Season Time

Theatre Bristol is in the middle of discussions for its 50th Anniversary season.  In this process there are a lot of conversations by all members of the board and staff. I have given some suggestions, and the one I am most hopeful for is a musical called "The Burnt Part Boys" by Tysen and Miller.  Please allow me to make a circle to explain why I think this is a perfect choice for Theatre Bristol.

My hometown is Bristol, TN. Also know as the Birthplace of Country Music, because the first county music recordings were done there. As part of the heritage of Bristol, a city that sits on the TN and VA state line and has "the worlds fastest half mile" NASCAR track, the city helped found an organization called "the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance".  The BCMA hold concerts, brings in entertainers, and holds a yearly 3 day festival every year (Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion).  The R&R Festival is a HUGE deal in town, 17 stages, each with 16 to 20 acts over the weekend. Ralph Stanley, Sam Bush, Doc Watson, The Avett Brothers, John Cowan, Langhorne Slim, Del McCoury, and Emmylou Harris.  

Theatre Bristol is a venue for the festival every year, the 120 seat theatre has amazing acoustics, so much so that WETS-FM (the local NPR station) records the performances to air at later dates on Rhythm and Roots Radio. 

The Burnt Part Boys is set in a West Virginia coal mining town in the 1960's and told with music that fits the R&R style. 

I suggested the dates be the weekend before R&R and the 2 weeks after. With the festival taking place on the set for the show. I also suggested teaming up with BCMA to help find the needed musicians needed to play for the show. Also negotiating the contract with BCMA to allow Theatre Bristol to have their stage for 1 hour to do a sing thru of the music. If BCMA was interested in reaming up with Theatre Bristol I think this could be a once in a lifetime event. The writers of the show might be interested in coming in and being a part of the performance. 

To me there is nothing more than showcasing the towns heritage and theatre has a very unique way of doing it.  The Barter Theatre has written numerous pieces that follow Ralph Stanley, The Carter Family, and others. This last year they did a production of Ring of Fire at the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, VA.  BCMA and Theatre Bristol should be teaming up yearly to do just this type of show. It is not only good PR for both organizations but also shows how involved both are with the community as a whole, instead of one doing shows and the other putting a festival on once a year.

orchestra

I recently did a major musical, and when I say recently I mean it closes tomorrow.  Well to save money, we decided to not hire any musicians and rent the computer genterated track from real-time music solutions.  Sinfonia. Oh the bain of my life for the last 4 weeks.

Sinfonia is what i call Sibalus for beginners, only you can't program the music into the computer. Sure you can control tempo's and keys and even repeats and vamps. You can also control individual volumes on instruments as well as muting them. Sinfonia is supose to be a orchestra suppliment, meaning you have 3 or 4 musicians in your pit and the computer plays along with them. We didnt do that.

I'm glad we didn't. While the orchestrations are nice, the issue was volume with the tracks themselves. Example, when you open the program for the first time all instruments are at 100. If you think of it like a soundboard 100 actually is 0, 0 would really be -100 and 200 would be +100, Understand.

So lets start the first song.

Oh thats sounds nice, wait where did the music go?, Oh there it is, HOLY CRAP WHY IS IS SO LOUD.

No joke that was the first 2 minutes of the first number. Now imagine having to sit down and edit every song and every point where the music could be at a more constant level. I'm not talking equal volume the whole show, I mean barely anything showing up on the sound board sensors to everything peaking in the matter of a measure. 

So for 2 weeks I edited and fixed and worked on everything. Then load in occured and we went into the theatre.

Everything I had mixed and edited was trash, but the problem was the show didnt sound right at all. I called Sinfonia and they didnt know what the problem was, in fact they still don't.

While our audience likes the orchestrations and they sound good, my suggestion, ude at your own risk first. It may make your life a lot harder as a sound designer.  I didnt get a decently sounding run thru until the night before opening, and after rehearsals it would be the director and myself in the parking lot working on 2 to 3 hours of notes on just sinfonia.

The sound guy's case

What is in my sound case?

First wig or toupee clips

I use these in alteration with bobby pins to attach a cable to someone.


Next would be Tagaderm tape and medical tape.

Tagaderm or medical tape is super useful to get microphone cables to attach to a person's body.  The great thing about Tagaderm is that is it super hard core and doesn't come off easily. The bad thing about Tagaderm is that it is super hardcore and doesn't come off easily.  It leaves a residue on the cable that is hard to get off. But I have a remedy for that too.

Isoporpyl Alcohol this can sanitize a surface but also can take tape residue off a mic cable.

Floral wire

#30 to be exact.

Its small and can be bent and moved easily.  If I am using a wig line mic on someones face I wrap the floral wire with it about 3 inches from the end then take the wire down to the edge about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch from the head of the microphone. wrap it around the cable once then bend down just before you come to the head.  This allows sweat to drip off the mic without damaging the physical mic. 

For one show I had 8 lapel mics and needed head mics (it was RENT) and so I made head contraptions out of small gauge electrical cable (single style) and attached the mic to the cable using spike tape.  If the cable was blue, orange tape was used. Pink/ green... so on and so on.

There was a sound blog that actually suggested a certain kind of marker in different colors as well as finger nail polish and nail polish remover to repaint the cable to hide in peoples hair and skin tone better. I don't do this but I have thought about trying it.

Would you make the same decision…

Recently, I got an email from the school asking me to take part of a survey. What my school wanted to know was how extensive did my education go for me, as well as how many types of papers I did versus test versus lectures versus types of classes I took. This was interesting to say the least, but while I was filling out the various answers, there was one question that just resonated with me.

If knowing what you know now, would you still choose this institution again.

My answer, NO.

Why, I was failed by this institution. You see, I am not the target audience that they are going for. I am not directly out of high school, I will be 30 this summer. So why should I be upset. From my first day on campus it was a cluster. It was truly a sense of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.  If I needed an answer to a question, I would go to one person, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else, who would send me to someone else. Literally, there was one entire day I spent running around the campus looking for certain people who others said had an answer but in fact didn't.

Then you have the bickering. My department has always had this issue. The professors just don't get along and from a students perspective, they don't want too. I had two of my good friends who used to be student liaisons. What they would do was be available to students who were having issues and then be invited to a department meeting and share these concerns with the faculty. The problem was, the issues the students were having were the professors not getting along. My friends, when they sat in this meeting, watched for 2 hours, as professors made snide comments, argued and berated each other for the entire meeting. Then closed the meeting with, "what's going on with the students?". Seriously, our problem is you.

That isn't even my main concern with the university. Its out for money, the general well being of the student body isn't a concern, instead getting more and more money from each student is. This could be from raising school "fees" more and more every semester, or requiring more gen-ed classes, or even more fees in general.

Let's attempt to break down the program service fee for ETSU. The only document I can find on the ETSU website comes from the 2011-2012 school year.

"The fee is based on the number of credit hours for which a student enrolls and is capped at $531.50 for freshmen and sophomores and $506.50 for all others.  It includes parking, athletics, student activities, and other items.  Students enrolling in certain courses or programs of study will also pay fees to cover additional program related costs."

from What You Should Know About Tuition and Fees

But that itself doesn't break it down, I couldn't get my hands on the most up to date breakdown of Tuition and Fees for the school.  That's ok though.

I recently signed up for summer classes and there is a $750 university charge per class and an additional $500 charge for the summer term. I think that is outrageous. The site doesn't break down what this fee is it just adds it all together.  I want to know what I am paying for.

The Tech Week Sickness

Tech week is a long process, the last year I have only had one show where it truly was a "hell week" but then you are talking about a MASSIVE show that I had been working on for 9 months.  It never fails that when you reach tech week on a show, the tech week sickness starts around the cast and crew. My tech week sickness is generally after tech week is over.  I think that this sickness comes from the lack of sleep and the lack of proper nutrition and food during the long week.

For a tech person, the sickness comes from where you are working. Theatre's are a dusty, dirty, contaminated public space. No matter how clean you keep your tech booth the rest of the theatre will still be dirty. That seat that you have by your board, how many people have sat in it and when was the last time the arms were sanitized. Door knobs are handled by how many people? Even the seats for audience members… think about those.  There are a lot of people that come in and out of the space, wood it cut in and around the space, things are painted, hairspray is sprayed. So there are many fine particulate that are floating around in the space. I worked in one space that in the 9 months I designed for them, they never once changed the air filters, thats not only a health hazard its a fire hazard.

My tech week sickness this time around came the week before tech week, and the week before I even loaded into the theatre. I was on spring break for school, and let me tell you this thing knocked me out. It lasted 18 days total.  It was terrible. It woke me up and made me start taking vitamins again.

Hiding a Microphone

Let's hid a microphone on a persons face.

NO THANK YOU

This is why I hate over the ear microphones. They are so obvious.  I have talked and talked with designers about this till I am blue in the face.  An over the ear microphone is more prone to harm then anywhere else. People sweat, actors have to kiss and breath. These mics pick up every bit of it and the audience doesn't want to hear that scratchy sound any more then they want to hear feedback.

Sure you can hid a mic in someones clothes, however if you want to hear the rustling of clothes be my guest.

I suggest that you place the mics as a wig-line or hair line mic. This is actually one of the best places on a persons face to pick up sound.

But what if the actor is wearing a hat, aren't you worried about sound reflecting off the brim? SURE

But the good part about hair line mics is that they can be moved.

The sound quality from a mic placed in the hair is much better then on the face itself. I have actually place standard lapel mics as wig line before and people working in the theatre would go "are they using one of the new ones?" UMMM, no remember that cheap lapel that came in the box, yeeah that's what they have.  I actually changed out 3 over the ear mics out for wig line during the run of a show once and the performers didn't want the over the ear mics back because they said they sounded better.  The wig line mic is a better view for the audience as well, think about how you take an audience member out of the moment when they see the over the ear mic on a actors face, with a wig line they done have to see any of that.

Microphones and the theatre

No matter if we as theatre people want it or not, microphones are here to stay in theatre. As a sound reinforcement the audience needs to be able to properly hear a performer. The acoustics of a theatre today are different from that of 50 and 100 years ago. The older theatre's were designed to project the sound properly to the audience members. In a series of post I will go into the various types of mics, the various places to place them and hide them, and lastly various items and things that every sound person might need to help change a mics color, hide a mic, and even protect the microphone from body sweat.

Over the past 6 years I have done numerous musicals. All of the theatre's claim that one style of microphone is better then another.  I for one think this is untrue. While I have my preference no-one microphone type (not brand) is better then another.

There are a few types of microphone, DPA is one of the top brands that you can purchase or rent.  They offer two types themselves. The miniature mics and the headset mic

The miniature mic is similar to a lapel style, but a smaller head that is easier to conceal. This mic can actually have an adapter to make it a lapel style mic. 

This mic is best for lapel or wig line. Both of which I will go into more detail in a later post. 

Most theatre companies and rental houses in the region only use one type of microphone, that would be AudioTechnica.  These mics packs are pretty good. However, the mics themselves are terrible. I actually replaced 30 AudioTechnica over the ear mics with microphones from Microphone Madness. A replacement mic from AT runs around $250 but the MM mics cost $100. Based on price, the MM mics sound like they are cheap and terrible. however they are more durable and better quality.

The second type of microphone is the over the ear style. This microphone is exactly as it sounds, the fits over the ear of the performer and rest within a few inches of the performers mouth.  The boom of the mic is reasonably flexible and can be adjusted on each performer, within reason. I have see numerous mics broken because performers will bend and adjust the mic over and over again on their face, breaking wires in the boom.

All these microphones are still fragile, users need to always remember that. When you bend a microphone repetitively the insides wires and cables can break. Another thing that can go into breaking a microphone quickly is passing a microphone between users.  Yes, you can pass a mic, however you need to teach every person how to do this. I stood backstage at a show once that had 30 mic passes between 10 mics. I saw people literally take the over ear mic off and pull the pack up thru their dresses by the cable, then throw it on the table and walk away. And this theatre company wonders why they spend 3 grand on replacement mics and repairs a season. 

I was at the mic rental house I use a few weeks back talking to the guy I use. He was telling me how they are no longer going to rent over the ear mics, why you might ask?  they rented 8 a few weeks before for a show for 5 days, when they were returned only 2 were in working order. 

When I bought the MM mics, I asked some twitter people what they thought of the company. I was told only use them on children cause they could break and who cares you are out less money.  When I replaced the first 10 mics for a theatre, let me say how much better the MM mics stood up against the destruction that was this theatre. The only issue I had with them was the wires would come out of the plugs (remember pulling up thru dresses).