I’m sitting to write this blog between projects – cleaning up holiday gunk and writing a strike list. When this blog posts, the ASF Christmas musical, Peter Pan, will be about to launch into its final week of performance, closing with a matinee on New Year’s Eve.

This particular production is my 3^rd trip to the Peter Pan rodeo – the second as a designer, and in a backwards way, the second time as an operator. (I’ll get to that in a minute.) Pan has been THAT show for me… part Pandora’s box, part Scottish Play, part case study of Murphy’s Law… Now, that said, I make no aspersions on the productions themselves. All three productions I’ve been a part of (one at the Utah Shakespearean [now Shakespeare] Festival in 2000, and two at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2007 and 2010 respectively) have been charming audience pleasers with talented casts and designers. However, my own personal experiences with the first two trips to the Pan Rodeo were nearly enough for me to throw in the theatre towel once and for all. I will forgo the gory details to spare the innocent, or to show mercy to those who suffered with me from reoccurring nightmares, but in summary, both drove me to drink. SO! You can imagine my surprise when the third trip actually started out fairly respectably. And, with only a few per-the course obstacles, opened without me owing my soul to the liquor store. The show still got me in the Murphy’s Law way. Due to unfortunate circumstances, I ended up first being the mic wrangler, then doing playback and orchestra mix for about two. Only on Pan.

This long preamble is a warm up to one of the most talked about sound topics… the musical.

Let me start out by saying that I’m not a musical hater. In fact, many of my favorite shows are musicals. Nor do I think we should stop doing musicals. But speaking from the role of audio supervisor and resident designer in regional theatre, where musicals are the exception, they pose an interesting challenge. 80% or greater of our season is NOT musical. So, what does this really mean for audio? That 20% or less of my season program is a completely different animal. Let me break this down a little more.

As a resident designer who is also the audio supervisor (unlike electrics who have a lighting designer and a master electrician, or the scene shop who has a scene designer and a TD and/or shop foreman) the musical is the show where I’m most challenged by having dual roles, especially as video systems, cue lights, paging, and com are all a part of audio’s responsibility –AND it is a musical that puts all those systems to the test and the type of show that demands that I pay attention to them, yet as a designer, I have the least time to spend on them, since my ears and person are in use from start of tech through opening or longer.

Speaking as a supervisor, the musical is where staffing becomes a challenge. With playback being computer based, any intelligent, reliable person with some theatre experience can run playback with some basic training. Not so with a musical. Having an AUDIO ENGINEER or TWO is crucial. Something I’ve discovered as well, a very crucial personality is the mic wrangler. I can teach the skills necessary for just about anyone with a theatre background to run mics, but I cannot teach them the right personal skills, or change their personality. I’ve been burned by the blanket assumption that I just “need a body” in that role.

The musical is also where my gear is tested. I was incredibly lucky (blessed) to walk into a well geared department when I came to ASF. That said, it’s gear primarily for playback, with additions made to accommodate musicals. With the scale of the musical shows ASF is producing, I have to get creative. For example, the largest console I own is 40 channel board, with a 32 channel right behind it. With body mics and orchestra support numbering in the 80’s, I need 3 boards before we even add playback to the tally.

And then there are the mics themselves… the primary audio component in a musical. And wireless mics are, like so many things in technology, wonderful when they work, and you’re worst nightmare when they don’t.

So that’s REALLY what I want to talk about… and answer some of the most common questions I get. Some of what I’m going to share may be old hat if you’re an engineer/designer with several musicals under your belt. If you’re just starting out in sound, a lot of what I’m about to say probably reads like Japanese. But either way, I hope it’s
some useful information:

Chapter One in the care and feeding of wireless microphones – set-up.

The first place designers and engineers go wrong when using wireless is in the set-up process. And nothing misbehaves more so than a neglected wireless mic.

First off, know your gear. If you’re using a type or brand microphones for the first time, or a make and model you aren’t familiar with, get familiar. Look at the instruction manual. (If you don’t have one, you can probably find one online.) If you're like me, and don’t use wireless every show, a little brush up before hand certainly doesn’t hurt even though I’ve been using the same series of wireless mics since college. Make changes and adjustment with a mic system - make sure you know what your system is capable of and how to use its features – long before the pressure of tech. With the 700 MHz ban of the FCC, I just bought a new bank of wireless mics. They have a heck of a lot more bells and whistles than the older systems we own, so I took a little time and read up. Glad I did – it saved me time and stress.

And time is always an issue in theatre – but there are things that are worth taking or making time for – and enough time to set-up and test your wireless system is one of them. After reviewing my gear, I make sure that my crew and I have adequate in space time to set-up and test everything we’re going to use. I’ve opted to work alternate calls (evenings or late nights) during load-in in order to accommodate the time I need rather than forgo set-up time. I have never regretted that choice.

The place to start is antenna/receiver placement. Many theatres were built without a musical mix position in mind, so wireless mic racks often live in dark corners under balconies, or stuffed into alcoves in the wings. Every wireless system is different, so that situation may be ok. On the other hand, it may be a guarantee for signal drop-out before your actors see the stage. If you have the budget/rental option to use powered antennas, do so – then you just have to find a home for the antennas rather than an entire rack. If you’re stuck with using the antennas on the mic receiver units themselves, the rule of thumb is line of sight. This means the dark corner under the balcony is only ok if the rack is high enough to clear all that metal hidden in your theatre seats – not to mention all the bodies and respective pieces of technology your audience may bring into the theatre with them. One of the best ways to find the “sweet spot” in your building is to simply power your system up and try your receivers in different places – see where you get the best reception. As long as you can get a snake there to pick up audio, try to find what works best. It may not be where you think… as was the case at the Utah Shakes. Wireless manuals will tell you that company switches, dimmers, and other places where building power run are bad for reception. Except that in the indoor space, the best location for reception is offstage behind the stage right torm – right next to a breaker panel.

Following reception, an absolute key to wireless performance is frequency selection. Preselect frequencies and check them. There are great resources online about picking frequencies – many of them from mic manufacturers, which is a great place to start. All towns/cities/buildings have frequency issues. Newer model wirelesses often have frequency scanning to check for open frequencies too. If they do, take advantage of the feature. Either way, once you have your mics set, turn them all on and check them for common problems in a controlled environment, so you know what your hearing IS or ISN’T a frequency issue.

On the same line, have your gear prepared well in advance. It sounds kind of basic, but know your show, and know your cast. It’s a lot easier to choose the right mics elements if you know what the actor looks like, not to mention when that actor does what and when. If you have 10 actors who need mics, make sure you have 10 wireless mic packs with elements tuned to 10 receivers that are labeled with those actor’s names or characters long before you’ll ever need to mic them up (plus a spare or two). Don’t leave mic pack assignments and element choices to the day of or on a “as you hand it out” basis. That’s a great way to get really confused. The bigger the show, the more important this is. For my current show of Pan, we’re running 30 wireless mics and three spares. Had I gone into tech without knowing what mic pack was what and who was wearing what element, we would still be trying to get the mix right a month after opening.

Pre-gain your mic systems. Sure, you’re going to make adjustments once you have the actual actor in the pack, but it’s a lot easier to have a place to start from that the sensitivity of the mic is gained appropriately on the pack and isn’t pegging out a receiver, or receiving so little signal you don’t even know if the pack is working or not.

Plan your console mic layout. Figure out (by actor or character) the mics you’re going to use together, and the mics you’ll use the most. Group them on the end of the console or center of the console – whatever makes the most sense based on if you’re left or right handed, where your masters are, and the size of your board. Yes this really makes a difference, especially if you’re mixing on the fly with an analogue console. For example, in Peter Pan, Wendy and the two Darling Boys Michael and John are often in scenes together. Wendy and Peter Pan also have several scenes together. So it makes logical sense to put Wendy’s mic between the boys and Peter on the console.

Once you’ve set up everything and tested the components, fire everything up once more and test it all again. If it’s done in advance, the first day tech can be about setting EQ and fine tuning gain – a much lower stress situation than scrambling to get things working.

That’s all for now, cats and kittens. Another installment in the care and feeding of wireless mics next week. Cheers until next time. ~R