So it is my intent that this blog be about primarily live sound, and specifically theatrical sound. Some things may be applicable elsewhere, but that isn’t the point. Also, I primarily participate in at the community theater tier, which means that most of the people I’m working with are untrained and are doing this entirely out of love of the craft.
In light of the recent decision by the Tony Awards Committee to discontinue the Best Sound Design categories, only instituted back in 2008 after many years of lobbying, the core philosophy of many sound designers comes out into the light: We are at our best when the audience can’t tell we’re there. Unfortunately, much like Stage Management (for which there also is not a Tony), this leads to the misconception that this is merely a technical endeavor, and not an art.
Sound Design as an art exists to support the show, just as Lighting Design, Set Design, etc. Universally, the show is for the audience who has paid to partake of the experience. Audience members willfully suspend their disbelief when they walk in the door – they WANT the show to work, or they wouldn’t have parted with their money for the ticket. Problem is, there are things we can do that break audience members out of that suspension of disbelief, and while the first time in was free, subsequent instances of dragging audience members back “in to the show” are more and more difficult.
Due to the nature of sound and how humans perceive it, “subtle” only begins to describe what must be done to craft sound and not stand out as artificial or wrong. Natural sounds progress along a path, an arc of existence, but artificial ones don’t have to. Certain rules apply to how sound physically propagates around a room when someone speaks, and we can artificially violate those rules. But when we don’t follow the rules, everyone in the audience will know something is wrong, even if they can’t put their finger on what that might be.
For example, sound reverberates. A church bell, a door bell, a gunshot, a thunderclap, … I could go on… these sounds all start big and then decay over time. Having them cut off suddenly is comparable to dropping a rock in a pool and expecting to have a way to suddenly stop the ripples. Would this break suspension of disbelief? Probably not, particularly since modern doorbells all do this all the time, but it’s unnatural enough that it will subtly detract. When it’s done right, the audience doesn’t even think about it – yes, that really is a church bell down the street.
Similarly, there are several characteristics of how sound moves and how we perceive it that are commonly on the chopping block through the use of wireless microphones. A sound coming from multiple places, within a short spread of time, will appear to come from wherever it arrived from first. It will also appear to come from wherever it arrives from loudest. The concept being that, in nature, the original sound will arrive at your ear first and loudest, as any reflections will have to travel further and will lose magnitude (volume) along the longer path. When those two conflict (first from the stage, loudest from a speaker hanging over the stage, for example) the sound will be perceived to come from a location somewhere in between. How often have we been to shows where the spoken lines sounded perfectly normal, but the songs suddenly were coming from the speaker up at the proscenium? Distracting, isn’t it?
So subtlety really does rule in this line of work. Too bad those who are knowledgeable and are supposed to know better aren’t, don’t, and run the Tonys.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/470/217/554/reinstate-the-tony-award-categories-for-sound-design-now/
2 replies on “A Bit of Philosophy”
At some peformances, I have been annoyed with the sound during dialogue because the volume drowned the actor. Do the sound people have a way of hearing what the person in the back row or middle or side of the audience hears? Some venues have terrible acoustics which may account of some of this. How do you compensate for bad acoustics?
The short answer is that you can’t.
The only real answer for bad acoustics is to fix the acoustics. You can sort of fake fixes by throwing a *ton* of money at the gear, and put speakers all over the place correctly configured so you can keep the volume as low as possible and people can still hear. To really succeed at this, you might as well fix the acoustics.
For hearing where I am not? During tech I will try and walk around the room as much as possible and get a feel for how various points sound, and will try to use that to influence my mix. Unfortunately, though, when it comes right down to it the only tool I really have there is the pair of ears that are attached to my head. Even sticking a mic somewhere else and listening to is via headphones is such a different way to hear that it isn’t actually useful.
Facility acoustics… this is a good topic for a future post.