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Boundary Vs Hanging Mics


mgreatorex

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Hello,

 

I have a school production of We Will Rock You coming up soon, and I am trying to figure out whether hanging or boundary mics are best?

 

The main actors will be mic'ed with wireless mics, but I am needing to come up with a solution to pickup the chorus. We do not have the budget and/or resources to be able to put wireless mic's on everyone.

 

I currently have a pair of audio technica pro 44 boundary mics which I can use, but I was wondering whether I would get better results from hanging mics? The speakers are hung in the centre directly above the front of the stage, but I am also able to place some speakers on stands if that would produce better gain before feedback.

 

Is there any hints or tips for using boundary mics, or should I look at something different?

 

Thanks

 

Matt

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My own feeling is that for a show like WWRY then neither option will work very well. I suspect that all you'll end up doing is picking up the band and the chorus won't be heard. If you're stuck with a fait accompli then, sorry but I have no advice to offer other than to suggest you try it with what you've got and see how it works. I'd have a small, but skilled, chorus, in the pit or backstage on vocal mics doing the bulk of the singing and let the chorus dance and sing along.
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My own feeling is that for a show like WWRY then neither option will work very well. I suspect that all you'll end up doing is picking up the band and the chorus won't be heard. If you're stuck with a fait accompli then, sorry but I have no advice to offer other than to suggest you try it with what you've got and see how it works. I'd have a small, but skilled, chorus, in the pit or backstage on vocal mics doing the bulk of the singing and let the chorus dance and sing along.

 

We don't actually have a band, but have brought the WWRY Schools backing tracks. I suppose that makes things a little easier, as I will have full control over the levels of the backing music!

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Trouble is, WWRY is a sort of mandatory LOUD show, so even with the backing tracks, you'll want the sort of volume where they can yell, not sing like a choir - so when it comes down to it, I'd forget about miking them up. When I have to, I choose boundary mics every time, but gain before feedback is not great - but they produce a better sound - hanging mics, as a comparison tend to pick up foot noise, especially if they stage is a bit bouncy. Adding more of the hanging or boundaries rarely seems to offer much in extra volume. With WWRY - if the chorus can't be heard, they're not singing loud enough - and if they don't do that, the mics offer very little.

 

I can't imagine a quiet WWRY - kind of against the feel really!

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For these types of LOUD musicals, SM58s on stands are the only reasonable alternative for chorus. Logistics may mean that only some of the chorus is on the mic, or indeed the chorus is actually off-stage in a curtain compound.

 

Since you're running from tracks, you could also have some chorus as part of the tracks. Its a bit of a cheat, but a cheat not unheard of...

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I did WWRY a few years ago and came across the same problem. We had the principals with headsets and then had a chorus backstage L & R round two 58's. The backing tracks were played via Cubase (yuk) at the time so we could control each channel individually. It worked out great! We didn't bother with any boundary or hanging mics as our stage floor is so loud.

 

Could you fix your boundaries to any of the set perhaps?

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Another vote for a pre-recorded chorus track to run alongside the backing CD here; whenever I have to do WWRY I always use a chorus track to run under the main vox at a subtle level to beef things up a bit.

 

If you must use ambient mic's, then I would always opt for something hanging above rather than boundary mic's on the floor, inevitably both options will pick up more band or foldback than anything else but a PZM sat in front of an open pit is generally redundant once a drummer starts playing or will just leave the footsteps on the stage thumping through the PA once choreography starts...

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I'd agree wth Paul here.

We set 3 PCC160 floor mics as a standard for pretty much any show that needs chorus mics. No, they're not 100% but what they ARE good at is picking up a fairly balanced level across the stage.

There are those who supllement these with a couple or three mics on stands in front of stage, but these tend not to be as good.

And don't get me started on rifles/shotguns, which seem to the tool of choice for many who don't really understand that both have a very limited field of pickup and as such can add more problems to the mix than they solve.

 

Hanging mics I've personally always shied away from if I'm ever involved in noise - Simply because very few performers will sing with their heads pointing UP to them and as they by default need to be at or near grid height to get them out of audience visibility...

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I can see that for some things a hung mic could be useful - perhaps a long way upstage - but the killer seems to be all the ones I have tried seem to rotate when the heat on stage rises. Somewhere I've got a couple of small ones with a wire angle changer on the end. They look ok, considering there's still a long ugly dangling cable - but it's when you've spent ages, adjusting the twist of the cable to point the cardioid pattern the right way, and then after a pile of PAR cans have done their stuff, it's twisted around.

 

Posting at the ground, they seem to pick up lots of foot noise. The PCCs, on that plane already, seem to suffer less from my own perspective.

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