Poll: Mixing Musicals

Do you mix musical mics with faders or the mute buttons assuming no dca's and scenes.

  • Faders

    Votes: 25 59.5%
  • Mutes

    Votes: 6 14.3%
  • Mutes? Are you effing kidding??

    Votes: 11 26.2%

  • Total voters
    42

Jay Ashworth

Well-Known Member
Just been told to mix the final show of this three-day rental musical using the mic channel mute buttons, because nobody's happy with the mix, because I'm not being given proper microphone cues.

Of people here who mix musicals on a regular basis: [POLL]
 
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Using mutes vs faders (or other automation if applicable) doesn’t change the mix. Are they complaining about lines not being heard or a balance (mix) issue? Was there appropriate rehearsals for you to learn the mix/show? Seems like whoever gave you this directive is trying to jump into the technical side of things instead of issuing an artistic request and having you meet it.

Ultimately you may not have been given the correct cues - but that doesn’t make much sense to correct it by using mutes... I sense there may be more to this story, but ultimately, no, using mutes probably isn’t the standard from what I’ve seen. Best of luck on the last run.
 
Faders are the way to go.

But generally when someone is unhappy and wants to stir things up for the final show, that just ensures that the last show will be a mess. Now you're fighting memory, and when missed cues become more obvious with the mutes/unmutes, you'll get a director or someone else in your ear who will rile you up and make it even harder to focus on doing a good job.
 
And when you're accustomed to throwing faders, the mutes are an additional thing to keep track of so you're not throwing a muted fader up expecting to nail an entrance only to royally fark it up, and it can be a lot easier to find a fader with your fingers without taking eyes off the stage or script compared to tapping the right mute.
 
Using mutes vs faders (or other automation if applicable) doesn’t change the mix. Are they complaining about lines not being heard or a balance (mix) issue? Was there appropriate rehearsals for you to learn the mix/show? Seems like whoever gave you this directive is trying to jump into the technical side of things instead of issuing an artistic request and having you meet it.

Roughly that, I felt, yeah. It was a director who got thrown into SM because their SM had been in the hospital.

And then showed up anyway, and was giving me said cues.

Ultimately you may not have been given the correct cues - but that doesn’t make much sense to correct it by using mutes... I sense there may be more to this story, but ultimately, no, using mutes probably isn’t the standard from what I’ve seen. Best of luck on the last run.

The evening show went *much* better, indeed, and yes, there were only 2 rehearsals in the space, which is much shorter than our usual rental.

That we had just deployed $26k of new ULX-D and TwinPlexes -- while they're *much* nicer than our old analog/Avlex rig -- didn't make my life any easier, either, since I had to get accustomed to them under the gun.

And the TwinPlex mics, BTW, are every bit as nice as Shure claims they are. They somehow manage to have a nice linear pickup pattern gain vs distances, and *still* not phase cancel as much as the old mics.
 
And when you're accustomed to throwing faders, the mutes are an additional thing to keep track of so you're not throwing a muted fader up expecting to nail an entrance only to royally fark it up, and it can be a lot easier to find a fader with your fingers without taking eyes off the stage or script compared to tapping the right mute.
*Exactly* the damn argument I made. :)

Though, for the record, their argument seemed to be that I wouldn't have to touch the faders, only the mutes.

Why that's a non-starter will be left as an exercise for the student.

I welcome everyone's favorite "broadway A1 mixing a musical" youtube links, though... :)
 
If the director or SM tells me how to operate the mixing desk, I'm leaving. Now, not at the end of the rehearsal. I'll stop by in the morning to pick up my cheque, please have it ready.

Why? Because I know what the phuque I'm doing here. If I have to wait for SM cues to open mics I'll be behind. You've expressed ZERO confidence in my ability to perform the work without micromanagement so I'm obviously the wrong person for the task. Pay my day fee and I'll not haunt your doors. I have no interest in working further with such a company until directorial or SM changes are made.
 
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I'm a little bit of both in that I will use a mute after a person exits a scene, I like to kill off anything that won't be coming back for that scene and then the next scene resets the mutes/dcas/faders for me.
 
Here's our general rule in my building when it comes to stuff like this....

If you want every line hit or it mixed exactly how you want you need to bring someone in who knows your show and they can mix it. You can hire one of my staff to go to your rehearsals and build your show, but that between you and them. Don't expect my staff to run your show perfectly after one or two rehearsals.

I'd also highly advise you to get a desk in there with DCA's... even if its a X32. Running wireless on analog desk should not be a thing anymore.
 
We have a PreSonus 32.4.2AI and I've been a diehard fader person for a long time. However, I decided last year to let the students decide since they are the ones who run the board, and all of the students who sat at the board voted that mutes were a lot easier for them. We also had the fewest misses in mic entrances then ever before. I also attribute that to having a much better system where the computer engineer gave proper warnings on mics coming on/off. So I'm going to let the students decide again this year.

Hopefully next year I get a new mixer (keep going back and forth between X32 and the TF series).
 
They occasionally do when we have actors who stand too close to others whose mics are on, but not to the extent that they would if I had DCAs. Last musical we had 18 mics in use and it just became too much for them. I'm still myself getting accustomed to the setup considering we went from having 0 wireless units we own and renting 12 per show just a few years ago to now we own 20 channels.
 
They should get better at it over time. I've actually never had the luxury of using VCA/DCA grouping with musicals, and the last show I did (Funny Girl) had 24 wireless ... it wasn't easy, but it was doable. Careful placement of the channels by frequency of stage presence (channels 12-13 are the center of the board and where the lead actors are clustered) helps you to get them within reaching distance of your 8 fingers most of the time.
 
I have always used mutes as I try to change my levels as little as possible after mic check. However, there are always times when faders are the way to go. This is not an A or B question, it's circumstance specific.

I'm not quite understanding how this becomes a mix issue though. Were they not happy with the mix in general? Aside from the mute/fader issue? Were you not able to find the same levels when fading in, therefore changing your mix?

Did they give you specific reasoning for using the mutes vs faders? Faster response time, consistency, etc?
 

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