One of the trickiest final touches to producing a musical is getting the sound just right. Former PCVS student, musician, teacher and incredible sound technician Andrew Shedden, offers some tips for successful sound engineering for a musical! SOUND REINFORCEMENT TIPS FOR MUSICAL THEATRE By: Andrew Shedden Here are some ideas to help improve the quality of your sound reinforcement for your next musical theatre production. These tips can be applied to live bands or other AV situations as well. 1.) Sound Reinforcement vs. Sound ENFORCEMENT- Make sure when you’re mixing audio that you’re taking into account the acoustics of the room in which you’re working. Listen to the sound of the actors unamplified to get an idea of how resonant or dead the space you are working in will be. Good sound reinforcement for musical theatre shouldn’t be readily apparent to the audience. They aren’t coming to your show to hear your great speakers. They want to hear the sound of the actors. Running your show at too high of a volume can also result in unwanted reflections which will make things sound muddy. Remember that your job is sound reinforcement; work with the natural acoustics of the room and build on them where necessary. 2.) Over-Prepare- Always have extra cables, batteries, etc. Multiple redundancy means that when something goes wrong, you have the solution readily available. 3.) Subtractive Versus Additive EQ- This is a general tip for sound reinforcement. Say for example one of your vocalists sounds too trebly (high) through your mains. Before you turn your bass frequencies up to compensate, try rolling off some of the high end instead. Turning an EQ up can add unwanted coloration to your singer’s tone (particularly on older boards). There will be situations when additive EQ will be useful as well, but try subtractive first. The Little Mermaid sound crew follows Andrew's tips #3 AND #4, during a performance. 4.) Headroom- Ideally your program should NEVER hit 0 on your meter. I like to run my program at an absolute maximum of -3. Going over 0 on your meter can result in damage to your speakers, amps and other components in your system. 5.) Organization and Safety- Cables can be a big trip hazard, particularly when working with dancers and dark stages. Gaffers tape is your friend. Keeping your cables organized can also help to make trouble shooting quicker. These are just a few general tips! I hope they prove helpful in your next production. If you have any specific questions about AV, you can reach me here: [email protected]
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January 2018
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