Opening at the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Linda Gross Theatre, original new musical Found presented Sound Designer Ken Travis with some particular challenges – not least the very quick amplification changes in the theatre, which was previously an old church.
The sound system for the Off-Broadway show was provided by theatrical specialist Masque Sound. ‘Because of its architectural design, you can’t really hit the walls and you can’t activate the room,’ Travis explains. ‘We needed to be able to go from really loud to super intimate within a second and allow the audience’s ears to settle into that adjustment. It took a little while to figure out how we would accomplish that without losing any energy and without having the audience members miss a single word.’
Found is an original musical featuring scores of surprising and eccentric discarded notes and letters that have been ‘found’ in the real world by every-day people. For Travis, equipment selection proved essential to the show’s success. He found what he was looking for with a speaker system featuring d&b audiotechnik – a Q-Series rig, with E3 loudspeakers for delays and B2 subwoofers.
‘In a matter of one minute, the actors can go through ten songs, and, stylistically, each song is 100 percent different,’ he says. ‘It can range from something that pays homage to Queen and Bruce Springsteen, to 80s metal bands and country music. Dynamically, the shifts are huge, and the d&b system allowed us to really bring out the style of the various music genres in a rapid succession.’
As no microphones were to visible on the cast during the production, Travis used a selection including Sennheiser MKE1 lavalier mics, along with one of Masque Sound’s pre-built Sennheiser 2000 Series wireless transmitter kits. Designed for quick and easy dispatch, These kits provide 24 wireless channels and are targeted for the Off-Broadway and regional markets. The orchestra was miked with DPA 4011 cardioid Mics, DPA 4099 instrument mics, Schoeps MK4 cardioid capsules and beyerdynamic M 160 hypercardioid ribbon mics. Masque Sound also provided an Avid Venue SC48 digital console.
Since the orchestra is present on stage, with musicians spread between a few small pods, Travis wanted the sound design to creatively capture and evoke a natural and intimate sound. To accomplish this, he used a Meyer Sound LCS LX-300 delay matrix. ‘We wanted the orchestra to be able to go from a chamber sounding musical, involving violin, cello, guitar, bass, drums and piano, to a heavy rock sound,’ he says. ‘We used the delay matrix to time every single instrument on stage so that when we were amplifying it, it really sounded like it was coming from the specific instrument. We also divided the stage into zones, which ensures that the engineer has a lot of cues for the actors.’
With regard to timing, this production requires that the audio is perfectly synched up to the show’s video images. Travis relied on Midi to achieve this, using one Midi loop to ensure that the design teams could send information back and forth. This was an easy way to simplify a very technically challenging show on an Off-Broadway budget.
‘This was a great team effort,’ Travis reflects. ‘My associate, Justin Stasiw, A1 Jillian Walker and A2 Laura Brauner all did a wonderful job, and it was terrific that the whole design team was able to come together for this fun and original production. Masque Sound was once again great to work with and very accommodating in providing me with the equipment I wanted to use.’
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