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.