17
“You don’t have the emotional capacity to mix my musical.”
Arthur Laurents, director and writer of West Side Story and Gypsy, giving a note to a mixer.
Well, here is the big chapter on mixing. I saved it for last because it is the most important, but also you won’t get to this stage unless you do everything else. You have to plan the system and build it and load it in and program the console before you can mix. Once you have reached the point of mixing, then everything that preceded is in the past. You could’ve had the most perfect build and take-in and if you blow the mix then none of it counts. If you had a miserable load-in and made huge mistakes but you mix an incredible show, then most of your mistakes will start to fade into the past. I spend a lot of time on every step that comes before mixing so that each part of the process is as complete as it can possibly be, so I have nothing to think about when it is time to mix other than mixing, because it is all about the mix. This is what we do. We mix. This is why most of the time I call myself a “mixer.”
The problem with writing about mixing is there is no way to explain in words exactly how to mix. Mixing is like playing a musical instrument and there is no way you can write a perfect explanation on how to play the cello, any more than you can perfectly explain how to mix. What I can do, though, is explain some of the goals of mixing a musical and some of the tricks that are used to mix to achieve those goals. I can explain some of the sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors involved, and I can dispel some false assumptions about mixing and describe some habits that mixers can develop that will drive designers nuts.
First of all, being a mixer generally means feeling like a bit of a failure. If you are good at what you do, you will constantly critique your own mix and you will see all of the mistakes and flaws, even when the “mistakes” you hear are not even noticeable to an audience. Your ears will definitely be more critical than the average theatergoer’s, but that doesn’t mean we should be complacent about our mix. We can’t lower the bar because we know our mistakes are imperceptible. Instead we have to always raise the bar, because even if our mistakes are not noticeable on a conscious level, they can be perceived on a subconscious level and distort the audiences’ response to the show.
Mixing a perfect show is basically impossible. I have mixed an average of 300 musical theatre performances a year for the past 15 years and I don’t think I have ever finished a show and thought, “That was perfect. There is nothing I could’ve done better.” No matter how perfect your show, there is going to be a moment where an actor was too close to another actor and caused a change in the sound or a musician played something slightly differently and you didn’t catch it or you were slightly too hot on a pickup. There are just too many variables to mix a flawless show. That is not to say that you can’t walk away feeling good about your mix most of the time, but you will be a better mixer if you are highly critical of your mix. You will be in demand if you do not settle. You will excel if you demand excellence. I am pretty sure my grandmother had a pillow with that last sentence stitched on it, but no matter how cheesy it sounds, it is true.
When we tech a musical we tend to get only a couple of passes at a scene and maybe a run or two before we have an audience. It is just the way it works. We sit in the dark for days as the lighting designer works his magic and when he is ready we run a scene. If he needs to run it again, then we do. Otherwise we move on to the next scene. Most Broadway mixers take pride in being invisible. We don’t want the audience to notice that we are amplifying the show. We dread being mentioned in a review and we never want to hear the words, “Holding for sound,” during tech. Our job is to nail everything perfectly every time we do it. In sound we are only as good as the last show we mixed… the last scene… the last song… the last word. Any flaw, and we are exposed like vampires caught in the sunrise. Lighting could lose a dozen lights at once and the audience might not notice, but bring up one mic by accident and amplify an actor offstage flushing a toilet and everyone will notice.
With the schedule being what it is, this usually leads to a first preview that leaves the mixer feeling like he ran a marathon: drenched with sweat and exhausted from trying to mix a two- or three-hour show at full-speed for the first or second time and possibly with the cast finally singing full out, which blows any mix you thought you had nailed down. The result of this is usually a period of time where you just want to crawl into a hole and hide. The most important thing to remember is to make your pickups. If you make your pickups, you will mostly be forgiven for balance or EQ issues. If you make your pickups, the director and producer will give you time to get the rest of it straightened out, but if you are constantly missing pickups you are headed for, as my mixer friend Chad Parsley calls it, a “Come to Jesus” meeting with the designer. If you are missing pickups, people will go to the designer and complain and then the designer will come to you. There is a window when you will be ignored, which is before the audience arrives. Until there is an audience watching the show, sound will mostly be ignored, but once butts are in the seats, sound becomes of utmost importance. You have to realize that, as a mixer, your main job is to turn the mics on and off at the right time. That’s it. If it doesn’t sound good they will blame the designer, but if the mics aren’t on they will blame the mixer.
So what do I mean by a pickup? The way we mix musicals is typically called “line by line” mixing or “one fader at a time.” Our goal is to have as few mics open as possible at any given moment. If only one person is talking, then we only want one mic open. If only the guitar is playing, then we don’t need the other 46 mics in the pit open. If three people are singing at the same time, we need all three mics open. We follow the script and we slap faders in and out as fast as we can. He talks. She talks. He talks. They talk. He talks. 1, 2, 1, 1&2, 1.
Why do we mix like this? Directors and producers ask this question a lot. I can’t count the number of times I have been asked why we don’t just turn all the mics on for the people onstage. Well, there are several reasons. The first reason is that it just doesn’t sound good. If you have ten open mics and only one person talking, the sound of those open mics will make it harder to understand what is being said. It will change the sound of the room and make the speaker more distant. It will sound very similar to area mic’ing because an actor’s mic picks up his or her voice, but so does the mic that is 10 feet away, which adds to the reverberant, or ambient sound discussed.
The next reason is “phasing.” Phasing is the sound of one voice being picked up by two microphones and being amplified. Technically what is happening is that the voice is being picked up by each mic at different times, depending on how far apart the actors are from each other. The waveform from each mic is being pushed through the speaker and because they are slightly delayed from each other, the result is the signal has some comb filtering as it is being amplified, which causes certain frequencies to be altered, thus changing the sound of the actor and bringing attention to the sound system as the actor’s voice alters. When two sound waves are exactly the same, the result is a double in volume, but when two waves are exactly opposite, the result is the waves cancel each other out. If two waves are slightly different, the result is certain portions of the wave are cancelled out. As the actors move closer and further from each other, different frequencies get cut and then restored, creating thin and hollow moments.
There are several theories on how to fix this problem. The only one that truly works is an A/B sound system. An A/B sound system is a system where there are two speakers for every speaker location and the two speakers are focused on the same location. If you have an A/B system, which is very expensive since you need two of everything, then you put one actor in speaker A and the other in speaker B. This eliminates the comb filtering because the delayed waveforms are being produced by different speakers. Even when mixing on an A/B system we try to mix line-by-line, but if we need to leave two mics up at a time, then we can do it without altering the sound and drawing attention to ourselves. Mixing on an A/B system can be challenging because sometimes you leave mics open to create an ambience to the show instead of just for specific lines. When I mixed Jersey Boys, which I could easily argue was one of the top three sounding shows I have ever heard, I had notes on every line in the script about which mics were opened and which were closed because the sound designer, Steve Kennedy, was creating an overall sound of the space that he wanted to remain consistent. It was very effective and definitely not something that could’ve been done without an A/B system, but it was hard as a mixer because there sometimes was no obvious reason for why mics were open. It was a really enjoyable challenge to mix.
Another theory is to delay certain mics to eliminate the problem. This doesn’t work because the delay only changes the frequencies that are affected. Another theory is to flip phase or, more appropriately, polarity on certain mic channels to solve the problem. The idea here is when the mic is polarity inverted, it pushes the speaker cone when it normally pulls it, and vice versa. This rarely works, and if it does, it only works for that particular moment, in that particular position, which changes as soon as the actor moves his or her head. I tried this on a really impossible moment in Anything Goes. I couldn’t find any other way to make this one moment work, and it did work for about four shows and then the actors changed something and it stopped working and I had to find a new method, which in the end was a really complicated minute of mixing, but mixing is better than gimmicks any day. More often than not, it is going to make the problem worse as it completely hollows out the sound of the actor. If it does work it is because the level into each mic is almost identical and the distance of the mics from each other is exactly right. If the level of signal into one mic is too different from the level into the other mic, the result will be to completely hollow out the sound of the actor. If you use this method, you are completely at the whim of the actors. If they vary their position or volume, you will be screwed.
Another reason for line-by-line mixing is for troubleshooting. The fewer mics you have open, the easier it is to find a problem. If you have eight mics open and you hear a crackle from a bad connector you are going to have a hard time figuring out which mic is bad, but if you only open one mic at a time you will instantly know who the problem is. Also, it is hard to mentally keep up with the show and what fader is important if you have several mics open all the time. The result is having an unbalanced mix where people are too loud or too quiet because you are never really sure who is speaking, so you don’t know what fader to push.
Part of the challenge of mixing one mic at a time is figuring out how to deal with people singing or talking into each other’s faces. A classic example is a duet between the romantic leads in a musical. Inevitably they are going to start singing far away from each other and end up singing at the same time with their noses practically touching and ending in a big kiss. As they start to get close to each other, there will come a point where you will start to hear phasing. As soon as you get to that point, you have to figure out how to get rid of it. The best way to do this is to use one mic to pick both of them up. So as they get closer, you fade one mic out and avoid the phasing. A good rule of thumb is to use the male singer’s mic or the taller person’s mic. The reason this tends to work better is because, if you use the mic of the shorter person, the taller person is going to sing right into the other’s forehead and be much louder. This doesn’t always work, but it is a good first guess. Take time in rehearsal to experiment with which mic works best for these moments, and before you go grabbing for the EQ to fix the sound of an actor, make sure phasing isn’t the problem, or the actor’s voice reflecting off an object. Also make sure the mic placement is good. The best way to fix a sound problem is usually to adjust the mic position. Mixing to avoid this phasing as the actors move in and out of each other’s faces is an exhausting game, but it is the key to a good mix.
Next it is time to learn the “Broadway Bump.” When we mix the band our goal is to follow the lead of the band and expand the band’s dynamic range. When the band crescendos, we want to follow the band and crescendo with them. When the band pulls back, we want to pull back with them. When the band does a single quarter note bump, we want to bump with them. We want to follow their timing as they make these changes so it feels natural. If we fade up faster than the band it will sound like two distinct fades. If we fade down slower than the band it will be painfully obvious. Orchestras play with dynamics, but their dynamics have to be enhanced to make them accurate for the size of house, which is why we run the band that way. And finally we get to the “Broadway Bump.” At the end of almost every song in musical theatre is a button. Our job is to give that button a little bump at the end to accent it. The old “Broadway Bump.”
There are several things mixers might do that will annoy designers. The first is to show off and miss a pickup. Nothing will drive a designer crazier than seeing a mixer mix a scene without a script and mess it up, or to see the mixer mix three characters line-by-line with three fingers on one hand while the other hand does nothing. The classic position for the Broadway mixer’s hands is both hands on the board, with one index finger on an open mic and the other index finger on the mic that needs to come up next. I have been known to tell mixers, “I am not impressed with your one-handing mixing. I am impressed with a good mix.” Another thing that can annoy a designer is excuses. It can get tiresome constantly hearing an excuse for why this person was too loud or why you missed the same pickup for the third show in a row. The audience doesn’t care that the actor was singing quieter or changed his timing and they don’t care that you mixed that scene perfectly yesterday. Our job is not to find excuses for our mix, but to mitigate the variables in our mix.
Another annoyance is over- or under-compression in a mix. When you are mixing vocals your fingers are like little compressors. In fact, I will note my mixers by saying, “Can you please turn down the attack time and increase the ratio on your fingers?” That is my way of explaining what the goal is when someone is singing, because that is what we are doing. If a singer holds a handheld mic and sings, the singer will pull the mic away from her mouth as she sings the big loud note and pull it into her mouth as she sings the quiet note. In musical theatre the mic is in a fixed position so the actor cannot do that. Instead that is what we do. We compress them when they get loud and we open them up when they get quiet. If you under-compress them, the big notes will hit the audience too hard and if you over-compress them they will feel squashed and buried in the music.
Mixers can form bad habits and hopefully a good designer will notice a mixer’s habits and help the mixer find a solution. One bad habit is getting upset with yourself. Missed pickups happen. Your mind can drift and you can miss something. When it happens you have to let it go and move on. If you don’t, it can cause you to make more mistakes. I have watched a lot of mixers miss a pickup and quietly cuss themselves out and then miss three more pickups because they feel out of sync with the show. Kick yourself when the show is over. Figure out how to not mess it up again at another time. Break the habit of punching yourself in the dark while you try to mix.
Consistency is crucial to mixing. Our jobs are infinitely repetitive. It’s the same script and same music night after night. The more consistently you make your mix, the better your mix will be. There is choreography to mixing a show and it is important to develop this choreography. Always turn the page of your script at the same time with the same hand. Create a rhythm for how the show mixes. Do it the exact same every time. By doing this you develop muscle memory and when you need to troubleshoot a problem your body can take over and go into autopilot and mix for a while, so you can try and figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. There are times when you have to mix a scene while talking on com to the A2 to explain a problem and how to fix it. If your mix isn’t routine, you will have no chance of managing a crisis without the audience noticing.
Finally, we have to learn to mix the intention of the moment. This is where we become part mixer, part director, part musician, part artist, and part actor. We can’t mix the entire show at one level. It has to have an arc. It has to have peaks and valleys. There are times when we want everything big and loud and there are times when we want to be extremely quiet. We have the power to pull people into the scene or push them away. Our ultimate job as a mixer is to make the audience laugh, cry, and clap. As a mixer we have to be painfully aware of the audience’s reaction. We should be able to judge our mix by whether the audience laughed at a certain joke or applauded at the right time in a song. There is nothing better than figuring out a way to mix a song and milk applause out of an audience. I have told mixers that they haven’t mixed a show correctly until they have made themselves cry—until they have become so in-tune with the show and the emotion of the show that they found a way to make themselves have a visceral emotional response to the show.
I can’t explain how to mix because every moment is different and different shows require different techniques, but I can tell you that our goal is always the same and I can tell you that you will never achieve the goal unless you mix line-by-line. You will never make an audience cry unless you invest yourself in your mix, and you will never be a good mixer if you accept anything less than perfection and you understand it is not possible.