More and more big musicals are touring these days, often looking and sounding very similar to their original West End productions. Jo Fletcher-Cross,
Audio Media June 2010, looks at how one huge show gets on the road.
Excerpt from article:
Gareth Owen, who designed the sound, elaborates on the particular challenges that faced him. “It’s quite a loud show, but they don’t want to see the microphones. On a loud show with no click track and no backing tracks, going to some really big venues, that’s probably the main challenge.”
The cast microphones are DPA booms, Godwin tells me, “hidden in the hair. We’re using them so we don’t have to use tape. Something a bit different. They’re rigid, and we don’t have to put tape on that keeps coming off. Because of the rigid microphones, we can ever so slightly bend capsules off hair and they stay like that.”
The actual sound of the show is another test. “They want it to sound 60s without it sounding 60s; because actually in the 60s, if you go back and listen to the original Beatles recordings, they sound dreadful,” said Gareth Owen. “You can’t actually hear what they’re saying, you can’t hear the detail. So again, it’s a challenge to produce that.”
Read or download the whole article (PDF)