“The Time Machine: A Tribute to the ‘80s,” with Jared Brown, Trequon Tate, Isaiah Engram, Jaitee, Ben Izlar Jr and Isaac Ray/Photo: Darin Gladfelter
For as long as there has been theater, dance and music, sound amplification and modification has been an integral part of art and entertainment. Music archeologists discuss the evidence of prehistoric humans using sonorous objects and spaces—like conch shells and caves—to amplify music and voices. Ancient Greeks used a “raked” stage tilted downward in part to ensure that sound traveled out to, and not over, the audience, and the Romans were among the first to construct theaters designed to amplify and enhance sound. For centuries, sound designers and engineers have been crafting soundscapes to enhance storytelling, evoke emotions and create immersive experiences, and the tradition not only lives on but has evolved.
PinkPantheress at the Metro/ Photo: David Kabira
The shape of a venue makes a difference in the quality of sound that the audience receives from the stage. Nick Cartwright, lead audio engineer for Metro, praises the concert venue’s nearly one-hundred-year-old construction. “The Metro was built before sound systems were part of the deal, and a voice really projects naturally around the room—you’ll find that’s common in theaters built around the early 1900s.” The Metro is notable for its relatively small size, which holds approximately one-thousand people despite showcasing some of the world’s most famous bands. Cartwright loves a packed crowd. “The mass of people helps soak up the sound. They tighten things up sonically and make shows more fun to mix.”
Cartwright gets to flex his creative muscles by adjusting a band’s sound to match the audience’s expectations. “These are people’s favorite artists, and they have an idea of how the bands are supposed to sound. The Black Keys’ drums sound very different to the drums of The Flaming Lips. You wouldn’t apply the iconic Led Zeppelin sound to a hip-hop band with a live drummer. It’s important to know those genres and order the characteristic sounds that pertain to them—that’s on the engineer to understand.”
“The Time Machine: A Tribute to the ‘80s” with Britt Edwards/ Photo: Darin Gladfelter
For theater, it’s a different ballgame. The Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center opened in 2011 and was designed to allow sound to propagate, with surround-sound speakers installed to complement the construction; but with great musical power comes less vocal audibility. Sean Alvarez, lead sound engineer for BE’s “front of house” (what the audience hears), says that “singing and dialogue are always hard to mix with the sound of a band, and the worst thing would be for the voices to be drowned out by the music.” To get things right, he spends months preparing for every production—reviewing the script and instrumentation of the band, figuring out the correct placement of lavalier microphones on faces and making sure that the actors can hear themselves without feedback. “You want to experience the energy of the band, but not at the cost of the singers.”
Alvarez oversees the sound design on all BE productions, including the company’s popular series of tribute shows that cover numerous musical genres—funk, soul, jazz, blues, R&B, hip-hop, rock ‘n’ roll, disco and more—and Alvarez seeks to imitate the audible aesthetics of each musical era. “In ‘Time Machine: A Tribute to the Eighties,’ the goal was to faithfully reproduce the sounds that people remember hearing on those records by putting effects on the vocals, like what they did in the studio, to really produce a tribute show that sounds like the eighties.”
Ravinia Festival lawn at dusk/Photo: Ravinia Festival
What if a venue has no walls and ceiling to bounce sound off? That’s the challenge faced by the Ravinia Festival outdoor music venue and their team of audio engineers: master sound technician Sam Amodeo, who designs the creation and deployment of the sound systems; audio technician Rob Laseau, who handles the day-to-day mixing of sound; and audio consultant Jonathan Laney, who handles the ergonomics of equipment installation, placement and layout. Besides the lack of acoustically reflective surfaces, the lawn at Ravinia is shaped asymmetrically (the stage is not always visible) and seats about two-thirds more than a large concert hall. “We are using various techniques and advanced sound localization technology spread out across a vast system to provide acoustic accuracy to the music,” says Laney, “which greatly improves the sense of the audience’s ability to tell the direction from which a sound is originating.” “On our lawn, the music sounds like it’s coming from the source,” says Amodeo. “We want you to hear the detail and clarity as if you were sitting on stage with the artists right in front of you.”
“It’s a combination of art and science,” says Laseau, “and juggling the requirements of this massive network is a collaborative experience of making system improvements and decisions, that’s the science part; the day-to-day operations become the creative part of using those tools to do that.” Laney cites balancing the sound of an orchestra in an outdoor environment as an example. “The orchestra can be very quiet, which allows for a very dynamic range, but as soon as you move it outside, even in a quiet place like Highland Park, our ambient noise level is much higher than it is in the concert hall, so the audible bottom end disappears. We raise the volume of that bottom end so that people on the lawn can hear what the very quietest parts of that movement are.” Despite their combined talents, they are still no match for the noisy Metra train. “For that we have no solutions,” says Amodeo, laughing. “Sometimes the conductor of the orchestra will pause if it rolls by between movements.”
Whether a musical play, famous band or trending YouTube star, every sound designer interviewed expresses the same priority, a desire to not interject themselves upon the artist/audience relationship. “Amplification is absolutely necessary, but we want it to be as transparent as possible,” says Amodeo, “It’s the artist that makes the performance, not us, so we try to stay out of the way.” Alvarez relishes the impromptu challenges of designing sound for live theater. “There’s always an outlet for creativity, to use a technique or try to implement an idea and find creative solutions to issues. It keeps things exciting!” For Cartwright, it’s an honor to be part of the act. “You get to put your sonic footprint into somebody’s music, and [artists] don’t just trust anybody. It’s not always a dream job, but, God, it’s a great job.”
