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DIFFERENT LEVELS OF THEATRICAL SOUND
The next important thing to discuss is the different levels of theatrical sound. No one starts off as a mixer on Broadway. Everyone started somewhere and worked his or her way up. The crucial point I would like to make is that it doesn’t matter what level you are at or what the budget is, the methods and goals of mixing musical theatre are always the same. We are there to help shape the emotional arc of the show. Inevitably, you will have better gear on a Broadway show than on an Off-Off Broadway show, but that doesn’t mean you treat the product any differently and it doesn’t mean you can’t still have an amazing show. One of my all-time favorite moments as a designer was working with a mixer in a small 150-seat theatre on a musical. We had some beat-up old Ramsa speakers for the mains and about 30 JBL Control Ones for delays and surrounds, and the board was a Mackie. There was one moment in the show that just gave me chills and that moment remains more impressive to me than some of the moments I have heard on a million-dollar sound system.
As a mixer it is important to set goals for yourself and to know that in every situation you can learn something. The lesson may not be clear for months or years to come, but if you look out for it you will find the lesson. Also it is important to learn the techniques used at the levels above yours and adapt those techniques as best you can to where you are. If you learn mic’ing and mixing techniques, you can add them to your bag of tricks. In the end that is what it is all about—building a bag of tricks so that when you run into a situation, you can pull something out and have a solution to a problem.
As you grow as a mixer you have to set goals. There is a path to success as a mixer. If you know what level you want to get to, then you set your sights on that goal and know that there is a road that will lead you to that goal. One advantage we still have as sound people is that there simply aren’t enough of us out there. If you put yourself out there and work hard it will be noticed and you will be snagged by someone and you will move up. A big key to this is staying open to knowledge. Keep in mind that people above you are there for a reason and they probably know something you can learn. Don’t ever close yourself off to that. If you are convinced that you are the smartest person in the room, then you are done growing and you will surely miss out. Mixing is a skill that is passed on from generation to generation. Stay open to it.
Small-scale and Off-Off Broadway
So you got a job mixing a musical for a 50-seat blackbox theatre and you are getting paid less than the barista at your local Starbucks, and yet you are excited about the opportunity. Good for you and congratulations. Welcome to the business. This is a great place to get started. It usually requires a younger person who is more interested in the art than the money, and it is usually a great community of people that can quickly start to feel like a second family. There is nothing like eating, sleeping, and breathing theatre.
The pitfalls of this level of theatre really come down to budget. There is never enough money at this level to get the top-notch gear. The challenge is to learn how to do amazing things with nothing. The beauty of this level is that it is almost always about passion. From the producer to the director to the designer, people are working on a project because they are excited about the project. Sometimes they are doing it just because they love the process. The results can be truly awe-inspiring.
The warning at this level is the same warning I feel at all levels, but it is a good one to learn right off the bat. The question is, what is the difference between a good sound mixer and a bad sound mixer? The good sound mixer knows what jobs not to take. There are times when you have to say no and there are times when you have to walk away. You have to learn to size up a job and know whether it is a disaster in the making. If you take a job that is destined for failure, then that black mark is on you. If you take a show where they want you to mix a rock musical with a live rock band onstage using area mics for the vocals and you take the job, then you will be remembered as the person who ruined their show.
As hard as it may be, there are times when you have to walk away. I have turned down many jobs because I didn’t think I could pull it off. The result is that the jobs I have done have mostly been successful. Of course there are some that I should’ve turned down but didn’t and there are some that I couldn’t turn down because I needed the money. You do the best you can. Just know that sometimes walking away is the best thing you can do for your career.
If you have to do the job, then the next lesson is CYA. Cover Your A… It is acceptable to respectfully voice your concerns. There are times at this level when there is no sound designer. Sometimes you are mixer, designer, A2, and usher. One of my all-time favorite job postings actually read, “Looking for Sound Mixer. Duties include: setting up sound system, mixing shows, and cleaning the restrooms.” Needless to say I did not apply. When this is the case, you are the expert. The company actually needs you to let them know if something isn’t going to work. They may not be able to fix the problem and they may not accept it, but you have to tell them. Otherwise you will end up mixing a show with a rock band onstage in a 50-seat house with two shotguns pointed at the stage for vocals and then getting chewed out by the director because he couldn’t hear the lyrics. If you pointed out the problems in the beginning, then you have a leg to stand on. If you didn’t, then you have lost all credibility and you will either be replaced or never work for that theatre again. Believe it or not, even at this level where there is no budget and the pay is terrible, you can still get fired for mixing a bad show. Sound is just that important.
Now for a quick rant about area mic’ing. Unfortunately, it is very common for shows to use area mic’ing. Area mic’ing is when you take some PCC-160s, or boundary microphones, and some shotgun mics and place them around the stage and that is all you use to amplify the show. The result usually ends up being disappointing. Area mics are not meant to amplify more than about 10dB over the acoustic level and can only cover about 8 feet per mic, so you need lots of area mics, and the more mics, the more likely you will have feedback. There is a common misconception among non-sound people that you can hang a mic in a room and that mic can discriminate between all of the sound in the room and the sound of one voice and just amplify that one voice. It is hard to explain to people that it just doesn’t work that way. It is hard to convince them to give up on the area mic’ing idea, but if at all possible try to talk them out of it. If you are lucky, then you have built enough of a relationship with the theatre that they will trust your judgment; if not, then good luck.
Regional Theatre and Off-Broadway
Once you have stepped up to this level, you will start to see better gear and probably bigger designers. It is becoming more and more common for Broadway sound designers to design shows at regional theatres around the country. This has been the case for other design disciplines for decades, but it used to be that sound design for regional theatre was handled locally. As sound has grown to a more accepted and respected design field the regional theatres have stepped up their expectations. The positive benefit for mixers at the regional theatre level is that they now get exposure to more people. This makes it easier to make a move to the next level, if that is your goal.
Even though the budgets are bigger at regional theatres, there are still money problems. When dealing with a theatre that has a budget of $100, there is usually an understanding between all involved that whatever they get is the best they can hope for with that kind of budget. Of course, there are exceptions where they expect more, but usually they understand that there are things they can’t afford. The result is that they are more accepting of things like the thunder not rattling the house like they hoped, because they couldn’t afford the subs. But things are different at the regional theatre level. The problem here is that they actually spent real money on a sound system. It is not uncommon for a regional theatre to spend a large chunk of money on their sound system and when they do their expectations rise dramatically.
After a theatre spends $10,000 on 30 wireless transmitters, receivers, and lavalieres, they feel like they should have shows with no wireless mic problems. There are even times when they will come right out and say, “We just spent $10,000 on these wireless mics. Why are they crackling? Why are they sweating out? Why are they breaking?” The reality is that if you bought top-of-the-line wireless gear, then those 30 mics would cost between $150,000 and $200,000, but the last thing the theatre wants to hear is that they bought cheap gear that is going to cause more problems than it will fix. The most important lesson to learn from this is that if you find yourself working at a regional theatre and they want to spend money on their sound system, then make sure you guide them down the path of buying less gear that is of higher quality. Otherwise it is going to reflect on you when the cheaper gear doesn’t work.
When it comes to Off-Broadway, it is similar to regional theatre in the pay structure and budgets. The main difference is that regional theatre is not-for-profit whereas Off-Broadway is for-profit. This difference is huge in the way the two produce shows. The regional theatre has donors and receives grants for things such as the children’s theatre program. The regional theatre also has a subscriber base, which means that they can sell tickets a year in advance for their shows. The regional theatre builds a reputation over time and a subscription base by consistently providing a certain level of entertainment. The Off-Broadway show has investors and doesn’t start selling tickets until right before the show opens. There is no subscriber base and patrons buy tickets based on whether they want to see a particular show instead of knowing that the show will probably be good based on past experience with the company.
The Off-Broadway show usually does not own its own gear and usually rents a theatre that is a “four-wall theatre,” which means a theatre with no existing equipment. The show has to supply everything, which means the Off-Broadway show will rent gear from a sound shop and load it in. Off-Broadway, which by definition is a theatre in Manhattan that is between 100 and 499 seats, is treated almost identically to Broadway, which makes it great training ground for a mixer who wants to mix on Broadway. The designers are usually Broadway designers and there is always a chance that your Off-Broadway show will move to Broadway. Examples of this are Avenue Q, Urinetown, Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Noise/Funk. Regional theatres also transfer shows to Broadway on a regular basis. Some examples include The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Wonderland.
Off-Broadway being for-profit leads to very different ways of spending. The regional theatre is usually working on a budget that could be scheduled for years, whereas the Off-Broadway theatre has an immediate budget to get the show open and keep it running. The regional theatre is more likely to buy equipment that can be used for a decade, while the Off-Broadway would prefer to rent the equipment and have the shop take care of replacing gear as it breaks. In some ways the Off-Broadway show is easier to deal with because they are willing to buy and rent more expensive equipment, as they are not worried about the future as much as how the show sounds on opening night when the critics are in the audience. But, on the other hand, the Off-Broadway show is much less accepting of sound problems. For an Off-Broadway show, one bad review could close the show and the investors could lose their money, while a regional theatre can absorb a bad review without bankrupting the theatre.
In the end this level of theatre is a great training ground for anyone who wants to mix on Broadway. There are some amazing sound department heads around the country who do a great job training young mixers and there are some great people who work Off-Broadway who are highly skilled and have a wealth of information. Absorb as much as you can at this level and if you find that you are happy mixing and working at this level, then you have found your career. This level of theatre is typically the highest level of truly risky and artistic theatre. This is where you get to mix that show that isn’t commercial enough for Broadway but blows your mind. Mixing and working at a regional theatre can be highly fulfilling and mixing Off-Broadway can truly be exhilarating.
The next level just under Broadway mixing is touring mixing. There is a definite life cycle to a show. A show starts at a regional theatre and then transfers to Broadway. It runs for at least a year and then that show is remounted as a touring production. The first national tour of a Broadway show usually moves very slowly. When Wicked first started touring it would sit in a city for weeks or months at a time. The Phantom of the Opera holds the distinction of being the longest touring show in US history, and up until the day that tour closed its shortest stop was a couple of weeks. After most shows tour for a while, the show starts to shorten its time in each city. At first a show goes to what are called “A” cities. These cities have a large-enough population to sell tickets for long periods of time for a show, but after a show has been to all the “A” cities it starts going to the “B” cities. “B” cities can usually only sell an eight-show week’s worth of tickets. Next a tour starts hitting smaller cities and moves anywhere from twice a week to every day. Once a tour hits this level, it is called a “bus and truck one-nighter.” This cycle usually takes several years and after the bus-and-truck tour the show closes for good.
As a tour moves through its life cycle the show has to adapt to each level. At first it is possible to basically move a Broadway show from city to city. A load-in for a first national tour could be anywhere from two days to two weeks. Phantom’s load-in took almost ten days. But as the show starts moving more the load-ins have to get easier and take less time. This is accomplished by making changes to the equipment on the show to accommodate quicker load-ins. Also, the size of the show starts to shrink. A first national can take dozens of tractor trailers to move. Phantom took twenty-six 53′ trucks to move it. As a tour moves toward doing one-nighters the tour has to find a way to fit in fewer trucks. This helps make load-in quicker and saves tons of money on trucking.
The mixers who are mixing the first national tours are typically mixers at the top of their game. These are mixers who have toured for years and maybe even mixed on Broadway. These are well- paying jobs that are hard to get. The only way to get a mixing job on a touring Broadway musical is to be picked by the sound designer, which means you have to build a relationship with designers so they know they can trust you to tour their show. As a tour heads toward the one-nighter circuit, the pay decreases and the experience level is lower. At the one-nighter level many of the mixers are straight out of college or from a regional theatre. Most of the mixers on the first-national tours started out by doing a one-nighter tour and worked their way up.
If your goal is to mix on Broadway then doing a tour is almost essential. The knowledge you gain from touring just can’t be gained anywhere else. The budgets for tours are sometimes very close to budgets for a Broadway show and the equipment used on a tour is very similar if not identical to what is used on Broadway. Being a mixer requires you to know and understand a wide variety of equipment. Some of this equipment is so specialized and expensive that it just isn’t used outside of Broadway or touring. For that reason, if you want to clock some hours on a Midas XL8 then your best chance outside of Broadway is to find a touring position.
A lot of Broadway mixers were touring mixers and a lot of Broadway shows start somewhere other than New York. These shows have an out-of-town tryout to work out the bugs and tighten the story. In order for a mixer to pull this off, he will need to have an understanding of touring a show and how to load-in a show. There is no better training ground for mixers than touring. You learn the nuts and bolts and you learn to mix a Broadway scale musical with Broadway techniques. You also learn how to EQ and optimize a system. A bus-and-truck one-nighter tour can play 100 cities in 40 weeks. That is 100 venues that have to be EQ’ed. After you do that, you will have a strong understanding of how to EQ and you will be a pro at loading-in and out.
If you decide that you are interested in touring, there are several things you should know. The first is that it is hard work. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it isn’t and don’t do it if you are looking for an easy job. At the same time it can be incredibly fun. The normal schedule for a bus-and-truck one-nighter is an 8 am load-in followed by a sound check at 6 pm and a show at 8 pm. If it is a one-nighter then there is a load-out after the show. The day is over after the load-out, which will be done by 2 am. Then you climb on a bus and sleep while you are driven to the next city. If it is not a one-nighter, then you are off to the hotel.
On a bus-and-truck one-nighter, you spend most of your time living on a bus. Bus living is great. The bus is split into three lounges. The front lounge is like a living room. There is a couch on each side and a TV in front. There is a little kitchenette with a sink and refrigerator and a little dining table. There is also a bathroom that consists of a toilet and a sink. The middle lounge is the sleeping lounge. The sleeping lounge has six bunks on each side of the bus and a hall down the middle. There is a bottom, middle, and top bunk on the passenger side front and rear as well as the driver side. The bunks are not large but they are comfortable. A curtain is at every bunk and can be closed for privacy. A lot of the bunks now have 5.6” LCD TVs for watching movies. The back lounge is like a second living room. It usually has a wrap-around couch and a TV. There are bays under the bus to keep luggage.
If you have decided that you want to tour, then more than likely you will get a job on one of the smaller bus-and-truck tours. The first tour you do probably will not pay all that well, but that is acceptable if you just keep in mind that you are gaining the knowledge you need to move to the next level. You will most definitely work hard and you will learn more than you ever wanted to about being a stagehand. In the end that is what a mixer is—just a stagehand that specializes in mixing sound. If you think it is all about mixing, you are in for a surprise. Even though the bus-and-truck schedule sounds grueling, people have been doing it for decades. It is hard, but it can be incredibly enjoyable. As you move up to bigger and better tours, you will find that the work never gets easier.
I had a mixer who did a bus-and-truck tour for me and he did a great job. The following year he turned down an A1 position to take an A2 position on a bigger tour because he thought the tour sounded easier. There was a two-day load-in and the show was going to sit more often. I laughed and told him it doesn’t get easier, just bigger. The schedule on a tour like that is an eight-show week with two shows on Sunday followed by a load-out. The load-out can take anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, so you load-out until around 8 am. Don’t worry about eating. You will usually have a catered meal sometime that night. After load-out you sometimes go straight to the airport and fly to the next city and sometimes after you land you check in at the hotel and then go to the theatre for a 4-hour pre-hang, which is the part of the load-in where motors and truss are hung, among other things. My friend went from a grueling one-nighter schedule to an arguably more grueling sit-down schedule.
The whole point is that touring is the best thing you can do to learn your craft. And mixing sound is a craft. There is an art to it, but if you don’t know the nuts and bolts, you are only going to go so far. If you really want to succeed, you have to be a good stagehand first and a great mixer second. You can learn a lot about being a good stagehand from working in theatres in college or regionally or other places, but touring is an incredible experience that can’t be duplicated in any other way.
The toolkit for a touring sound person should include a crescent wrench, snips, a soldering iron, wire strippers, a multi-tool such as a Leatherman or a Gerber, a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers, a set of screwdrivers, a socket set with ratchet, gloves, a multi-meter for testing voltage, a Q-Box, a cable tester (that can test XLR, BNC, NL4, NL8, RJ-45), a P-Touch, and a cordless drill.
So this is the goal. Broadway is the crown jewel of musical theatre. If you are a sound mixer and you mix musicals then the highest level of mixing is Broadway. That is not to say that the best mixers are on Broadway or the best sounding shows are on Broadway, but that the highest level of talent, quality, budget, and scrutiny is in the heart of New York City beating away in less than 40 theatres that reside in a 15-block radius. People come from all over the world to see a musical on Broadway. The crews are top notch and the shows are impressive spectacles.
Broadway theatre is very different from other levels of theatre. There are unique practices and methods. There are special rules not found in other places. There are different unions and contract issues. There are budget issues and safety issues that are different. It is a different world and it is what we will break down for the rest of this book.
It has been mentioned before, but is worth discussing again. If you want to have a long and lucrative career in this business, you have to learn your place. You need to understand where you are in the pecking order and what your responsibilities are. More importantly, you need to understand what you are not supposed to do or say. You have to be careful not to overstep your boundaries. Sometimes the best answer is, “Let me check with the designer and I will get back to you.” You have to be careful not to commit to something that later the designer has to un-commit to. Some designers are laid back when it comes to things like this, but it is more common for designers to be very protective of communications between the sound team and the rest of the company. It would be a very long day if you, as the mixer, told the lead, “I would be glad to put your vocals in the monitors onstage,” because you would’ve just dug yourself into a hole that you may not get out of.
A designer is looking for a mixer who can mix a show, load-in a show, build a show, plan the build, and make the designer look good. Designers want the whole package. They want someone with a great ear who is humble enough to take notes. They want someone who can “protect” their design. That word is used a lot because the design is always under attack. You constantly get notes from cast, musicians, stage management, creatives, or producers about what they think should be louder or softer in the show. You have to know how to respond. If you take every note and follow it, then the sound of the show could drift from what the designer wants. Then you will have to explain to the designer why the show sounds the way it does. Of course, the most common way around this is to smile and nod and say you will fix it and then change nothing. Amazingly, people will usually hear the show and think you fixed it. You just never know where their notes are coming from. Are they sick? Did they fly recently? Did they have a big meal or a glass of wine just before coming to the theatre? A little-known fact is that digestion affects your hearing. While you digest food some blood leaves your head and goes to your stomach. This causes a loss of high-end frequencies and general SPL (volume).
You have to be confident enough to know what the designer wants the sound of the show to be and you have to protect it. Another acceptable answer is to say, “I am not allowed to change that without talking to the designer.” This will usually result in that person talking to the designer and if the designer agrees with the note, then the designer will call you and give it to you. I have worked on many shows where the designer lets the entire company know that no one is allowed to talk to the mixer about the sound of the show and that all notes go directly to the designer. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does.
You are a reflection on the designer. The way you look and handle yourself directly reflects on the designer. If you are rude, then it will get back to the designer and he or she will be less likely to hire you again. The way you dress is also important. As a mixer you do your job in the house with the audience. If you wear grungy t-shirts and torn jeans, you cheapen the Broadway experience for the audience and you show disrespect for your profession. Some designers are very particular about the way their mixers dress. Some may request that you wear a coat. There was one mixer on Broadway who was wearing grungy t-shirts and show management approached him and asked him if he could dress a little nicer out front. His response was, “That’s not in my contract. You can’t tell me how to dress.” This guy could be the greatest mixer in the world and the best production guy, but the fact is designers wouldn’t want someone who would say that to mix for them.
Loyalty is another important aspect to this business. If you do a good job for a designer, then that person will show some loyalty to you. The designer will do what he can to get you another show or more work. In turn, if you are working with a designer who has given you work then you should give him some loyalty as well. You do not take a job from a different designer without checking with your designer first, and you should make sure your designer knows and approves before you make a huge commitment. For all you know, the designer has a show for you that he just can’t talk about yet. In the end, what is important about loyalty is that it defines the relationship between a mixer and a designer. Once a designer finds a mixer he likes, he will try to hold onto that person and the only way to do that is to keep finding work for the mixer. As a mixer the unspoken truth is that the designer’s most important job is to find more shows to design. A mixer’s job, in the end, is to take care of the designer and do as much as you can for the designer so he can be free to find more projects. A good designer is never working on just one show. If the mixer does his job, then the designer can juggle multiple shows, and the more work the designer has, the more work the mixer has. It is a great symbiosis.