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Comment by Richelle Thompson on December 25, 2012 at 8:23pm

I'm not a teacher or director... but in the 3rd grade we didn't even have a sound system and everyone heard us, so I would agree with the previous comments about projection.

As for your wireless... I would start by figuring out why your wireless aren't working once they leave your hands. Are they getting turned off? A little piece of electrical tape over the switch will fix that - from little fingers or simply getting "bumped" off. Are the batteries dying? New batteries every performance. Are you having frequency problems? A little more complex, but a little finessing and antenna placement can make a world of difference. If you're using older or low/medium price range microphones, you may be running into maxing the available number of mics in your frequency band. Spend some time with adults and no kids to work things out with less pressure. I've put up a lot of other wireless trouble shooting on my blog - check out back posts for the "Care and Feeding of Wireless Microphones." (Not to self promote, but to save rewriting it all here! :)

Area micing is tricky even in static conditions... it's hard to suggest a "catch all" kind of mic for multiple venues. My stand-by is the Crown PCC, but it isn't the best for 'the multitude'.

Hope you find some solutions!

Cheers,

~R

Comment by Douglas Fox on December 21, 2012 at 12:00pm

Speaking as one who has directed many such elementary school productions, it starts with the director teaching how and then insisting that the students learn to project! (good old diaphragmatic speech). I'm constantly reminding them to speak so that "Grandma in the back row with the hearing battery that's dying can still hear you. We don't need her shouting 'Eh, what did you say!?' during the show."

As for mics - head mics can work -- if you can get them to fit well and them keep the kids from fiddling with them and the battery packs -- the most common cause of them not working - little hands playing.

I've tired both over the ear (oh do they play with those) and classic style through the hair top of forehead placement -- works IF they have hair (boys here love close cropped hair) -- even then, they play with them -- tho' that placement does give better results and has the added benefit that if gain is correct can pick up another person (such as minor role) standing near to them.

we use a combination of worn and boundary-effect floor mics -- and LOTS AND LOTS of practice to sing/speak loudly enough to be heard easily without the mics.

I abhor overheads for stage performance as they all to often get in the way of the set, cast unsightly shadows and have to be hung extra low for them to pic up the little folk. While they are great for choirs (but still lousy aesthetically), they are too much trouble in my opinion for stage shows.

Also, we only mic the lead roles, not the entire chorus and minor roles; that's what the floor mics are for.

No magic solution, except to realize that it is not possible to on most school budgets to do Broadway level production and that it being a school production the parents will cut you lots of slack.

Now get that director (and music director too) to really work on enunciation, articulation, and PROJECTION!

Comment by David McCall on December 20, 2012 at 11:43am

The problem may be mostly with the kids refusing to speak up and speak clearly they can do it they just don't. You have to get them to speak loud enough that they can be heard in the audience. If you can't hear them at all, the wireless mics are probably not going to help much.

I find that a digital console does seem to help. IT will give you better control. THE kids tend to be all over the map in their volume, so I put quite a bt of compresion individually on each channel to even them out a bit. WE also use the gains on each channel to set the level for each child such that their normal level will be at "0" (unity gain) so that you aren't always guessing what level to use.

We use Shure mics as well and they are working well for us. The actual mics that we use are from http://www.microphonemadness.com/ and cost just over $100 each. We also bought some very nice QSC KW speakers and they made a huge difference too. If you can't hear them at all without mics, then none of this will help much.