the house. (Foldback is another word for the monitor mix onstage. The word comes from the fact that you are folding part of the sound back to the stage.) Finally, after months and months of working, the monitor issues were resolved. It is a horrible feeling because you want to help the actors, but at a certain point physics works against you, and there is apparently no good way to explain that to actors and have them accept that this is the best it can possibly get.

I designed and mixed a show once that required me to work with an extremely challenging actor regarding the monitor mix. When we started the tech process, the levels onstage were normal levels for a musical, but the cast was not happy. As we moved into previews I was asked to turn it up and up and up. I tried to keep it from getting out of control, but it was a losing battle. Finally, I was asked by the producers to give the actor whatever he wanted. I argued that the levels he wanted onstage would greatly change the sound in the house, which everyone was pleased with, but the decision was made that it was more important to make the cast happy. So I cranked it. The taps onstage peaked at 110dB, which is louder than a chainsaw. The crew complained and started wearing earplugs. They even posted OSHA signs warning of the hearing damage that can be caused by extremely loud volume. The sound onstage was so loud that there were times when the front-of-house system could be turned off and it would still be too loud. And yet it still wasn’t loud enough for the cast.

After having a long conversation with the actor about the monitors onstage and what could and could not be done, he looked at me and said, “Why is it that it sounds so perfect in my head?” I honestly did not know what to say to him, but he very succinctly summed up the actor/foldback dilemma. The actors usually want it to sound onstage like it does in the house. Actually, they want it to sound like it would in a movie. They look at you skeptically when you explain that if you put an omnidirectional microphone into the speakers they are standing near, then the mic will probably feedback before they hear themselves. It is even harder to explain to them that, even if it doesn’t feedback, it will affect the sound in the house because of two very important reasons. One is that their mic will be picking up their voice along with their voice from the foldback speakers with a huge delay, and that will cause them to sound hollow and muddy. The second reason is that the speakers onstage will bleed into the house and muddy up the sound in the house. And don’t even try to explain to them that they will hear themselves with a delay that will actually cancel out their voice and could possibly make them sound even quieter. None of that matters. They know in their heads what they need it to sound like onstage and that is what they expect.

But there is hope. Luckily, the main concern of most actors is how they sound in the house. They want to sound amazing to the audience. However, something happens with almost every musical that puts the cast on edge, when the cast takes the stage for the sitzprobe or wandelprobe. (A sitzprobe is when the cast sits onstage in chairs and runs through the music in the show for the first time with the entire orchestra. It is also basically the sound check for the sound department. A wandelprobe is the same, except the cast is allowed to walk the stage and do blocking and choreography.) Since this is the first time, there is a ton of work for the sound department to do. Inevitably the balance is not right for the cast, and it takes time to get it right. All the cast knows is that it does not sound good onstage. They can’t hear themselves or the rest of the cast, and the orchestra is not balanced at all. Naturally, their first fear is that they are going to sound bad in the house, and their second fear is that they are not going to get what they need.

Actors are putting a great deal of trust in the sound mixer. They are basically putting their talent in your hands, so it is important to gain their trust and to let them know that you are doing everything you can to make them sound incredible for the audience. You have to allow them the time to understand that you are working as hard as you can to make them sound as good as possible. Once they find out that it does sound great in the house, they will usually relax about the sound onstage. They will still need help, but they will be more patient. If they find out it is a train wreck in the house as well as onstage, then it will be a long and miserable process. In the end, your saving grace is how good it sounds in the house.

This does not mean you don’t do everything you can to make it sound good onstage. I have worked shows where there are almost as many speakers upstage of the proscenium line as down. A happy cast makes for a much better experience. Sometimes it is possible to give the cast everything they need, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you have to find a compromise between what they need and what is going to affect the sound in the house. But it takes time and planning and patience to achieve this. Sometimes having an actor feel comfortable so that a good performance is achieved is better than a perfect mix in the house and a lousy performance. Sometimes the compromise is the best choice. Sometimes you have no choice but to sacrifice the sound in the house for the sound onstage to best serve the show. However, getting to the final sound onstage is like running a marathon. You have to be ready to run uphill with people pouring oil on the track.

I designed a short run of Cinderella and my mixer was Chad Parsley, who has mixed Jersey Boys, Avenue Q, and Spamalot. We were in the middle of the wandelprobe and I walked up onstage, stood with the actors during a couple of songs, and worked with Chad to set the levels onstage. At the end of a song, I talked to the actors and told them to let me know what they needed. I of course received the usual answer: “I need more of me. More of me. More of me.” I explained that I would do the best that I could and to give us some time to get everything dialed in. As I left the stage and walked toward the back of the house, the director stopped me and asked if everything was okay. I said everything was fine and explained that the cast was trying to be patient with me, but they would hate me in another hour for not turning their mics on in the monitors, and then slowly but surely they would go out and listen in the house and hear how good it sounded and would then calm down. She smiled and said it sounded normal, and told me to let her know if I needed any help.

As you can see, your job as a mixer has several layers. The first layer is a thick skin. You have to be aware of the incredible vulnerability of the actors you are working with. There may be times when everyone in the room is annoyed with you, and you have to acknowledge that they have every right to be. You have to hold it together and fix whatever is annoying them. You have to exude a confidence that everything is going according to plan, even if the console is on fire. The next layer is the artistic layer. You are there to amplify the words and the music. You facilitate the communication of story between the actor and audience as well. You are there to help carve out the emotional content of the show. You are also there to make the actors as comfortable as possible. But that’s not all. The next layer is the business layer. You are also there to train a sub how to mix the show, and you are responsible for ordering the perishables, such as batteries and tape. You are in charge of working with the rental house to replace broken gear, and you come to work no matter how sick you are unless you have a sub to cover you.

There is a certain amount of confidence required to be a successful mixer, but it has to be couched with a decent balance of humility. You have to be confident enough to make quick decisions and implement them with ease. You have to know what knob to grab and how to EQ a mic. You have to have the confidence to know that your EQ is correct, but you also must have the humility to know that you are there to serve the designer and his design. As a mixer, you do not have to approve of every decision a designer makes; after all, sound is very subjective. You may like more hi-hat than the designer, and that is fine. As a mixer, you have to respect the decision of the designer and mix it the way you are told to mix it. I don’t think I have ever mixed a show in which I agreed with every sound coming out of the speakers or every choice made by the designer, but that doesn’t mean I disapproved of the overall sound of the shows. So what if you don’t like a certain reverb? The director and producer and designer like it. That is all you need to know. It is a huge challenge as a mixer, and it is why designers gravitate toward mixers who have very similar ears to their own.

There is also a certain Zen place that an experienced mixer reaches while mixing a show. When you are new to the world of mixing musicals, it can be completely overwhelming. I remember my first big show. The designer/mixer made fun of me for sweating all over the VCA section on the Yamaha PM4000. What can I say? I was nervous. I was learning to mix a show, a huge show, live and in front of an audience of 3,000 people. I wasn’t doing a very good job, either, and I was very close to being fired. Luckily I pulled it off and toured on the show for several years. When you are learning a mix, it seems so fast. There does not seem to be any time even to breathe, let alone fix a problem on the fly, but once you learn the mix and you’ve mixed the show 50 or 60 times, it all slows to a crawl. That one scene that seemed impossibly fast is now creeping along and, not only can you mix it, you can also fix a problem and write down notes and call backstage to find out what’s for dinner. Once you do several years and several dozen shows, mixing in general just becomes easier. It becomes second nature. You get to the point where you can just walk up and throw faders and mix a musical cold with no run-through and without any panic or nerves getting in the way. It’s just you standing toe to toe with the faders: all the layers disappear and you get lost in the story and you mix.

2

History of Theatrical Sound

There is an old Latin saying, “nanos gigantium humeris insidentes,” which translates to “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” Of course, this has bec...