8

Recording, Editing, and Refining Cues

All of the sound and music cues need to be prepared for performance conditions. Once you’ve collected the sounds for your design, they can then be put in their final form. Prerecorded cues need to be gathered, mixed, and edited. Original music or soundscore elements need to be recorded, mixed, and prepared for the production. Live effects and practicals must be set up, listened to, and refined.

PRERECORDED CUES

Under most circumstances, theatre sound calls for using the same recording and editing techniques that are employed in other genres, such as film or music recording. As in these other fields, it’s important to make your cues as clean as possible. Recordings with imperfections or noticeable digital artifacts are a big problem in theatre because a noticeable edit or hiss clearly identifies recordings to the audience as being artificial. Consider that the only other sounds the audience hears (along with its own coughing and candy unwrapping) are the performers’ voices, which are obviously not accompanied by sonic hiccups or background noise. Because the actors’ voices are what your score or effects accompany, your recordings must be as pristine as possible.

If you mix your playback devices live on an analogue mixer, there are some things you should consider. By using a lower recording volume on your mixed cue, you can make it easier for an operator to fade in a cue to a very soft level. It’s often difficult to gracefully execute a manual fade of an effect or music to a very low sound level if it means that the operator is moving the volume fader only a small distance. The usual way of avoiding this is changing the mixer’s output volume or reducing some other volume control in the sound system. If that solution is not possible, you can give your operator a little more “fade distance” by recording the effect at a lower volume than normal. Computer-based playback systems nearly eliminate this problem by allowing the user to program a fade up or down, at almost any rate (measured in fractions of seconds) and you can even program a compound fade. For example, if you’re fading in a sound from infinity (off) to–20 dB in a twelve count, you could program the first part of the fade-in to be a four count to–30 dB. Then you’d program an additional fade-in, eight count to–20 dB. In some systems you can create customized fade contours for any cue. This provides a wonderful amount of control for the shaping of your aural ideas.

Mixing sound and music for the stage is similar to mixing for records in that you strive for the best balance of sounds and processing (equalization, reverb, delay, and so on). There are, however, some major differences to bear in mind. Always listen to your cues in the studio at the same volume that the audience will hear them in the theatre. Put your mix together at a normal listening volume, but check your final mix at a volume that resembles what you think you will be hearing in the house. What at first may sound like enough reverberation at a moderate listening level may disappear when played back at a soft level. Just as some people use the loudness control on their home stereos to boost bass and treble frequencies at low volumes, you might want to adjust the equalization. On the other hand, the louder a recording is played, the more the imperfections can be heard. A slight thump in an edit may be imperceptible at soft listening levels, but could become apparent at a louder volume. Listen for imperfections in a recording (like noise or the fadeout at the end of a cue) at a slightly louder volume than you expect to hear it in the theatre—that way, you’ll know that it will sound unblemished at most volumes. If you’re unsure of how to mix a cue, give yourself some leeway by making one or two alternative mixes to try in technical rehearsals. As you become familiar with a particular theatre, experience will tell you how your cues will sound in that house.

SPLITTING TRACKS/ALTERNATE MIXES/PROCESSING

You may be undecided about which elements are needed in a cue or whether the director will like your choices. For example, suppose you’ve created a night ambiance consisting of a field of crickets, an owl, and a dog barking in the distance. If you built it as a single cue (with all elements on one track) and the director doesn’t like any of the elements, you’ll have to go back into the studio and rebuild the cue from scratch. If the tracks and channels are available, lay down each effect on its own track, a technique called layering—that way, any one element can be mixed lower, higher, or eliminated completely. If you don’t have the tracks available, make alternate cues that are variations of the first. Record a few takes without the dog or the owl and have them at rehearsal. Make sure your choices are readily accessible. When you play the cue in the first technical rehearsal, tell the director that you have alternatives for him to hear. Unless things are very hectic (or the director is a dodo), he’ll appreciate alternatives. A computer-based playback system allows you to layer as many cue elements as you require. You can even treat the layers as if they were tracks on a multitrack music recording. This type of system allows for the greatest flexibility and subtlety. Track counts (the number of available playback tracks) can be limited by the speed of your hard drive, computer processor, or the software you are using.

For two track playback systems, splitting the tracks or creating alternate cues are also good ideas if you’re unsure about the amount of processing you want to add to a cue. Record your cue without reverb on one channel, while laying down a reverberant track on another channel. (This method comes in handy when the theatre doesn’t have a reverb unit.) The cue can always be made more reverberant by adding more of the reverb track in the mix, but it can’t be made less reverberant. Consequently, if you’ve gone too far with processing, it may be impossible to compensate for it later without rebuilding the cue.

In the best of situations, using an artificial reverberation processor in real time allows a designer the ability to sculpt the reverberation to the theatrical need as well as change reverberation characteristics over the duration of the cue.

BUILDING THE SHOW

Some designers like to gather and prepare all of their cues before they load them into the playback devices. They believe that this is a more efficient way to work and it helps them focus on the operation of the cues. This consideration can lead to a show that is easier to operate.

Not too long ago, a sound designer had few choices as to how to play back his design in the theatre. Reel-to-reel, cassette decks, and cart machines were the norm, and digital technology was just starting to appear in the form of samplers. Digital audio can provide clean, hiss-free sound as long as the signal path is free of noise and distortion. The days of splicing cues together into a show reel have faded away, replaced by terabytes of hard disk space and computer-based playback systems. The nightmare of a broken splice mangling your show reel has been replaced by the equally invigorating nightmare of having a hard drive crash during performance. Fortunately, data backup systems with instant recovery have significantly minimized that problem. Today, designers have many options when it comes to playback equipment, including digital samplers, MiniDiscs, compact discs, DAT players, digital cart machines, hard disk playback, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and dedicated computer-based systems. However, the basic concepts behind how you prepare your show for operation haven’t changed significantly—only the equipment has.

What every cue has in common is that they must all be defined or encapsulated so that only the cue called for plays; they must be easily identified; and there must be a backup copy of the cue in case of disaster. These cue attributes are best achieved by the use of a sound designer cue database (your software for creating a sound plot) and computer-based playback system. The database is also essential when using manual playback, especially when constructing operator cue sheets.

PLAYBACK SYSTEMS

MINIDISCS AND COMPACT DISCS

MiniDisc and compact disc playback devices are still popular in theatrical playback because they provide inexpensive digital sound. Many players start immediately when you hit the play button. Professional models of both units will allow you to play only one track with its own cue, and then will cue up to the next track without playing it. Some consumer models have a single playback mode that will play only one track at a time, avoiding the chance of accidentally rolling into the next cue. Barring these features, you can leave a few minutes of silence at the end of every cue, which will give your operator enough time to cue up the unit. If you look at the playback specifications of a MiniDisc player, you can see that the format is a bit of a compromise in audio quality. Using a MiniDisc player would be acceptable under circumstances where there isn’t a need for impeccable playback, such as a soft ambiance. But music or loud sound effects can reveal the shortcomings of this format.

MiniDisc players do allow you to change the running order of the cues by reordering the discs’ table of contents, and because MiniDiscs and CDs are so easy to use, they are often used to play rehearsal cues. A MiniDisc player allows you to give a name to each track, which will show up on the machine’s display. Many designers will name a track by its cue number and will include a brief description. Although CDs don’t allow you to name a cue, by putting only one cue on a track you can locate a cue by its track number. For CD playback, include track sheets with each disc.

DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATIONS AND HARD DISK PLAYBACK

Although it’s common to edit, process, and mix your cues utilizing a DAW with software such as Logic, Digital Performer, Nuendo, Sonar, and ProTools, DAWs generally do not make great playback systems. In the past, these units were used for multiple track playback and they were reasonably effective, if a bit clunky, in theatrical operation. If you choose to use one for playback, you’ll want to have a specific file (often referred to as a session) dedicated to playing cues. If your session has multiple cues in it, utilize the memory location feature of the software to allow you quick access to each cue.

Cues played on a hard disk playback deck need to be referenced to “locate” points. Hard disk decks work similarly to multitrack tape decks except for the fact that they are random access devices, which allows you to go from one cue to another very quickly. Tape-based systems must fast forward or rewind through the tape to get to different cues. Both DAWs and hard disk systems have the advantage of allowing you to play multiple tracks at the same time. DAWs allow you to do anything from automating fades to redesigning the cue.

DIGITAL SAMPLERS AND CART MACHINES

Digital samplers and digital cart machines take sounds and play them back at the touch of a button. In the case of a sampler, that button is usually a key on a MIDI keyboard, whereas a cart machine has assignable buttons to play specific sounds. Digital cart machines are modeled after the tape cartridges that were used for years by radio stations to play commercials. They look similar to an eight-track cartridge from the 1970s. Both of these units were often used to play short sounds. Although they can play longer sounds, they are limited by the amount of memory they have.

When you play a sound out of a sampler, assign one key on the keyboard to play that sound. The envelope can be adjusted so that the operator can hit the key and the sound will run for the full length of the sample. If the sound plays for six or seven seconds, adjust the envelope of the sound so that the operator does not need to keep the key held down for the duration of the cue. The envelope of a sound represents how fast the sound fades up to volume, how long it stays at volume, and how long it takes to fade out.

Samplers have many other features that make them good tools for both design work and performance. You can play more than one sound at a time, letting sounds overlap. If you have a series of thunder cues assigned to different keys on a sampler, you can begin the next cue before the first one has finished playing. Samplers are ideal for cues that are repeated often. Once loaded into the sampler, the sound can be triggered as many times as you want. For example, if there are fifteen identical doorbell cues in a show, it would be simpler to have those cues played by a sampler than to edit them into fifteen separate cues.

COMPUTER-BASED PLAYBACK SYSTEMS

MiniDiscs, compact discs, DATs, hard disk players, and DAWs each have their value depending on the scale of your production. But it should be noted that these devices have generally fallen out of favor for playback use. They have been replaced by computer-based playback and mixing systems such as QLab, SFX, Meyer Sound’s LCS Matrix3, AudioBox, and Cricket. The URLs for these companies can be found at our webpage at www.elsevierdirect.com/companions/9780240810119. Most of these systems are capable of playing back more than a dozen stereo tracks of audio simultaneously, and on some systems, track counts are limited only by your budget. Some systems allow you to mix live microphones and process effects, while others only play back multiple sound files.

Portable DAWs have become the creative tool of choice for every professional sound designer. These tools provide flexibility and power when creating or recording music, soundscores, soundscapes, and sound effects. They can easily “talk” to any of the computer-based theatre systems listed above and allow for the seamless transfer of sound and control files in either direction, facilitating backup.

BACKING UP YOUR WORK

The importance of having a backup copy of your work cannot be stressed enough. A substantial amount of work could be lost if a hard drive crashes or a CD or DVD is irreparably damaged. Making backups (or clones) of your CD or MiniDisc is simple. Most good MiniDisc players have digital inputs and outputs for copying. You can go back to the source files on your hard drive to burn another CD once the show is locked. Backing up a DAW can be as simple as copying the performance hard drive to another drive or using backup software. There are several automatic systems that back up in the “background” and others that can be scheduled to back up overnight. The bottom line is to make sure you do regular backups and make sure they are dated or marked in a way so that you know what they are.

LIVE AND PRACTICAL EFFECTS

Live and practical effects need the same preparation for performance as do prerecorded effects. Live effects, such as gunshots and offstage crashes, should be heard in the theatre before technical rehearsals so that there will be time for refinements. Directors especially like to hear gunshots before tech because it often takes time to locate and determine the right combination of firearm and blank charge size. Even if the set isn’t complete, a listening session in the house lets you ascertain the quality of an effect.

Crash box effects usually require a lot of experimentation before finding the right sound. If the crash sounds too small, more items should be added. Another solution might be to make the crash box bigger or construct it out of a different material. Refine your materials, then work on the “crashing” technique. Timing and intensity are vital. Believe it or not, there are many ways to drop a crash box, and the attitude of the dropper is as important as the technique of an instrumentalist.

Try to experiment with the person who will be performing the effect. Allowing time to do so outside of technical rehearsals gives you and the operator a chance to work on his technique and finesse without being rushed. Explain the action that the effect is supposed to imitate, and describe the artistic intent of the crash. For example, tell the operator that he is producing the sound of a trunk full of family heirlooms falling down a flight of stairs, picking up momentum along the way. This will conjure up a visual image in his mind and, hence, a sound image. Show the operator how you would work the effect and have him try it a few times until you get the sound you want.

Phone rings, doorbells, and other practical effects also need listening time. A realistic effect, such as an actual phone ring, will often sound small in a large theatre, in which case you may have to augment the effect. If you can, prepare the practical effect before tech by wiring it up to its power supply and activation switch; make sure to use enough cable to reach the power outlet, the operator’s position, and the location of the effect.

Regardless of how a cue is executed, you should play, experiment, and try things. Bang on a dumpster in search of the right “bang” effect. See whether cascading pots and pans sound funnier than tumbling pie tins and ironing boards.

Manufacturing effects is a major part of your craft, but it is not the last step. Until you enter the technical rehearsals, your beautiful music and glorious sounds are only discs and drives sitting on a shelf. When you add your cues to the production, your design becomes whole, as does the production. This final phase in the development of your design or composition is just as important as all of the hours spent researching, recording, and editing.