Even though she knows it won’t last past summer, sound mixer Carin Ford loves manning the board of the Tony Award-nominated musical Bullets Over Broadway. “I really enjoy the music because I grew up listening to and playing jazz,” says Ford, who, like her father, has played saxophone. “I love the music. I can really relate to it and can get into the mix of it. I love working with this cast. We have a great band and a great cast. I haven’t been with a good ensemble like this in awhile. I really enjoy the show, and I think Susan Stroman did great work with it. That one tap number with the gangsters (“‘Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do”) is off the chain.”
It’s a good thing that she loves working on the show, because it rarely stops moving thanks to its numerous characters and subplots. The shows includes 29 cast members (including swings), 19 musicians and 182 channels all run through a Meyer CueConsole—including sound effects cues, which number between 60 and 70. And even with a show that’s fully set, there are still variables that come into play with every performance that keep Ford on her toes.
“The actors are pretty much the same, except when people leave,” explains Ford. “One of our dancers left to go to Cinderella, and her replacement’s voice is a little different so I had to work on her EQ and had to increase her level a couple of dB. It’s nothing really major. The most challenging aspect is dealing with the band and their subs because they can sub out 50% of the time. They only have to do half of their shows in a year, so we get subs a lot. Typically, we average about three to five subs per show. There are nights where there have been seven subs. With each sub that comes in that’s relatively new, I write down who is subbing and on what instrument and take notes. If their levels are drastically different I take note of that, so when they come back in, I know I have to adjust them. I also have to double check and make sure that they’re sitting in the proper position, that the mic hasn’t moved or whatever. Everybody plays differently.”
The live musicians do not actually play in the pit as that space has been taken over by the carpentry department. Two elevators bring up scenery from under the floor during the first act, so the musicians sit in a specially designed room built in the trap room. “Sound designer Peter Hylenski had an acoustician come in and build the room,” explains Ford. “Drywall, sound installation, the whole nine yards. It’s like a recording studio basically.”
The members of the orchestra include drums, percussion, bass, guitar, violin, two piano/keyboard players, four reeds, two trombones, a tuba player that doubles on bass trombone, a French Horn player, three trumpet players and the conductor. Things tend to get loud in that small space, but Ford mixes it smoothly. “We’re using a mic on the bass as well as a DI. The same with the guitar. The guitar player plays ukelele, banjo, electric guitar and acoustic guitar. It’s also been a challenge to mic the drums in that place because it is real tight for the drummer and because everyone is so close in there.”
Making It All Happen
Prior to working on Bullets, Ford came off of the equally frenetic Big Fish, another Susan Stroman show. Some of the actors from that musical moved over to Bullets. This production has offered Ford her first opportunity to work with Hylenski. “I learned how he worked and how he sets up his system, which is interesting,” she recalls. “It’s cool working on different shows with these different designers, learning how they work and adjusting to that.”
Ford has designed sound for a few small Off-Broadway productions, including a musical in Houston, that while not on the scale of Bullets, gave her experience that is valuable in her mixing endeavors on bigger productions. “It forces you to learn how to set up a system and to think about how you want your system to work,” she says. “It forces you learn how to choose your speakers, how the room is going to behave, and what system you are going to use for sound effects, playback and all that stuff.”
Despite the daunting task of mixing all the people on and under the stage, along with cueing dozens of sound effects—dog barks, sirens, audience hoots and howls—Ford handles it in stride. She has certainly faced far worse. When she worked on La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer, she faced a mixer’s worst nightmare. “I lost the console, lost audio, lost everything,” she reveals. “I had to get up and leave the console to go backstage and reset the system in the middle of the show. Kelsey Grammer actually stopped and talked to the audience while I went backstage to fix everything. I was frantically on the phone calling the production sound man Kevin Matthews because he was the programmer and knew the system inside and out, and I was getting him to talk me through the reboot of the system.”
Bullets Over Broadway has a large cast with lots of sonic variables, and Ford did spend time finding her sonic groove. “Now that it’s running, it’s really not that bad,” she says. “But the production process was a little bit of a challenge because the show is just so busy. Susan Stroman loves sound effects, so putting in all of the sound effects and having to mix the show and do the sound effects at the same time took a lot of practice. What helped me and actually saved me was that I had the luxury—and this is not a usual thing—of being able to be in the rehearsal studio for two weeks. There were two reasons I was there: so I could get to know the show, but also because Susan Stroman likes to hear the sound effects played back during rehearsal. I would be in the rehearsal playing back sound effects and I could see the development. But now that the show is running, it’s just a matter of going in and mixing the show. With any show, the more you do it the easier it gets.”
The show moves fast, from scene changes to musical numbers within scenes, and staying on top of the dialogue is a challenge with so many principal cast members onstage at any given time. With so much frenetic action and dialogue, principal lines compete for attention. It is not as easy as grouping them together as with the ensemble members. In one rehearsal scene for the play within the play, several actors are talking on top of each other. “It’s a challenge to mix that and avoid phasing is much as possible,” stresses Ford. “If they’re all talking at once, you have to finesse that a little bit. That’s work.” Ford’s dedication to that work will insure she gets more of it, even after Bullets closes at the end of August.
Gear
1 Meyer Sound CueConsole
3 Meyer Sound CDP-72 D-Mitri Processor
12 d&b E0 loudspeaker
30 d&b E6 loudspeaker
10 d&b E8 loudspeaker
5 d&b E12 loudspeaker
2 d&b E12D loudspeaker
26 d&b Q1 loudspeaker
4 d&b Q-Sub loudspeaker
40 EAW UB12 loudspeaker
2 Meyer Sound UPQ-1P
2 Meyer Sound 600HP Sub
4 Meyer Sound MM10 Sub
6 AKG C414 B-ULS
1 AKG 451
4 DPA 4011-TL
2 Neumann KM-140
8 Neumann KM-184
8 Neumann TLM-102
2 Neumann TLM-170
1 Neumann U87
6 Royer R-121
8 Sanken CUB-01
2 Schoeps CMC6-MK4
4 Shure SM85
2 Sennheiser MD-421
1 Sennheiser MD-441
2 Sennheiser MKH-60
2 Sennheiser MKH-800
4 Sennheiser MKH-8040
3 Shure 514B
1 Shure Beta 52
3 Shure SM-57
This profile of FOH engineer Carin Ford also appeared in the Oct. 2014 edition of FRONT of HOUSE’s sister publication, Stage Directions. –ed.
