LONDON – Ghost, the 1990 movie, has been reincarnated as a West End musical. It blends live acting and music with complex lighting, video and special effects. The show's sound designer, Bobby Aitken specified a DiGiCo SD7T for FOH, and it's being used for a lot more than just mixing sound.
"The SD7 is more of a production hub than just an audio mixer on this show," said Aitken, who is working with associate Simon King and the musical's head of sound, Ben Evans, on the production, which is under the direction of Matthew Warchus. "Of course, it mixes the band, the vocals and audio streams from various playback machines, but it also serves as the timing and synchronization hub for the entire production.
Aitken noted that Ghost is a technically-complex show, with video playing a key role in the show's scenic design. Because of that, "the band, video and lighting have to be locked together.
"We use Ableton Live as a kind of ‘master lock,'" Aitken continued. "It is started at the beginning of every song and produces a click track that the band plays with. It also provides additional audio playback and, importantly, SMPTE and MIDI timecode, which we then put out to the video and lighting guys for synchronizing parts of their production with the show. Everything basically comes through the SD7T. We also use the code to start many of the "non-orchestral" audio files," Aitken added.
"The mixer is very deeply programmed; all in all we use about 110 stereo inputs, 28 stereo aux buses and 32 matrix outs," Aitken continued. "We step through 170 snapshots in the course of the show."
Along with the SD76, a DiGiCo DS-00, located sub-stage, feeds a personal monitor mixer for each musician, allowing them to handle their own 16-channel mix. There are about 60 cues on the DS-00 which are fired from MIDI commands from the SD7T. "The DS-00 is basically unmanned, it's pre-programmed and just gets on with it," said Aitken.
Live stage shows also mean that, however much a show is rehearsed, there will always be slight differences in the performance. To accommodate this, certain effects need to be fired manually. And with a 25-member cast, the SD7T also has a significant number of microphone inputs.
"All the cast wear radio mics; a lot of them wear two," Aitken said, noting the use of Sennheiser gear. "We mic them in the traditional theatre way, with miniature mics in the hairline, so they are invisible to the audience.
"Multi channel radio installations are still a complex beast, especially in the West End, where there must be well over 100 channels operating within a square mile," Aitken continued.
"The radio receiver rack is sub-stage. Lauren Coull or Poppy Ballon (sound techs) monitor it throughout the show, but we also have touch screens around the sides of the stage. If we hear an RF issue with somebody's mic, we can confirm the problem by auditioning the currently live transmitters, identifying the channel and swapping it out when they come off stage."
In a show that has a plethora of special effects, one of the biggest special scenes is the ‘get off my train' scene in the New York subway.
"Because there are a lot of human elements in it, we fire a lot of those sounds manually – as the ghost goes to punch somebody, we'll hit go. We fire about 20 spot effects through that sequence," Aitken said.
Of course, as in the film, the musical's male lead – played by Richard Fleeshman – spends most of the production appearing as a ghost, which was manna from heaven for the sound department.
"The whole ghost thing was fantastically good fun," Aitken said. "I really enjoyed doing it. We've got a 5.1 (ish) sound system and lots of sound effects running all the time, which I think work really well."
Ghost opened in July at the Piccadilly Theatre and is currently booking through until January next year.
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