Microphone help

[Jupton24]

Hoping to get a bit of help here,

I've recently been told by the head of drama where I work to install some mics in our small theatre. seating capacity max 120. The theatre is actually an old chapel that has been somewhat converted. rough size 8m x40m and cealing hight of roughly 6m at peak

 

Now I've tried to play around with different mic options such as boundary mics and hanging mics but they haven't worked as the boundary mics just pick up the stage floor as its rostras with kids stepping on it. Hanging mics are a no as the head of drama doesn't like things dangling down.

 

Personally, I have tried to explain that it doesn't need to be miced and the kids just need to speak up but the issue is with that we have nursery nativities where you can barely hear the kids from 2m away.

 

Now I can kind of see the answer coming but is there any sort of mic that would be able to achieve something like a hanging mic but out of the way so to speak. I've tried rifle mics/shotgun mics they work alright but I've only had them at the front of the stage when we recorded a production but apparently, they lose the aesthetic of the theatre. I was thinking of something like a rode ntg on an articulating arm bolted to the rafters in the ceiling but I'm just worried about if it will pick the little kids alright. The budget is very very minimal roughly £300. I do have rode m3's that could be used but I have never used them before so I don't know what they are likely to pick up.

 

Thanks for your help

[sandall]

Forget hanging mics - unless they are practically sitting on the kids' heads they are useless in your situation. As you've discovered, gun mics do work - best on short stands poking over the stage front. For small children there are only 2 other options; either someone with a handheld, moving from mouth to mouth as they speak, or individual radio headset (best) or tie-clip mics, but that sounds way out of your budget for anything decent. The Rode m3 is just another close-pickup mic, so only of use when the kids can come up to a mic to do their stuff.

[kerry davies]

The only way I managed, and that was with a full orchestra, was to strap three rifle mics to the rood cross as mounting them high up in the cross beams of the church got nowhere. Unless you have something like a proscenium arch the performers really do need to project. For a choir I found that moving them up in front of the altar helped with the acoustics but Sandall is right, you haven't got the budget, sadly.

[Jivemaster]

Nothing picks up no voice, no matter what the budget. Individual radio mics is one way BUT budget for totally destroying one installation per year with people tearing them off and uncareful helpers, also add cost of batteries, and you are limited to 4 - 8 channels according to your location/frequency band etc and any neighbouring users.

[paulears]

What did Scotty say? "Ye can break the laws of physics Captain".

 

I have got quite a few shotguns - short shotguns like Sennheiser 416s, AKG 451+CK8 and even the stupidly long CK9, plus Audio Technica and a couple of others - and NONE of them will do what you want. You can put them on the floor on suspension mounts, clip them to poles, dangle them from girders - anything, but when you turn the level up till it feeds back, then back it off till stable you will find hardly anything coming out of the speakers. Shotgun mics are best viewed as torches. Imagine the mic is a torch with different beam widths from medium to quite narrow. Anything in the beam will be amplified. Not just the person, but the floor, the walls, other people and you hear whatever is in the field. Given the choice of boundary mics or shotguns I stopped using shotguns as soon as I got the first boundaries. The often reported comment about the floor noise is perfectly true, but it's two things - the airborne sound of the feet and the vibration through the floor. A thin bit of foam sorts the structural stuff, but feet do make noises, and shotguns pointing at a floor pick this up just the same as the boundaries. Shotguns pointing up at the mouth do work - BUT - there's always a gap where if you have more than one, they overlap. Odd numbers work best, but when all the faders are up there's a nasty comb filtering going on and a kind of hollow sound.

 

The advice to make them speak up/sing out really is the best solution. It's basically signal to noise - maximum voice to minimum noise. In my summer seasonal theatre with 1400 seats, people often insisted on using shotguns - 5 across the 12 m pros opening. You would always hear perfectly the person on row three singing loudly out of tune, and nothing of the ones on row one singing quietly. In a play, with the faders just under the feedback point, muting them often did nothing at all, unless you choreograph the entire blocking of the show to make the weak people stand in front of one. It's a futile exercise for PA - but recording with them can be really good. They're just rubbish for amplification.

[Jupton24]

Thanks all. I kind of was expecting that. Though it's great I have this in writing so I can go direct to the head of drama with this info.

[laolu]

When I started reading your post, I remember the headaches I had in 20+ years of theatre work. And my job was with university students!

It is quite a futile endeavor to amplify a shy whisper so that a booming voice comes from the PA. No no no. So your >head of drama< has only two options: train the kids to speak up. (They can be noisy in other situations!) Or pre-record everything and let them lip sync. Whether children can do that, I don't know.

BTW, I used 2 shotguns hanging from the ceiling and 3 on the floor, and fed the signal to speakers at the rear wall. Audience in the front could hear sound from the stage, audience in the back sound from the speakers. Those in the middle a little bit of both. And it worked - sort of.

[sleah]

I concour with everything that has been said. I do at least 2 shows a year with the little-uns where headset/lapel mics would not work well, mainly due to age of kids!

I haven't really come against the asthetics issue (apart from my own desire not to be too intrusive) and generally do the "mics in front of the stage" arrangement.

You can gain a lot more gain by 'ringing out' the system. I just use an EQ and push to slight feedback, find and lower the offending frequency, rinse and repeat. The sound won't be as rich as you or I might like but the teachers are happy the little darlings can be heard(ish!).

 

Also room acoustics make a noticeable difference. In our junior school hall there are lots of curtains and a vinyl floor, the gain-before-feedback is quite reasonable and the sound is good too, other than as I've mentioned.

However I was doing a summer school in a different space (an old 60's build school hall) that had no soft surfaces at all and the result was barely worth the effort.

Poor(er) gain before feedback and the sound was very hollow and echo-ey.

 

No magic bullet unfortunately. Headsets/lapels are the best solution but even with the budget, not always practical.

 

Good luck!

[paulears]

I recorded an amateur choir a week or two ago and knew from the off the guy on the front row who had a voice like a foghorn and sang his own version of the tune would be an issue. The conductor asked if I could work magic and remove him. I couldn’t and I felt her look at me in disbelief! Surely technology must be able to remove one person in a group?

[Jivemaster]

Perhaps, just perhaps there is a way of hiding microphone(s) inside props or set, and the inclination to watch for cues to fade them up and down.

[d_korman]

I recorded an amateur choir a week or two ago and knew from the off the guy on the front row who had a voice like a foghorn and sang his own version of the tune would be an issue. The conductor asked if I could work magic and remove him. I couldn’t and I felt her look at me in disbelief! Surely technology must be able to remove one person in a group?

 

My response to that is "I'll do it if you can tell me how to remove an egg from a cake"

[sandall]

I recorded an amateur choir a week or two ago and knew from the off the guy on the front row who had a voice like a foghorn and sang his own version of the tune would be an issue. The conductor asked if I could work magic and remove him. I couldn't and I felt her look at me in disbelief! Surely technology must be able to remove one person in a group?

Presumably if you'd known in advance you could have had him direct on a separate track & then subtracted this from the mix.

[paulears]

No I would have promoted him to be balance manager, had him develop hand signals then stand at the very back and signal to the others to push or pull their section levels. He would have felt important, been totally ignored and be nowhere near a microphone!

[Robin D]

Ohhh. What a pity there is no "like it" button against some of these posts. ?

 

Going back to the 60's I remember the guy with responsibility for we apprentices saying 'rubbish sound in = rubbish noise out" however good the equipment.

[Jivemaster]

But remember that for a school show each one of the shepherds is a star to their parents. Edited September 2, 2021 by Jivemaster