On Theater Sound

Finally!

So, now that our production of City of Angels has opened and is running, I can take a few moments to discuss the most difficult aspect of that effort (and, possibly, any other musical theater effort) - sound.

Sets, costumes, props, lights, choreography, we've pretty much got all these things figured out. But sound is a different issue. There are two major issues here. The first is what, exactly, an audience expects and requires in a live theater setting and the second is the equipment required to give it to them.

Sound has always been a difficulty for live theater. The Greeks used to build amphitheaters near natural rock formations that they had found which naturally amplified the human voice. When Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, he was standing at the apex of a natural bowl formed by a ridge and a valley which allowed his voice to carry to thousands.

In Europe and America, as opera led the day, the orchestra was sunk as many as 12 feet into a pit in front of the stage and the audience was tiered in mezzanines and balconies to keep them close enough to the stage to hear. Meanwhile, opera performers studied the science and art of making their voices carry to thousands of people (an unnatural sound, to many ears).

As the twentieth century turned, so did the ability to artificially amplify and record sound. Valentino and Swanson lost their jobs because they didn't "sound" like actors, the last castrati was preserved on vinyl, Callas could be heard in every living room, and George Martin made sure that our right ears heard Lennon while our left heard McCartney.

In the twenty-first century, sound is a mega-millions industry. Not a single portion of our lives isn't saturated by recorded sound that's mixed and prepared to within an inch of its existence. Extremely powerful electronic and digital tools for manipulating sound are available cheaply and widely. Hell, most podcasts are mixed and mastered professionally.

And then there's live theater. Theater, it seems, simply cannot keep up. Audiences have literally grown up with mixed and mastered sound - delivering to them exactly what the creator wants them to hear at every second - in every part of their lives. TV, movies, radio, CDs, video games, elevators, dentist waiting rooms - it's all filled with perfectly mixed sound. Musical theater, it seems, cannot compete. Opera is fine. Take a bunch of really loud singers and throw in a super-scripter, and you're all set. Plays are fine, too. After all, any music or "noises off" are simply turned down by the sound op so as not to get in the way of the actors. But musical theater has a unique problem. How do we get audiences to hear lyrics that sound as clear and close as the Black-Eyed Peas did in the car while maintaining that live, natural sound that theater relies upon to reach its audience. The answer: no one has any fucking clue.

Here's my theory. An audience enters into a sort of contract with the creators and performers of a theater piece. The audience agrees to work a little harder to hear and see than they do at home while watching reruns of Will and Grace. They agree to pay a little closer attention to the dialogue and lyrics beacuse they understand that theater is an all together separate medium from the electronic ones. They know they won't see real trees. They know the phone isn't really ringing. They know that when a character has left the stage, he's actually just hanging out in a room with green walls. Suspension of disbelief. Oh, they'll suspend their disbelief for movies and TV, too, but they may not be willing to work quite as hard to follow and understand as they do in a live theater. They don't have to - Schumacher has made sure that his 64+ tracks of audio are mixed so that every single sound and word is heard perfectly. They get it - they know that each performance of a piece is special because of the unique combination of cast and audience. There's electricity, chemistry (call it what you will). Al Pacino may be incredible in Dog Day Afternoon, but he's the same incredible every time it's shown. Put him on stage, though, and from night to night, each audience experiences something slightly different - Tuesday he's on fire, Wednesday he's slightly off, Thursday he's frightening, etc.

So, how do we do it? How do we make sure the audience hears exatly what we want? How do we make sure that the trumpets can rip, that the bass and drums can groove with power, and that the leading lady can be heard as she quietly descends into a breakdown? There's choir mics - little condensors that hang from the grid above and pick up a wide range of sound (including dialogue, foot-stomping, curtain rails being pulled, and sets being wheeled on and off). There's lavs (lavalier, or body mics - mics that are worn by each actor - that send their information to the sound board not via wire but via radio signal). There's handheld mics (these are usable only for rock-concert-like settings). There's floor mics (like choir mics, they're small condensors placed at the foot of the stage - a problem because the actors tend to speak and sing out to the audience rather than down to the floor). But that's not all. It's not enough to pick up the sounds being made on the stage. Now you have to amplify them and send them to the audience. This is where theater enters "sound hell":

So, do you have a video camera? Go get it. Great. Now, plug it into the nearest TV. Got it? Great. Turn it on and aim it at the TV. Trippin', right? that's called feedback, or a video loop. It's like standing between two mirrors. Each image is feeding into the next creating an unending loop of image after image. Well, it turns out, sound meas loops, too. Get the mic too close to the speaker and you'll make a loop. You've heard it before. Every sappy movie ever made that has a scene with our hero standing uncomfortably at a mic and revealing to us what he's learned and how he's growm has a moment of feedback. It's that high-pitched squeal. So, now you've got a bunch of mics on the stage - if you're using choir mics or floor mics it's going to be worse - and speakers nearby aimed at the audience. Now, what's your theater space made of? If it's got hard walls (brick, concrete, panelling) then it has the potential to magnify the feedback loop greatly.

Anyway, I'm sick of that. But I think you get the idea. Now, don't get me wrong, it's all surmountable. But a theater's going to need to invest a lot of money, effort, and time into getting things right. And, to make things even more difficult, things are going to change from production to production. Check out this article about a theater that finally got it right - and then look at how much it cost:

http://www.meyersound.com/markets/theatre/circus.htm