StageLync: When I started mixing sound for shows in high school—and I use the term “mixing” loosely—I had no idea what I was doing. Which is normal for anyone’s first foray into a new subject, but the problem was that no one else knew either. My training was our TD basically saying, “here’s the board, plug this cable in here, and that’s the mute button,” before he had to rush off to put out another fire somewhere else.
7 comments:
its interesting to hear about the beginnings of a touring audio technician, the skills they started with and the development they went to to get to they status they are currently. A lot of high school tech theatre I've noticed focuses more on making sure the show goes smoothly instead of fully learning the capabilities of the technology, which is fine since most people in a high school tech crew wont pursue technical theater as a career. Doing shows outside of my school allowed me to gain more skills and knowledge, like her i learned as i went along, picking up skills as i got a bit more experience, I'm still not as good at mixing as i could be, but i think if i trust my ears as she says i can improve my skills as a mixer.(also i love mean girls the musical, it has some of my favorite songs)
I thought that this article was really interesting and a very good introduction into the intricacies of mixing sound. Personally, I didn't do much with sound in high school, which is something I want to fix in college. I also found the video in the article where the sound board operator was mixing the song very cool. Seeing the clearly practiced motions of their hands moving to pick someone up right before they started singing was very cool to see, and made me wonder how much practice they had to do before getting to that level with the show. It also made me wonder how you practice that when there's not actually a show going on. Basically, this article made me really want to be a sound board operator for a show.
I loved this article because everything it said resonated with me a lot. I started sound designing and mixing in high school and like the author I was kind of just thrown into the deep end of the pool and told to “mix the show” which was extremely terrifying. I had a pretty solid music background and I could use my ear pretty well to pander to the audience and create decent mixes but it was also like a complete rush to figure out what I was doing on the job. This was one instance where I faked it till I actually made it and now I love it. I was incredibly intimidated but everything worked out in the end. I knew that professionals line-mixed but it also never clicked with me just how exact and precise they had to be in order to line-mix well. Like, it’s a whole new ballpark of skill and practice which I’m extremely excited for. In high school, I did a mix of line-mixing and programming each scene into the mixer and just pressing the next button but I’m so so excited to learn more about sound stuff.
Mixing is an art which has so much knowledge and skill that goes into it. It’s been a beast I’ve been able to tackle a number of times and every time it’s interesting and challenging in its own way (and it’s a challenge I will be tackling in the coming months here at school)! Being able to concoct a solid mix and keep up with the dynamism of the actors and musicians on stage is hard, and requires so much focus and precision, and reading an article about some of the specifics of mixing and line-by-line mixing is really interesting. The training video from the Miss Saigon tour is so precise and quick and only a fraction of the complexity of that show. There is so much precision and for lack of a better word aural psychology that goes into mixing a good, clean show, and it’s a skill I love continuing to learn about.
I've seen similar videos before, I love to watch videos of people mixing. It is such a fully involved task, where mixers don't get to stop or even take a second to look at the show. But it is a really cool thing to watch someone mix line-by-line, especially when they do it so well. In a way, it seems to me that it's like playing an instrument. It takes a very delicate balance, between the timing and volume. The mixer probably knows the show better than anyone else, even compared to most of the actors. I can imagine it takes a lot of practice to get to know the show on that level and to perform it perfectly when there are hundreds of pickups that occur.
Oops this was me
What was most interesting to me about this article was the discussion about really listening to the show in front of the mixer and the need for the mixer not only to be technically great at their job, but also intuitively great in the sense of being able to adjust the technical aspects of the job to best support the decisions being made on stage and the small difference between each show. What I was particularly curious about is how teachable of a skill this is or if this is something that truly can only be gained through experience and similar artistic vision to the sound designer themself. While my intuition is that this is more of an experiential learning to become this good at sound mixing to accommodate the emotion of the show and amplify it through the sound, I wonder what the author would say as to how to demonstrate this to future sound mixers, as well as how the sound mixer and the sound designer agree on how to amplify particular moments in the show.
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