Canadians over the boarder

Saw this 20-year-old Canadian play with the Albany Symphony at the Troy Music Hall. The hall sounds spectacular. My buddy Marc was playing bass. The Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was pretty solid. 

Harmony Zhu at the piano.

Whose you then behold inversely square

The BBC sound effects library.

Mixing Station is amusing. It's for remote control of a variety of digital consoles. Doesn't work for Yamaha. 

Inverse Square Law Calculator.

This font is everywhere and specifically on Apollo spaceships. Gorton.

I saw a video with Ian Hubert and he said to render out EXR format, RGB half (DWAA). I listen and obey.

Music for sneezing

Mainstage is a Mac app which lets you run VST and VSTi plugins and what-have-you so you can use your computer for instruments and effects suchwise. 

What do you say when this sneezes? Pika-chu.

Idempotence is something I do not understand. 

Delia Derbyshire -- you know, Dr. Who and what-have-you.

If you had to name a single person more influential to music, just music itself everywhere in the world in the 20th Century, I think it would have to be Nadia Boulanger. Certainly to music in Europe and the Americas. 

The Music Director and Me

So I was designing a musical and I got the most hilarious email from the music director, telling me that there would be hotspot amp/speakers [shudder] in the pit and also dictating microphone placement. Here is that exchange:

Honestly? One of the better musicians around here.

We: You specify two microphones for the woodwinds doubling. Where... do you suggest those microphones go exactly? Perhaps we have wildly different ideas about how to mic woodwinds. 

They: There are many changes of instruments for the player so the constant repositioning of the mic is not the best idea.  Flute mics high close to the players mouth while a clarinet mics close to the players hands.  This would be the correct way to mic these instruments, which is why we need 2 separate mics. 

We: There is no "correct" way to mic any instrument. Close to the mouth might be fine for flute if this were, for instance, a Jethro Tull concert in 1972. But we might want a somewhat more delicate sound for a small-ensemble musical theater experience. This will help enable the subtle dynamics and phrasing of the material to be realized with more musicality than otherwise achievable with rock-and-roll mic technique. I suggest we do not close-mic the woodwinds.   

They: Actually, that’s incorrect.  The micing is dictated by where on the instrument the sound is coming from.  If we were in an isolation box then you can mic the space, but that is not the case here.  Flutes and clarinets produce sound from different parts of the instrument.  We will need 2 mics. 

This is maybe the funniest thing I've ever heard about how sound is amplified. So yes, from here on out "The micing is dictated by where on the instrument the sound is coming from" is one of those things which should be a cartoon sign on every mixing board. 

Anyway, can you tell I got fired from that show? Thank the gods too, I've heard nothing but bad things about how these shows sound and, well, now I know why. "The micing is dictated by where on the instrument the sound is coming from." Huh. I wonder how that works on violin? ;-)

Bio

This is my early 2025 bio. I needed a place to put it. That place is here.

Gratuitous picture of Meydl (RIP) and microphone.

Dr. Bellware was a founding member of Manhattan Theatresource and has worked in sound for hundreds of New York, regional, and touring productions. He directed and composed scores for numerous science fiction feature films, distributed domestically and around the world. He recently completed the feature film The Drowned Girl, a fictional exploration of Swedish-German actress Kristina Söderbaum’s role in WWII-era propaganda films. Currently, he is finishing Red Flag of the Future, a filmed opera adaptation of antifascist playwright Ernst Toller’s Expressionist classic, Masse Mensch.

Kean University

If I want to sound pretentious (and, let's face it, I always do) I would say I have accepted an adjunct position at Kean University's theater department. 

I'm also designing two shows for them. One is a musical called Alice by Heart. The other is a straight play called They Promised Her the Moon. I'm also teaching theatrical sound design. 

Pit documentation.

There are seven musicians on this show. But we have to use a Behringer X32 Compact as a monitor mixer. The mixers can be controlled by the musicians' iPhones (presumably, I haven't tested it yet.) I, of course, don't have enough inputs and outputs so I need to use the Yamaha CL3 to premix some things and I need to use the Behringer to be essentially an active split for some feeds. 

A Weasel a Day Makes the Automixer Go Manet

 Audiothing makes a plug-in to emulate that Dolby A trick. 

Ermine? Or er-YOURS?

WTAutomixer is a good little automixer. 

Mainstage for Macs. It's reasonably priced. You can run VSTi's with it, or also you could (say) run your whole mix through VST's or AU's or what-have-you. I'm kinda thinking about putting Smoothe on the vocal submix. 

Cardinal is a virtual modular synth plugin. 

Watching ICE.

Canterboulious

 A reddit post with game audio job posting places to look for jobs. 

Savihost for hosting VSTi plugins.

Machinal. It's a play. 

VST Host is a PC-based VST plugin host. 

Graduation pictures

 All photographs from the Queen of Mars.

Here I'm having breakfast at the university's coffee shop.

This is maybe the first time I went up the stairs, but they skipped over my name so I had to sit back down again while the staff added my name back to the list, making me walk at the very end rather than 3rd.

A closeup of Dr. Andrew Bellware. We don't know if this was the first time or the second time. 

I feel I look like a Picasso in this. I'm not sure why I'm so two-dimensional. 

I was very irked at this point. 

Still, there's one smiling picture of me:

I have my PhD now

Doctor Andrew Bellware with his official diploma from the University of Salford, having been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 

 

Python, Congressman Davy, and Me

Line arrays.

The sound plot for Congressman Davy.

Idempotence.

A modern image of Andrew Bellware.

My personal website, andrewbellware.com.

Image dumpricae.

I finally quit Twitter. 

This is you.

I also had tried the Brave browser. But it seems like a scam, so I went back to Chrome. 

I look very angry here. This is a picture from several years ago. 

I believe this is from the last RCCNY concert. 

A closeup of that recording situation.

This DC train station is very lovely.

I do not know why I think this is as funny as I think it is. But I do. And I am.

Here's an old, badly-exposed picture of me and Willow. I seem much cooler a person than I really am in this picture. 

The future is all red flag.

Todd Johnson in his kitchen circa maybe 1981. Likely shot with my old Yashica camera and outdoor 400 ASA film. I'm guessing this was in his kitchen on Clive Street. But I don't recognize the actual background. It's not my house, it's not Todd's old house, it's not his mom's house. So I dunno.

I designed a reading of the musical Congressman Davy in DC. Here was my original conception of how the stage should be set up. I didn't win this argument that the band should be centered. 

The producers wanted the musicians to be on the floor off to the side.

I wanted the musicians (in red) to be centered here on the floor.

A photograph of the venue.

This is ewe.

Target is locked.

Me on Millenium Crisis.

Dancers and Puppets

 

Bev Yang and a banker puppet.

John Stange and a headless ghost puppet.

Stacy Whittle and a prisoner

Danielle Davy and a guard.

John Jones and nameless and Gaylia Wagner.

John Jones and Nameless.

Raven Wilkes and Woman.