About This Production: |
Position: Sound Designer and A1 Mixer
Location: Indian Hill High School Date: 10/20/16-10/22/16 |
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was my very first experience with creating a comprehensive design in a musical with only utilizing the actor's voices and instrumental sounds generated by the musicians themselves. In this show, a quite literal spelling bee takes place on stage between the "children" and a few participants from the audience. However, while moments seem realistic to a spelling bee, the children's imagination and inner thoughts often present themselves to the audience. As discussed below in the "design keynotes" section, surround speakers and creative vocal effects through delays, reverbs, and different convolution tools were used to bring the audience into the children's imagination. So while no artificial sounds were used, the acoustic sounds were heavily modified to create a unique atmosphere. While these moments brought the audience into a different world, the show centers around a spelling bee and must be treated as such. During the more-or-less realistic moments, I wanted to make it seem like your usual spelling bee. To do so, I disguised the microphones so they were only heard, not seen. While the usual "suspension of disbelief" involves the audience ignoring the microphones, I wanted to take it a step further to make the show (or at least the "normal" sections) seem more realistic to the audience.
For this show, the orchestra was fully mic-ed to give more full control over their balance and the tonal characteristics (through effects and surrounds) throughout the show. This allowed me to use the orchestra to create an atmosphere and mood in addition to the show's music. Monitoring in the pit was also a challenge. I wanted to give each member control over their mix and many of the instruments were electric. First, I wanted to avoid using any internal speakers in the electronic instruments due to their sound quality and lack of directionality. So I first disabled the internal speakers and routed their outputs to both the main FOH console and a monitor console. These direct feeds along with some mixes from the FOH mixer were channeled through the monitor mixer. Doing so allowed the instrumentalists to modify their mix to their liking.
For this show, the orchestra was fully mic-ed to give more full control over their balance and the tonal characteristics (through effects and surrounds) throughout the show. This allowed me to use the orchestra to create an atmosphere and mood in addition to the show's music. Monitoring in the pit was also a challenge. I wanted to give each member control over their mix and many of the instruments were electric. First, I wanted to avoid using any internal speakers in the electronic instruments due to their sound quality and lack of directionality. So I first disabled the internal speakers and routed their outputs to both the main FOH console and a monitor console. These direct feeds along with some mixes from the FOH mixer were channeled through the monitor mixer. Doing so allowed the instrumentalists to modify their mix to their liking.
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Few Design Keynotes About the Production: -One of my favorite moments in regards to the sound was the "slow-motion" section towards the end of the show. During this, a low rumble encompassed the space that responded to the actors and the pit. Also, different reverbs were used to drastically enlarge the space with the use of surround speakers. To accomplish the low rumble, two subs (QSC KW181s) were positioned behind the SL and SR walls. These were given signal from the piano and actors that was sent through a LPF, dropped two octaves in pitch, and through a 30 second reverb. -The show jumps between reality and the private thoughts or day-dreams of the spellers. To create a difference between the two, I utilized the surround speakers to add some reverb whenever we went into the speller's head. The careful selection of reverb and delays made the space seem smaller, and gave the impression of being inside of an enclosed box (or rather the actor's head). |
Production PicturesPictures courtesy of Kyle Himsworth
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