“Water for Elephants” sound designer Walter Trarbach spoke with FRONT of HOUSE’s Bryan Reesman on the control setup for the complex Broadway production, a mélange of music, dialog in various languages and animal puppets, which loom large in the production and even have their own character arcs in the story.
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As we go into festival season, you may be mixing on a console that’s your second or third preference. It makes sense to tweak your console files to make them as easy to use as possible… Be sure to indicate names for the band members, the date, monitor output routing, and add channels for monitor and FOH talkback, and keep everything up to date as changes happen. High channel counts make navigating a desk cumbersome, so develop a grouping system that makes sense to you and reduces the number of faders you need to run a mix… I typically color code the DCAs, matching the color of the channels to their respective DCA. I find this helpful when I’m looking through multiple fader layers for something in a hurry.
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Gymnasiums don’t have to have hard, reflective surfaces in every direction… The use of drapery with convention hall-style curtain rods could at least eat up some high-frequency reflections, as could office-style gobos. Both solutions can be surprisingly portable. Another clever trick to increase absorption is using soft-upholstered chairs.
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The production team at Shakespeare’s Globe, the world-renowned performing arts venue in London, strives to maintains historical accuracy, but certain modern amenities such as a fire sprinkler system, lobby area, gift shop and dressing rooms are essential to its operations. Another nod to 21st century technology comes in the form of the new intercom system. The venue recently adopted Riedel Communications’ Bolero system to drive communications for its two theaters, the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Read More »Surrounding the drummer in plexiglass is one sure way to tame the volume of acoustic drums while also putting a lid on overall stage volume. But if panels or baffles are the chosen solution, it’s important to give the band at least one rehearsal with the baffles in place, because both monitor and FOH mixes will need adjustment. I witnessed a band place plexi baffles in front of the drummer after a sound check, and the resulting changes to the stage sound were so profound that when they started their first song, they all had a look of panic on their faces — particularly the drummer. When the first song ended, they had the stage crew remove all of the baffles. Yikes. Better warn the musicians ahead of time.
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If you are the one responsible for supporting the audio needs of a large church event, the most important ingredient for success is advanced planning. Yes, you will need additional gear, additional personnel and you may even need permits and other stuff like that. But above all else, you’ll need time – time to plan and prepare…And the beauty of it is that time doesn’t cost us anything. All we have to do is think ahead a bit.
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Obviously, there is such a thing as Too Much Bass, but I’d say there are four good reasons to consider using subwoofers in our sanctuaries. First, people are now accustomed to hearing (and feeling) a lot more low-end than ever before. Second, modern worship music tends to feature more low-end than ever. Third, rap, hip-hop and EDM have arrived in church. These genres rely extensively on low-end. Fourth is that if we add the capacity for deep low-end, we don’t have to try to force more bass than the system can handle.
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Any time there’s more than one mic on a source, there’s a possibility for phase cancellation. Combining snare top and snare bottom mics often results in phase issues. Once you have the gain settings dialed in for these mics, listen to just the top mic. Slowly bring in the bottom snare mic and listen to the low-mids. If they get weaker, there’s a phase issue. Flip the polarity switch (Ø) on the input channel for the snare bottom mic and see if the low-mids come back…The polarity switch is most effective when two signals are perfectly 180° out of phase and may be too coarse a tool in some situations, but there are other options. Digital consoles usually provide channel delay which can help if it permits adjustments in increments less than 1mS. You can also try a phase alignment plug-in or hardware device such as Radial Engineering’s Phazer (pictured here) or the Little Labs IBP — all of which provide far finer resolution in phase adjustment.
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When it comes to piano miking, miniature mics mounted in the piano are a popular option, such as the DPA d:vote CORE 4099 pair pictured here. But it’s also definitely plausible to capture a piano nicely with a single mic.
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Audio pros may be constantly on the hunt for weird tricks and hacks that, at a stroke, make their jobs infinitely easier. But sometimes there are no easy answers, and you just have to dive in and embrace complexity. That was the case for sound designer Dan Moses Schreier, FOH mixer John Sibley and the rest of the cast and crew for Barry Manilow’s “Harmony, a New Musical” on Broadway. To read about the challenges they faced with the production, which centers on six-part vocal harmonies and a band that required two sound designs, one for when they perform offstage and another for a number during Act II when half of them roll onstage on a wagon, see our Theater Sound article in FOH’s January 2024 issue.
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Michael Brammer, son of Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award winner Jim Brammer, stepped up to the podium on January 26 to present the plaque to his dad. After some private plane piloting and skydiving jokes, Michael quickly disabused the crowd of the notion that his dad is the kind of guy who ever takes on big risks with a backup plan. “He’ll have TEN backup plans,” Michael said, a truth reflected in the panoply of companies now under the Concert Stuff Group (CSG) umbrella, including Special Event Services (SES) and many others.
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Audio pros have expensive toys, and a sad fact of life is that there are unsavory characters who covet those toys. Sometimes shady people steal or try to steal gear in hopes that they can sell it for quick cash. These are the tools we use to earn our living, so it makes sense to thwart these efforts before they happen, and to be prepared in the unfortunate event that they do. There are a number of ways to protect your investment. The first: Don’t advertise the presence of your gear with words like “sound and lighting” on the side of your unattended vehicles. And if you don’t know who’s listening, don’t broadcast the parking or storage locations of your gear.
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