DESIGN TEAM’S JOB

This is where the designer gets busy. From this point on the designer will be around most of the time. The designer’s job is to help shape the sound of the show into what the director and music supervisor want. His job is to work with the mixer on EQ’ing the system and the mics so they sound natural. His job is to build sound cues, or have them built. It is not uncommon for the designer to have someone on his team build the sound cues or even have them built by someone not at the theatre. A designer on a musical is constantly looking for why things don’t sound natural and is trying to fix it. He is working a couple of steps ahead of everyone else to ensure things go smoothly. A designer might realize that a scene sounds bad because two actors are just too close to each other and he can ask the director to position them slightly differently to make the scene sound better. He can work with the dresser of the lead actors to find a good mic placement they can help maintain. He can look ahead to figure out how to deal with the problem a hat will bring.

On Wicked there was a big challenge with getting Idena Menzel to sound good when she wore the witch’s hat. After trying different placements and EQs it became obvious that the problem required more action. Tony Meola, the sound designer, worked with the costume designer to find a way to put a mic pack in the witch’s hat and have the mic run to the brim. That completely fixed the sound and made the end of Act I sound infinitely better. When Tony does a show he has a tradition of giving out shirts with the show logo and some sort of nod to the sound system of the show. For Wicked the shirt had the normal Wicked logo with the addition of a black dot on the brim of the Wicked Witch’s hat.

Probably the most important job of the sound designer in tech is to create a sound at the mix position that properly represents the sound throughout the house. For the mixer to be able to mix the show, it is crucial that he or she has a good reference point to mix from. If the show sounds perfect in the mixer’s chair but is ear-bleedingly loud in the mezzanine or desperately quiet in the middle of the house, then there are going to be problems. This is something that is completely out of control for the mixer. There is no way the mixer can know how the show sounds in the rest of the house. All the mixer can do is to make it sound good in his chair and it is up to the designer to match that sound in the rest of the house. I have worked on shows where the designer has a speaker hung specifically pointed at the mixer so the designer can replicate the sound in the rest of the house for the mixer.

It is not always realistic to make the mix position sound perfect. In that case, the designer has to explain to the mixer what the difference is in his chair. I have had designers walk the house with an SPL meter and come back and explain to me that my position is 3dB quieter than the rest of the house. If the designer can find a way, it is a good idea to have the mixer walk the house to hear what the rest of the room sounds like. As a mixer, you have to be able to merge what you hear with what the audience is hearing and sometimes mix something that sounds wrong to you because you know it is right everywhere else in the house. Low-end is a perfect example of this. Almost every mix position in the country is in a bass trap. When you are mixing you will feel like there is way too much low-end in your system. Then you walk ten feet in front of the console and realize you can’t hear the bass at all. It is up to the designer to help the mixer understand what the pocket is and to define the parameters for staying in that pocket.

It may also be necessary for the designer to analyze his mixer and trick his mixer into mixing the show a certain way. If the mixer constantly under-mixes the vocals, which means to mix them in a way that they are not loud enough, then the designer may need to adjust the system so the vocals are quieter at the mixer’s chair than anywhere else, which will cause the mixer to mix the vocals a little hotter and thus balance the sound in the house better. It may be that the mixer mixes the band too loud and the designer needs to make the band louder at the mix position to get him to mix the band quieter. A good sound designer will be overly concerned with the sound at the mix position. A good designer will try to get the SPL as close as possible at the mix position as it is everywhere in the house.

As I stated earlier, the designer’s job is to create an environment in which the mixer can succeed. If a great mixer is working with a designer who can’t EQ or balance a system, there is no way the show will sound good. If a great designer is working with a less experienced mixer, then the designer can analyze that mixer’s strengths and weaknesses and do what he needs to do to get the mixer to mix a better-sounding show. The reality is that a musical can only sound as good as it is mixed. A good sound designer will know that and work with the skill level of the mixer to achieve the highest quality sound. It may be necessary to fire the mixer if he really can’t cut it, but this is never a good situation. There is just no easy way to transition from one mixer to another.

Several years ago I designed a national tour of a show that toured the country for three years. The mixer who was hired was not a very experienced mixer. As we got into tech I realized he didn’t have the chops to mix the show the way it should be mixed. We were having tons of missed pickups and sloppy mix levels. I had to sit down and look at this mixer’s skill level and adjust how the show was mixed. I simplified the mix from 12 DCAs to 8. Instead of having Men and Women on separate faders I made it All. I did anything I could to simplify how the show was mixed. The result was a much better sounding show than I started tech with. As the mixer toured the show, he became a better mixer and started moving the mix back to what I had wanted, which was a bit more complicated but allowed for an even better sound. I consider that my job when I am a designer, and I know a producer wants to hear a good sounding show more than my excuses. When we were working on this show, the producer asked me what the problem was with the mixer and I said it was a hard show to mix. I have been friends with this producer for years and he looked at me and said, “You say that about every show,” and I looked at him and said, “Every show is hard to mix if it is mixed correctly.”