How to get sound from people above a small orchestra without radio mics?

[rickie1080uk]

Hi,

I'm a drama tech at a school and we're currently gearing up to do the school play - and while I'm vaguely competent with sound, it's not completely my area of expertise, so I was coming on here to see if I could get some advice with a huge conundrem....

We are doing a musical - we have a small orchestra with 1 cello, a few flutes, a piano, a clarinet and a violin - this is micced, but mostly just for the sake of a monitor that enables them to hear everything back. We then have our main characters micced with radio mics, so we can easily raise the volume of their singing above the orchestra. We do however have a few times where odd characters sing a solo line in a song and we don't have the capability to attach a radio mic to them but we still need to pick them up.

We first tried hanging 3 cardoid rifle mics from the top of the stage, one left, one centre, one right (for the record, I didn't think this would work, but it was recommended by a professional company!) - we managed to pick up spots but they didn't quite do what we wanted, and quite often gave feedback. Out of curiosity we also tried this with a vocal handheld mic, which as expected was even worse.

We've now tried putting the cardoid mics on the front of the stage, about an inch above the floor, pointed diagonally up. We have four of these, two in the centre pointed away from each other and one on each side of the stage pointed in at an angle. We tried them out yesterday and they were picking up better. But when we try it with a play run through tonight I know it will pick up footsteps, or give feedback, or find another way to inevitably fail.

Please can someone who knows what they are doing with sound a bit more than I do point me in the right direction! What would you recommend is the best way to pick up the actors that have the occasional lines in a song without attaching a mic to them? Many parents would be devastated if they didn't get to hear their kid's only line!

Am really appreciative of any advice

 

[Tex]

Please can someone who knows what they are doing with sound a bit more than I do point me in the right direction! What would you recommend is the best way to pick up the actors that have the occasional lines in a song without attaching a mic to them? Many parents would be devastated if they didn't get to hear their kid's only line!

Am really appreciative of any advice

The simple way would be to block the scene or choreograph the number so that the actors are near someone with a body mic when it's time to say/sing their line. The problem with trying to pick up an individual with boundary mics is that they exist for sound reinforcement rather than amplification. They tend to make a group sound larger rather than make an individual sound louder.
I usually borrow or rent a few cheap wireless mics to share between those incidental characters with one or two lines.

 

[mstaylor]

Are you putting the instruments in the main mix at all or just micing them for monitor purposes? They should be able to maintain with no reenforcement, allowing the nonmicced singers to come through.

 

[Dillon]

As Tex mentioned, it's all about the blocking. If you can't get a wireless mic on or near the actor, then you need to find a way to get the actor near a mic. I'd try taking your cardioid rifle mics and strategically place them in front of where the actors you need to lift will be. And then only turn the mics up one at a time, and only when you need to use them to lift the "un-mic'ed" actors. It will take some experimenting, but you should be able to come up with a working solution...

 

[museav]

As Tex mentioned, it's all about the blocking. If you can't get a wireless mic on or near the actor, then you need to find a way to get the actor near a mic. I'd try taking your cardioid rifle mics and strategically place them in front of where the actors you need to lift will be. And then only turn the mics up one at a time, and only when you need to use them to lift the "un-mic'ed" actors. It will take some experimenting, but you should be able to come up with a working solution...

Provided the rest of the system and the room allow you to do that without feedback, going from a mic 1" or 2" away from the mouth to one 10' or 20' away is theoretically losing 36dB to 48dB of potential acoustic gain and can make getting enough gain before feedback with the distant mics to keep up with the close miked actors can sometimes be a challenge.

 

[Dillon]

Yeah... I was picturing something closer to 10' away from one of the shotguns, maximum.