My first completed project was the Vinalhaven production of Pippin in which I played guitar and percussion in the pit orchestra. After three nights, it is now completed and I am currently in the last stretch of Courtney's production of Freshwater by Virginia Wolf. Not only am I an "actor" playing the philosopher Charles Hay Cameron, but I have also created a decent sound design to go along with it.
I will not speak too much of my "acting" as I am not very good, this being only my second acting part ever on the stage, but I would, however, like to discuss a bit of my sound design work with which I am quite happy.
Because my character (Cameron) totes around a caged marmoset throughout the play, I first decided that I would like to have some marmoset sounds that were not only dimensional (moved with the prop itself), but also not overwhelming and overshadowing. I was fortunate enough to have an iPod Touch app purchased for me by my friends the Toughcats called Beatmaker by Intua for assisting them with some recording they did for their next record. This app allows me to access any sample I load onto a 16 x 16 button pad. Since I do not have access to any live marmoset that I can sample myself, I was lucky enough to find a sample on the internet that I was able to split into three different samples. I loaded all three samples (each on it's own pad) to every pad on the screen. Following this I am taping the iPod Touch itself to the underside of the cage in which the marmoset sits and that I carry around on the stage. I was originally a bit worried that the volume would not be suitable and attempted to wire up some sort of speaker to the underside of the cage as well. After realizing that boosting the high frequencies of the sample and subsequently cranking the gain up a bit on the entire frequency band of the sample really allowed the internal speaker of the iPod to project in the theater while not being too overwhelming during the speaking of an actor, thus achieving my first goal. Below is a screenshot of my marmoset samples in Beatmaker:
As I enjoy dimension quite a bit with regards to sound, I decided to follow my usual path of directional speaker placement for the rest of the sound design which consists not only of sound effects, but some musical samples as well. The first speaker placement I required was stage left while the second was about center stage behind the scrim. I mostly used the speaker behind the scrim for the music and the speaker stage left for some more directional sound effects. The most difficult aspect of this was to determine how to perform the sound design live from the lighting/sound booth whilst employing these different speaker placements. The final, and possibly most difficult task, was to achieve the usage of a third speaker by itself while being able to mute the other two speakers without having to unplug anything. This third speaker is placed on the ground at the front of the stage and under a sheet that simulates an ocean. Guess what the sound cue for that is. I achieved this by using the control room function on my portable mixing board where by pressing the control room button, the main output (where the other speakers originate) is muted and thus creating an almost "surround sound" style of speaker placement. The third speaker is plugged into the main sound board via the monitor input, where the other two speakers are powered using a small PA backstage. I did not want to use the house system because the speakers are above the heads of the audience and does not create the desired effect while being very difficult to deactivate as well.
Once the hardware was all set (running cables over the ceiling of the theater, etc.), I used a simple piece of software to program each cue called VSamp. VSamp is a simple sampler that can utilize either midi or the keyboard of your computer to trigger the samples. I like to use the keyboard because it minimizes equipment to be drug into the small lighting/sound booth at the theater. VSamp allows me to program volume as well as panning.
This is, in essence, the basic idea of my sound design for Freshwater. As simple as this process is to execute, it is difficult to describe without many more paragraphs so I will leave it at this. I would also like to mention that this project was made much easier with the help of my friend and student Jack Walker. Jack is an amazing person and I hope he continues to do this work in the future. He is also performing the sound cues live while I "act" on stage.
Freswhater opens tomorrow, 14 May 2009 and runs until 17 May 2009 at Waterman's Community Center
Dude. You is smart.
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