sound engineer

Qlab MMC Cues Across A Wireless Network

August 23, 2010 by Nathan Lively Leave a Comment

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Last weekend’s production of 10MinMax by Dance Umbrella at The George Washington Carver Museum And Cultrural Center gave me an opportunity to test out a networked Host-Remote Qlab setup. This years production included 24 works and over 80 artists. Two pieces included video plus I created a slideshow for intermission. There were a lot of first for me on this show. I had never run video cues, neworked Qlab playback, or had Production Manager duties.

Running video cues with Qlab turned out to be a snap because a lot of the details were automatic. It resizes to fit the screen, protects aspect ratio, and fills the background with black when you’re not playing. Creating a looping slideshow was kind of tricky because once a still image is played, it wants to play forever, so the next image might come up, but the other ones are still there. I solved this by putting stop cues for the previous image to automatically follow each new image. Then you just need a start cue at the end to take you back to the top.

Sending midi machine control over a network seemed complciated at first while using OSX’s built in Audio Midi Setup. Turns out that it was creating a feedback loop somehow and once I switched to ipMidi it worked fine. So much more simple than all of the challenges I faced while setting up Software Audio Workstation for the Route 66 tour. Thanks to Figure53 for their excellent customer support.

I had done some technical directing before, but never production management. It’s one of those all encompassing jobs. You are with the product from it’s inception to it’s delivery. In this case I basically filled in all of the management holes to make the production happen with our limited staff.

We had many performers this year compared to last year plus lots of lighting problems, but the show turned out well. I especially enjoyed Emily Shaw’s duet choreographed to spoken word and Verge Dance Company’s piece with live musicians onstage. After Saturday’s show I met Acia Gray who I hadn’t seen in almost 10 years. Sometimes I worry about Austin’s lack of high quality productions and forget about how special it really is. Did you know that Tapestry, Acia’s company, is the only professional tap company in the US?

More photos available on here.

Dance Umbrella Recommends Nathan Lively

August 23, 2010 by Nathan Lively Leave a Comment

I just received some big-time recommendations from Dance Umbrella in Austin, TX and Teatro Nacional Dona Maria in Lisbon, Portugal. Thanks!

Copied from Linked-In
Sound Designer
Dance Umbrella

“I have worked with Nathan on two productions for Dance Umbrella and I am very impressed with not only his sound engineering capabilities but also his organizational managment through all phases of a production. He is an excellent choice to have on any production team.” August 20, 2010

Top qualities: Personable, Expert, High Integrity

Phyllis Slattery
hired Nathan as a Production/Sound Designer in 2009, and hired Nathan more than once

Sound Engineer – Recording and FOH
National Theatre of Portugal Dona Maria II SA

“It has been a real pleasure working with Nathan at D. Maria II National Theatre. He quickly became part of the team as an extraordinary sound engineer and a dear friend. After having recorded with him and shared sound designing, stage and FOH operation, in many plays and concerts, I can surely say Nathan showed to be a great team mate, a flexible, sensitive, and skilled professional in studio and on stage. I sincerely hope someday we can work together again!” April 25, 2010

Sérgio Henriques, Sound Tech and Musician, D. Maria II National Theatre
worked directly with Nathan at National Theatre of Portugal Dona Maria II SA

35 days into the Route66 Tour

February 19, 2010 by Nathan Lively Leave a Comment

Time for some notes from the road.

SAC Rack: This is my mobile wireless mix system. The first 10 performances went off without a hitch and I started to relax. Then, at the end of the second act of the 11th performance wireless signal strength went way down I lost my connection with the host. I ran backstage with my laptop and did the rest of the show from there. I’m still not sure what happened, but since then I have taken some steps to insure signal strength. I moved the router out of the rack that houses other wireless equipment and built little RF reflectors to push signal out into the theatre where I need it.

I’m still don’t know if the router is the weak link or the software so I’m doing my best to investigate each one.

Local Venues: If you follow my twitter feed then you’ve heard it several times: This is a tour of contrasts. One day we are playing on a tiny messy stage at a Baptist youth fellowship building where we can’t even install our set and the next day we are playing on a large stage in a 1500 seat auditorium. One of the most difficult things for me has just been a lack of information. When we show up and there is no sound engineer and no one knows the details of the sound system, it’s a big handicap. In Gaffney the technical director didn’t know anything about the system so I ended up in the flies messing around with their amps and processors trying to figure out what was going on. I discovered that they had a 3-way spectral divide of the system into low/mid/high, which is common, but they had sent the highs to the center cluster and the lows/mids to the left/right stacks! It was really weird.

So far the best sounding venue has been Turnage Theatre in Washington, NC. They had a single central array hung in a room with very few reflections. It was nice. One change that I’ve had to make to every system, though, including this one, is the subwoofer level. Every venue we’ve been to has had it set too high. Everyone seems to want to their subs to act as independent instruments instead of an integrated part of the sound system.

The most exciting show happened just last night at Byron Center when the building’s power went out during the first act. We waited for a while for a fix, then decided to continue with the acoustic piano they had in the pit. Eventually power came back online and we finished the show. No one complained or asked for their money back. Our technical director was happy that she got to yell “Hold!” in the middle of a live show.

Driving: When I found out a day before we left on tour that I would be one of the rotating drivers, I was a little pissed. I hate driving. Especially big trucks, in the snow, for hundreds of miles. It turns out that it’s not as bad and I thought and I don’t mind it so much. With nice weather it can actually be pleasant. Day before yesterday I drove 324 miles through the mountains in the snow, though. That sucked.

September 2, 2009 by Nathan Lively 1 Comment

What’s wrong with stereo?

After my recent post where I demonized stereo speaker installations I received a whirlwind of backlash from… Travis. During our conversation I was unable to clearly express to him why the most common speaker array in the world is not the most best for every application.

After referring to Sound Systems: Design and Optimization I came up with a better answer, taken directly from the book.

The problem I have with stereo is not artistic in nature. My goal is ‘same sound’ throughout the audience. Any overlap of sources creates variance throughout that space. Stereo requires overlap and increases variance. It is actually a form of desirable variance, for those people in the central area. So the question I’m always asking when I see these systems is, “Do the benefits of the center outweigh the costs of the sides?”

In the first diagram you see several plots of rooms with different dimensions with the blue triangle representing the central areas of the room that experience the stereo effect.

The second diagram shows a 80x50m room with a stereo speaker installation. As you can see, instead of experiencing stereo, the people off center experience two separate speakers.

Thanks to Bob McCarthy for the use of the diagrams from his book.

http://www.nathanlively.com/62/

August 23, 2009 by Nathan Lively 3 Comments

This week I worked on a two day production of 12 new pieces of dance called 10 Minute Max. Most of the pieces were modern dance and were limited to 10 minutes. My responsibilities were all of 1) Push Play and 2) Watch good looking women dance. Sometimes you’re hanging sound systems in the heat for 12 hours and sometimes… Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. There were a few instances of actual sound reinforcement, but what was more notable about the whole event was this theatre. The Boyd Vance Theatre at The George Washington Carver Cultural Center is a proscenium stage with stadium seating to fit 134 patrons. Most interesting for me were two things that I had recently been suggesting for The Palace in Georgetown.

A center speaker for vocal clarity

When should a theatre use a stereo system (MainA+MainB)? I am always a little confused when I see people using stereo systems. And as you can imagine, I’m confused a lot, cause they are everywhere! I can’t stop having a conversation in my head with the person who installed it asking, “What were your goals with this setup?” It couldn’t have been to create a stereo field, because there is only a small triangle of people near the center that are in it. It couldn’t have been for coverage because one speaker is basically playing into the wall and then you have a whole balcony without coverage. Whoa, rant alert!

I’ve worked on plays where sound designers have wanted a stereo system for actor location (following them around stage) or stereo FX. Those were special cases. The focus on vocal clarity comes way before FX. Here is a photo of the central cluster at The Boyd Vance Theatre. You can’t really see anything. It is covered with some acoustically transparent fabric that blends in with the ceiling. I appreciate that they are covering the room from a central location, probably with a point-source array, and close to the audience. Stereo FX can be created by auxiliary speakers stacked on stage that the theatre keeps in reserve.

Acoustic absorption on the walls.

In the case of The Boyd Vance Theatre they have broad-band acoustic panels covering almost every wall. These make the space quiet, less reflective, and serve to hide lighting instruments. I don’t have a photo yet, but will update this post soon. One more amazing part of the the installation there that I need to report on is the fact that the entire sound system can be turned on with a single button at FOH. No system startup instructions or running around backstage to find amplifiers. There is a little micro-controller that turns everything on in the right order. Hurray!

http://www.nathanlively.com/60/