THE SOUND OF MUSIC

By Hari

I had the privilege of spending the four years of my undergrad life within the walls of IIT Madras, which, all said and done has a rich theatre culture to speak of. I think it is great that All Things Drama is giving me the opportunity to share some of the things I have learned from my forays into the world of drama. The concepts and experiences that I speak of do not relate to acting, directing, sets, lights, or anything you can see during a play, for that matter. You see, I was the sound guy.

the basic setup

In my experience, sound was the least important aspect of a theatre production (sigh, what to do). Consequentially, there weren’t too many general practices to follow, so I think going over some basics would be a good idea. These were things that I found can be easy to take for granted, but could be the difference between an amateur play and a professional production.

hardware

In most situations, your hardware setup will be a laptop computer hooked up to the room’s PA system through a mixer of some sort. Having physical access to that mixer is very important. If you need to stop playing a sound and your computer starts lagging, or decides to start making random beeping noises, it is a lifesaver to be able to reach over and pull down a fader or turn down a knob to physically disallow any sound from hitting the speakers. I usually carry around an external sound card with a built in volume knob in case the logistics of a venue do not permit me to sit next to the mixer.

software

From most of the productions I’ve worked on, I’ve found that keeping things simple is usually the way to go with software. I play my sounds through VLC player, or on rare occasions, iTunes. It’s a good idea to have all of your sounds loaded into a playlist. In some cases, you may need to have music playing while another sound effect occurs, so having two go-to players is good practice. A couple of things to keep in mind with your player are the smoothness of starting and stopping audio files, and the lag between double-clicking a file and having the file actually play.

sound check

I am a firm believer that sound is an essential part of any play, but at the same time, it’s quite important to know where it fits into the overall production. Once your sounds start competing with dialogue, you’re no longer adding value to the play. I find it immensely helpful, during tech rehearsal, to play some continuous sounds, request the actors to deliver some lines, and stand in the audience area, while having someone adjust the volume of playback. Once I’m happy with the balance, I make a note of the levels that all my knobs (physical and virtual) were set to, and also get a feel for how loud things should sound from where I’ll be sitting during the play.

managing your sound files
I suppose the general idea here is to make yourself do as little work as possible during the show. Here are some of the things I do to reduce my headaches during shows:

• Name my sound files with numeric prefixes in their order of appearance in the play (’01-doorbell.wav’, ’02-telephone.wav’, ’03-happymusic.wav’, etc.)
• Some basic audio editing on all sound files to make sure that there are no unnecessary silences at the beginnings and ends of the files.
• Loop the living daylights out of ambient sounds like rain, because you never know how long a scene is actually going to last.
• Some more audio editing to ensure the relative levels between sounds are accurately represented. If the car horn is really far away in the play, I make sure the car horn sound is softer than the telephone ring. This way, I avoid having to do volume adjusts mid-play.

sound effects

I’ve found that the hardest part of SFX is finding good sounds to begin with. An excellent resource I’ve taken advantage of on countless occasions is www.freesound.org, and is definitely worth checking out.

the aesthetic

Now this is the fun part. Some plays use a lot of ambient noise to reinforce the different environments portrayed in a play, such as the clinking of cutlery at a restaurant or chirping crickets in the outdoors. Some plays rely heavily on music to supplement the actors’ expression of emotion, giving the production a movie-like experience. Some plays only use sounds if they have to, such as for a ringing telephone.

The cool thing is that all of these are valid roles in which sound can add value to a theatre production. One very interesting play that I worked on was set inside a submarine. Sound played a large role in this play, with both constant ambient noises such as running machinery and precise sound cues such as creaking metal and exploding artillery.

In any case, it’s always a good idea to have a conversation with the director or producer to make sure that you’re on the same page with respect to what the sound’s role in the play should be. Whether the role is miniscule or very intensive, I’ve found that coherence with the rest of the play is ultimately what makes good sound.

Well, those are some of the things that I’ve learned from working on a few plays. I can only hope that you may have found these thoughts remotely useful. Toodles, and happy sounding.