In response to DrPinto's question about use of a leslie in
Theatre:
I used a smaller, single 8"
driver two-speed leslie
unit in the 1990s for an
effect on the voice of the
Wizard in a youth production of The
Wizard of Oz (or maybe the Wiz, I don't recall, as I did sound reinforcement for both several times over the years.)
My concept for the
effect came from hearing an amazing sounding B3/Leslie combination used for gospel music in a 3200 seat Theatre-in-the-round, which had been converted to a church (Melodyland Christian Center, was near Disneyland, since torn down). The circular room had raked seating and reflective ceiling panels that raked down as the distance increased from the
stage. Around the outside was a circular cinder
block wall. I think the best sounding leslies are a result of both the
loudspeaker plus the room contribution. In this case, the highs and the lows 'swept' around the room, and reflected back. It sounded amazing, and it was also shocking how loud 60 watts through two drivers could get. (I know there are lots of exotic ways to mic a leslie, but since it is a 3D sound, I'm not sure that any combination of 2 - 4 mics through a stereo PA will ever reproduce what these sound like in-person in a good room.)
The
Theatre for my show had hard walls and ceiling in an open area above the
house seating, and I wanted to create a similar
effect where I would try to have the sound
bounce off the walls, by flying a rotating vibrato/tremolo
unit under a lighting
catwalk. I was looking for an enveloping sound that came from everywhere.
It wasn't feasible (nor safe) to fly a full size leslie. I was able to rent a small
unit from Peter Miller at CAE Sound (who has been repairing and hot-rodding leslies for San Francisco Bay Area bands, some legendary, for many years), which I suspended from chains underneath the
catwalk. I could not modify the leslie itself, so all connections and rigging were done without changes to the actual
unit.
The
unit had an 8"
driver and looked similar this:
It is a smaller
unit of the Leslie model 16, which was also packaged as the fender vibratone:
Here is YouTube video of the internals of single-speed version of the
unit:
Since the
unit was out of an organ, I had to provide the AC motor
power and control. I built a two-channel
relay control
unit that switched AC
power located at the leslie, controlled with remote
switch box using 12VDC control via an
XLR cable, which was operated from the
FOH position. I ran AC
power,
speaker line, and my control
XLR cable up to the
catwalk (along with the usual feed for balcony fill speakers).
For the audio feed, I was limited to using the actor's wireless mic feed from a
bodypack. I was hoping to use a
dynamic mic but it was not feasible to get it built into the set, due to cable runs and set changes. The actor playing the
wizard was a boy using an omni
lapel mic, so the sound was very thin. I ran the feed through a
compressor and added two octaves of frequency down-shifting with an SPX90, to try to add some 'meat' to the sound. That output was
fed to a 25
watt paging amp (e.g. a Bogen or McGowen), as a quick way to make sure I did not burn out the 8" 'vintage'
driver on the rented
unit.
When the
Wizard spoke, the mix operator brought up the leslie feed, and switched between the high and low speed motors similar to a B3/Leslie organist playing music. A clean feed of the actor's mic went through the main PA as well, as we still needed to maintain intelligibility (which limited how far we could go with the entire
effect, as we didn't have a lot of
headroom before
feedback.)
On the positive side, the
effect filled the room with a unique sound, and caught the attention of the audience because it wasn't just coming from the
stage. And, like a B3 through a leslie, the most interesting sound came when the
unit was speeding up or slowing down. The leslie
effect is both Doppler (
pitch or vibrato), and
level (tremolo). The operator learned to continually flip the
switch so it was always speeding up and slowing down. With more tech time, I think would could have tied the speed control adjustment to dialog.
On the down side, I was not able to achieve the 'sound bouncing off walls'
effect, likely because the room was too small, and the coverage 'angles' of the
unit were too wide. Also, I was not able to get the
effect to really have the impact I wanted, as it didn't 'growl' the way I wanted, and I didn't get people to jump out of their seats. That is likely due to the concept itself, which is diffuse, along with the limitations of a boy actor,
lapel mic, and lack of a two-way, full-size leslie. I'm not sure any sound out of an 8"
speaker under a
catwalk would get 400 people to jump out of their seats.
Since that show, I found a couple of similar units on Ebay that are sitting in storage waiting for attention. I'm thinking a high-power 8"
coax might work well, but would prefer something with narrower coverage. However, there is no way a single-drive
unit will have the sound of the two
driver unit, which typically spins asynchronously in opposite directions, adding an additional set of interactions between the high and low frequencies. The magical sound of a leslie comes from very elegant engineering that all works together in a sloppy sort of way, and that includes how the speed changes between the two motors on a single shaft, along with belts slipping and such.
While there are fewer and fewer leslie experts around, here are a few other reference links I've found, for reference:
Anyway, that's one use of a leslie in
Theatre...
-larry-
