After the first few official meetings with the director, the composer, and music director, it was clear to me that this new pop-rock musical needed to have flair and power behind it. Having worked at Constellation many times, I was fully aware of the possibilities and limitations of the space both in terms of it’s acoustics and inventory. After back and forth with both the theatre and the producers of this musical, we came up with some extra funds to purchase additional speakers as well as new microphones for the pit.

The set was configured to be in a proscenium setup, but a very wide compared to most theatres. This resulted in the audience being arranged into three distinct chunks. To make sure everyone got adequate coverage and full range of the frequency spectrum, I gave each bank of seats a stereo configuration (QSC K8s). I also put two subwoofers under the audience risers both house left and right in order to provide an even coverage of low end (Behringer and Alto Professional). The foldbacks for the cast were Samson speakers from the stock inventory. With two downstage for coverage of the main playing space, and two upstage behind the set for everyone offstage. The band was using Behringer P16 personal mixes with headphones for monitoring.

Given the volume of the show, I made the decision for everyone to be using “boom” style rigs to give me the most gain before feedback. We had over 10 actors using Countryman B3’s with the in house Shure ULX transmitter and receivers.

Given the volume of the show at times, it was important for me to minimize as much extra noise on stage as possible. We had no where to put the band except upstage of the set. Therefore I advocated that the band be as direct as possible with no amps on stage. For the drum set we ended up building a custom drum booth with insulation to help minimize noise bleed into the other instruments and on stage (check the pictures to the left). The keyboard was a Mainstage rig that was straight into a stereo direct box. The guitar player, used a Line 6 HX Stomp direct into a DI Box for his electric, and for his acoustic, we went off the pickup into a direct box. The bass was also straight into direct boxes with amp on stage. The cello was mic’ed using an AKG P120. The drum set was an Audix D6 on the kick, Shure SM57 on the snare, Shure Beta98s on the toms, and AKG P120s as overheads. We also used tracks triggered via Mainstage for a click track, loops and tracks.

This was a challenging show to craft a mix for, but we ended up prevailing and creating a very dynamic, but powerful performance.