radio-mic use in amateur theatre and schools

I frequently deliver a load of radio mics to a theatre group or school and the director is relieved that all his[her] problems are over.We just clip on the mics and the weakest voice will come thundering out, in tune, over the band next to the stage.Oh dear.Radio mics are complex devices,mine have 700 channels but that does not mean you can use anything like that number because they interact with each other and other radio sources in unpredictable ways, so you have to select the dozen or so frequencies that will work in the venue and set these on the transmitters and receivers.Each transmitter also has a gain control which needs to be set correctly.You then have to plug in the actual lavalier mic into the transmitter and fit it to the actor in such a way that they don't rip it out during the dance routine.Then you can fit fully charged batteries and you can start to plug them into the P.A.Now working a 16 channel mixer is difficult at the best of times but with actors entering and exiting the stage at rapid intervals keeping track of which channels need to be live and more importantly which ones need to be off can be a nightmare even more so if actors are changing mics to save hiring more.Just to make life more interesting the omni-directional mics usually used on beltpacks will pick up all the sound in their location, so a weak voice next to a band will only be amplified relative to the band.So who's your sound operator? well Fred missed out on a part in this show so we thought he could do it.Oh dear.I know I'll be out every night, the problems will be ,mic ripped out,flat battery,lost antenna,channel changed on belt pack,etc.Now you are wondering why this rant.The point is please don't use radio mics unless you absolutely have to,a good voice teacher would probably be better value.If you really must use them prepare to spend a lot of time getting them right and rehearse with them a lot.Finally your sound operator must be good and keen and will probably need an assistant to keep tabs on which mics are 'live'.Finally be prepared for something to go wrong, you are using a highly complex system and the scope for things stuffing up is significant, always have a spare.Sorry to be so complex but it was hard to explain any other way.

Whatever happened to projection? David, I know exactly where you're coming from...but I was taught to use my voice and PROJECT. That said the tendency to automatically use an amplified/electric band for all shows (I'm thinking mainly musicals here) kind of means you have to mic everyone to achieve a balance. Tricky ... very, very tricky. Also trying to convince the performer to actual "help" the mic a little by at least speaking up a bit rather than mumbling ... I saw one very experienced sound tech actually in tears because a certain Miss insisted on whispering her entire performance!! And they weren't tears of laughter either. People really don't appreciate how quickly any tech has to "learn a show" do they? They get weeks, sometimes months, we get...well... enough said! Hey ho, must go mix the "wine" for tonight. "Papa, where is Mama? They tell me she has gone away, where is she?"

Amatuers and school shows always seem to assume that the equipment will work perfectly at all times regardless. Radio mic's are a bit fragile for various reasons you are certainly aware of and the drop outs and breakages that according to amatuers "never seem to happen with pro shows" of course do. I watched Danni Minogues first performance in Notre Dame De Paris in London and her in ear monitor kept going off and her mic kept cutting out. It will happen and when you don't have experienced people taking care of mics they will tend to break down more often. Use your voice and keep the band quieter. Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. www.tonymoore.id.au

Projection is the key. As one of those techs that are frequently asked to radio mic everybody, I think the teachers etc are being lazy. And young kids have the ability to fiddle with bits of equipment and what a wonderful toy for them to play with. A people need to be trained in the proper use of lapel mics, how many of us have had the problem of people talking "off mike" with a lapel? And many inexperienced performers immediately drop thier volume when presented with a mic. Thus making the sound guys job even harder.

Of course I'm old but it seems to me that mics will be with us for ever. It's what I describe as the phony energy created by an amplified show that attracts and excites the punters. And all the comments about the mixer are spot on. Most it seems a deaf or have the aim of deafening the audience and removing any semblance of light and shade from the performance and then of course there are the unfortunate souls who have to work in a building where they can't get a clear idea of the sound they're mixing. Ah the old days when we just projected.

Ahh, my first production on sound was using 16 radio mics. I was the assistant but we split the board in two, so we each controlled 8 mics. We had a fairly co-operative bunch that didn't fiddle with their mics We were able to lock the settings and had a separate person who's only job was to make sure that the mics were plugged into the transmitter and gaffered to their costume etc. But our bunch did not understand that the mics were not simply turned off when they were offstage. The sound crew were the most informed bunch of people, between hearing what the actors AND staging AND orchestra were saying. Even though we had 3 people on mics, we still managed to stuff up. In the dress rehersal, we were told by the orchestra who was coming on next. So we turned on those characters' mics. As you can guess, the orchestra doesn't remember the storyline or the characters. Instead we got over the speakers was three fairies insulting the director in the illusion of privacy...

I've read alot of comments saying that teachers are being lazy and using mics coz they can't be bothered with getting students to use their voices. In my experience the exact opposite occured. For my school production we hired the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre's Boardwalk theatre which has the capacity to seat around 800 people. Yet my drama teacher taught everyone in the cast that you have to project as only about 5 people ( the leads) would be wearing microphones. By the time we got to the actual production almost every character who had either a speaking or singing role was wearing a mic, but it didn't matter because we had all been taught to project our voices. Sometimes mics are necessary though , and that was apparent with us in some of the bigger musical numbers and solos as some people cannot sing as loud as they can speak.

As a member of a school who untertakes alot (167 this year) productions run by directors who can't control their actors, want everything to just work and arn't patient enough to teah their students anything, i know how mics get chuked in at the last moe. I had a director once who goes to me half an hour before the show: "Do you have that head set?" "what head set" "Oh, i forgot to tell you i wanted a radio mic for ------- for this performance." Then as i proceed to try and eq over pfl, she tells me she wants to hear it. putting through the system the actor suddenly falls over his own foot (literally) hits the mic and guess wat, feed back. The director proceeds to scream at us for this "noise" then says... "well you can't get this working so then don't do it! Afterall, i'm not important! Why should you worry about the sound on MY show?" Walking out of the venue slaming doors as she goes, and she never returns again... Lesson... don't give last minute warning about sound!

"the weakest voice will come thundering out, in tune, over the band next to the stage." How on Earth can a radio mic make someones voice in tune? What bunkum. Music production and film scoring www.filmcomposer.com.au

working in opera, where you don't use mics, I can tell you projection has nothing to do with volume and everything to do with the edge or cut in your sound. It's certain frequencies in your vocal sound that allow your voice to carry over the top of the 60 piece orchestra and be heard clearly. you develop this cut with training, and balance your 'edge' with your tone to produce a pleasant, even beautiful, sound! Good sound will fill a space, and use the acoustic of the room to 'biggen' it. i have heard many loud singers disappear in an orchestra. of course, opera conductors, most being full-time professionals (not a lot of amatuer/community operas out there- at least with a full size orchestra), will listen and balance the sound of this vast band accordingly. unfortunately, many shows these days just play, and let the sound guy do the balancing, thus expecting of a technician the skills of a highly-trained musician. (Fortunately a large number of them are actually able to pull off this feat much better than we really deserve.) This laziness is often a factor of inexperienced or unskilled MD's and directors, performers who are poorly trained or who simply don't listen, or combinations of these. there is also the aspect of venues that are too large, and that are poorly designed acoustically. (think large school hall and a 12 year old trying to be heard over electric guitars, drums, keys and horns- all amplified) radio mics are not the be all and end all. If you must use them, you must rehearse with them. The sound guys have to have time working on the show to get to know it intimately (as well as your MD at least, as you are expecting them to do their job for them), and everyone needs to be prepared for disasters, as they will happen. unfortunately, too many productions do not and will not spend the time (and money) to do this. Therefore, I think you are better off not having them at all, and taking the time to teach projection. however, why am I left feeling as though the same teachers/directors who would be unwilling or too disorganised to have their s''t together for radio mikes, would be the same people who wouldn't be particularly good at teaching projection properly?! I think the rule is one I have learnt over my career- listen to your tech guys, and involve them from day one. They can save you a lot of grief and wasted time, and at the end of the day, they'll be the people who save you from looking like a complete tool. Nev ps- strangejuice, I think he was being sarcastic?! It's the simple things stupid...

I hope so! But I have heard worse. Music production and film scoring www.filmcomposer.com.au

Yes that was a sacastic comment he made but one that I get from people believing it to be true. Any mic, not just radio mics, can only amplify voices by a certain amount. Mics were really developed to get voices beyond what is naturally possible, ie the Jimmy Barnes is loud naturally but he can't sing over a screaming PA and be heard by 10000 people. However the most common request I receive is "this person is so quite, put a mic on her and she will be fine" Complete rubbish, this person is so quite (usually due to lack of projection training, or being 6, or being shy) that the mic does not have the headroom to help. And when shyness is the culprit mic them makes them talk even softer when they hear themselves.

The point of the post was to try to point out to directors and co. that radio mics are not a magic solution and can actually make things worse,[ and I have a vested interest in hiring them out].The other imperative is lots of time to get it right, a company will rehearse for weeks but expect the sound to just happen, but multi radio mic systems are very tricky to get right with a multitude of potential radio and acoustic problems.So don't blame the poor sound operator when the inevitable problem occurs.

You're right about the shy/projection problem. We had a flute player that wanted to perform but was petrified of a mic. unfortunatley we had to mic her because the sound crew actually couldnt hear her from the back of the hall. We kept turning the foldbacks down to encourage her to play with her own volume and only mic her a bit...and to stop scaring her with her volume. We discovered that if we quietly played background noise over the foldbacks that she would try to project over it, so thats what we did in the performance, amplified the audience to her