Before I get started with this book I feel it is important to answer some key questions like… Who am I? Why am I writing this book? Who is it for? How is this book laid out? And… if a speaker feeds back in the woods, will anyone hear it? So let me start with the first question. Very simply I am a sound person. I will do and have done almost any job in the field of theatrical sound. I also consider myself a stagehand. I am willing to work anywhere I am needed in the theatre, but I probably shouldn’t be allowed to wield a jigsaw or repair a wiggle light. I started dabbling in theatre in high school back in the mid-1980s. I was a spiky-haired little new-wave punk looking for a place to fit in and for some reason the theatre department drew me in. My first venture into theatre was as the newspaper boy in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Ah, those were the days. At that time I considered myself an actor, but I was one of the few who hung around to build the set and hang and focus the lights. I remember doing musicals back then with no amplification. Nowadays there are high schools running 30 wireless on a musical. It just blows my mind how much things have changed in 25 years.
After high school I went to college and studied English and Theatre. What a money-making combo that is! I considered myself an all-around theatre person and I enjoyed acting, directing, writing, and teching shows. Right after high school and during my first year of college, I worked in lots of little black box theatres around town and more often than not I was the electrician/light board op. There were also times when I would stage manage as well as build sets. Basically I would do whatever I needed to in order to get an invitation to the opening night party. Then I became more involved in my college program and did a little of everything. I think wardrobe crew was my least favorite, but other than that I enjoyed what I was doing. I am a big believer in a liberal arts education and I think the field of sound is a perfect example of that style of education, which encourages you to learn a broad range while you focus on your goal, and gives you a rich palette of knowledge to use in your career path. I hadn’t really found my niche in theatre; I just knew I wanted to work in theatre.
Sound was barely a part of theatre back then. I remember seeing The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables on Broadway in 1987 and I know those shows were amplified, but in my little world in Texas there was not a lot of sound in theatre. Neither my high school, nor my college, nor my local community theatre, nor my neighborhood avant-garde theatre owned a single wireless microphone. In fact, other than pre-show and some scene change music, I don’t even remember any recorded sound cues in anything I worked on until the last couple of years in college. During my junior year in college we did Sam Shepard’s Mad Dog Blues, which is a really strange musical about people tripping on acid. It was my first experience with sound for the stage. I was told I was going to mix the show and the college rented some equipment from a man who worked in bars and did industrials. He had no theatre experience and I had no sound experience. Together we were quite a team. I can’t even imagine what it sounded like now, but I doubt it was very good. I do remember I really enjoyed it and it opened my eyes to a new world in theatre. That year I also started the obligatory college band and bought a four-track recorder. Remember those? Four tracks on a cassette. I started getting more interested in sound, but I hadn’t really figured out that there was a career in it.
After college I went to graduate school for Dramaturgy, which is basically a person who studies theatre and helps explain the socio-economic environment that existed in the time of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and stuff like that. I was into directing and writing and researching theatre, but after my first year I realized it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. The whole time I was in school I was working as a stagehand to earn money, and I realized that I enjoyed being a stagehand more than anything. So I dropped out of school and started a dance/theatre company with some friends and played with my band in bars all over Texas and Arkansas and Oklahoma. Those were the lost years and, man, were they fun. I also worked as a draftsman at an engineering firm, which had been another source of income for me since I was 13. At the ripe old age of 13, I had been introduced to AutoCad 1.0. Very few people knew how to use it at the time and I figured it out and worked as a draftsman during the summers. After I dropped out of grad school, I fell back on drafting as a way to make money while I figured out what I was doing.
By this time, it was the early 1990s and sound had really taken off in theatre in my area. My good friend from college, Patrick Pummill, was mixing musicals at a local theatre and was soon to start touring, which would lead him to Broadway. I started following his path as it became clear that there was a career to be had. I found myself working at an avant-garde theatre called The Undermain and I was the sound mixer. My then girlfriend and now wife, Mollie, got me my first job in sound, and she loves to point out the fact that I owe my career to her, so props to Mollie. I loved mixing and I loved that little theatre. I mixed punk rock musicals and crazy plays. The more I worked in sound, the more I understood how it brought everything together for me. Unlike any other technical discipline in theatre, sound is organically involved in creating the performance. As a mixer you are part actor, part musician, part stagehand, part director, and part dramaturge and it was a perfect fit for me.
Then I moved on to mix at The Dallas Theater Center and I met Curtis Craig, who really opened my eyes and changed my life. The Dallas Theater Center is a very nice regional theatre with a 500-seat theatre and an 800-seat warehouse space. We did some great work there and it was full of creativity. Curtis was a fantastic sound designer and I was so impressed with the work he did on plays. He built great layered soundscapes and at the time we were using minidisc players and some samplers. Can you believe that? Curtis is still a very close friend. He currently teaches at Penn State and anyone who gets to study with him is incredibly lucky. I have hired several of his graduates and they have all been of the highest caliber.
While at the Dallas Theater Center I stumbled upon a job posting that changed my life even more. I applied for a position as a touring sound person on a show called Tap Dogs. I was so young and dumb and I had no clue how unqualified I was for the job. Fortunately for me, though, when I applied the tour just happened to be in Dallas. The designer was touring on the show and he needed to take a few months off to do another show and he was having no luck finding anyone, so I met the designer for an interview and he hired me. As it happens so often in this business, I was offered a job and had to be on a plane a couple of days later and would be gone months. So I said my good-byes and became a touring mixer.
The designer’s name was Daryl Lewis. He was from Australia, which meant he talked funny. Once I arrived at the theatre in Springfield, Missouri, I think it took Daryl less than five minutes to size me up and realize what a mistake he had made in hiring me. I was completely in over my head. I went from mixing shows for 500 people to mixing shows for 3,000 people. I had never heard of Camlocks or G-Blocks and the Mackie I had become so proficient with at the Dallas Theater Center didn’t have VCAs. I can only imagine what Daryl thought when I asked, “VCAs? What are those?” I arrived for the last day in Springfield and I watched the show that night and was blown away. I couldn’t believe I was going to mix that show. Then we did a load-out, which was my first load-out and I still have a scar from it. When we were dropping the Yamaha PM4K, Daryl asked for hands all around the desk. I jumped in and as we set it on the ground Daryl warned us not to get our hands caught under the 600-pound desk. We placed it on the ground and as everyone else stood up, to my horror, I realized that my middle finger was stuck under the desk and there was a piece of sharp metal digging into my flesh. I cried out for a little help and my bloodied finger was released from the console’s death grip. I learned an important lesson right then, which is you never drop a desk like that. Someone could get hurt. And now anytime I start to get a little uppity, I just look at the scar on my finger and that deflates my ego a little.
The next stop was St. Louis at the Fox, which is a 3,000-seat work of art. The first time I touched the desk was in front of 3,000 people and I was a nervous wreck. I never knew how much sweat could pour out of your palms. Daryl made me bring napkins out front every night to wipe the desk off after I mixed portions of the show. He was not happy with me. Basically after each show he would say, “Well, that was pretty bad. I don’t think this is going to work. Keep your bags packed because I will probably fire you tomorrow.” And then I would go back to my room feeling like a complete failure. It was kind of like the scene in The Princess Bride where the Dread Pirate Roberts would tell Westley, “I will probably kill you tomorrow.” But luckily Daryl had a plane ticket back to Australia for another job and I was his only hope, so he kept working with me. I learned so much from Daryl and he was a great mixer and a great guy. By the time he left, I was doing a good job on the show and I took care of the tour while he was gone with very few problems. After that I worked for Daryl for a couple of years.
With that change in my life, I began my life as a theatre hobo of sorts. I didn’t have a place to live for about seven years other than a bus or a hotel room. I lived on the road and bounced from one tour to another or to a summer stock or regional theatre when I needed to. I did my time working for most of the touring production companies and I toured mostly bus and truck one-nighter tours of musicals. Slowly I started moving up the ladder as a mixer and worked on bigger tours with longer sit-downs. Then I got a job on a union tour and received my union card. Next stop, New York City. When I arrived in New York, it was like I started over. I was back to mixing in basement theatres and at the Fringe Festival and making no money.
It took some time to make connections, but luckily my friend Patrick Pummill was by then mixing on Broadway and he introduced me to Kai Harada and Tony Meola. I can’t say enough about these two people. Plain and simple, Tony is one of my idols. To me, he is a master at his craft and I fall right in line with his design aesthetic. Kai is one of the most talented and intelligent people I have ever met. After a couple of years doing this or that, I eventually started mixing as a sub on Broadway musicals. My first show was a Tony and Kai show, which was A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden. It is just a little 5,000-seat house and we did 15 shows a week for eight weeks. Then I moved on to other shows. At one point I was the sub mixer on four Broadway musicals. It was crazy, but I loved it. Mixing musicals is definitely my passion.
The next step for me was to become a Local One member, which took me almost seven years. For the past few years I have worked as a deck sound person, sub mixer, and monitor mixer as a house sound person. I also have moved into designing. I rarely design anything but musicals, but I have designed a fair amount of musicals. To me, musicals and plays are completely different. Different aesthetics and different techniques and different skill sets. I can do plays as a mixer, but I prefer musicals. I can design a play, but I prefer musicals.
So that’s me in a nutshell. Now how did I come to write this book? Well, it’s a funny story actually. Over the years I started developing software on the side and I became a partner with Stage Research. Stage Research revolutionized playback for theatre when they created SFX, which is playback and show control software. Before Stage Research we used minidiscs, CD players, and samplers for sound effects. Once SFX came along, we started using computers for our sound effects. It has made for vastly more complicated sound designs that are infinitely easier to run. I developed a program called ShowBuilder, which is a software solution for paperwork management in theatre and is especially geared toward sound. Several years ago Carlton, one of the owners of Stage Research, asked me to create a hand-drafting sound template. He put me in touch with Fred Allen and Steve Shelley. These are the guys who created Field Templates, which is the company that makes hand-drafting templates for lighting. So we worked together and put out a sound template that could be used to teach basic sound theory as well as being used for hand-drafting. Of course, no one hand-drafts anymore, but the template can be useful in production meetings if you want to do a quick sketch of your plan. Last year I was at USITT and ran into Steve in the hotel bar. Steve had just released the second edition of his book A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. I was primed with a few pints, so we started chatting it up and I asked him about his book. The next thing I know, a drunken slur of a rant starts pouring out of my mouth about how there really hasn’t been a book written about mixing. About being a theatrical mixer. There are books on design and electronics and the like, but no books on the process and career of being a mixer. Steve told me I should write that book and of course I blurted out, “That’s a great idea,” as I finished off another pint of Guinness.
Steve told me he would introduce me to his publisher, which he did, and the next thing I know I am telling Mollie I have to write a book. Of course, she thinks I am crazy, but she knows me and she knows there is no stopping me when I get some thought in my head. So now I find myself spending all my time thinking back over my career in sound and all of the lessons I have learned and all of the amazing people I have worked with and I want to share the knowledge that I have been fortunate enough to soak up. To me, the position of being a sound mixer is a trade that has been passed down from one mixer to another. The history of sound in the theatre is still relatively young. It is still possible to meet and talk with the pioneers of the field. How amazing is that? If you have never heard Abe Jacob give a talk, then you have truly missed out and you need to find a way to hear him. I also consider myself a historian of theatrical sound. I am fascinated with old war stories and thoroughly enjoy knowing the lineage of mixers and designers. At some point in this book, maybe I will put together the genealogy of theatrical mixing. I feel like there is such a rich and interesting history and I want to help preserve it so others can learn from it.
As sound has developed into an important and crucial part of theatre, colleges have started teaching sound and I believe there is a place for these programs to offer a book that gives insight into this amazing field. I believe this book is for several types of people. Most obviously, it is for college students, but I also believe it is for people doing sound in little black box theatres or regional theatres. I am writing this for anyone who wants insight into the world of theatrical mixing at the highest level. I am focusing on musicals rather than plays because I believe they are very different skill sets, and it is vastly more difficult to mix a large-scale musical than even a large-scale play. For the most part, if you can mix a musical you can move over and mix a play without an issue. The same can’t be said in the reverse.
I started at the lowest level in theatre and worked my way up. As I moved up the ladder I learned what was possible at the next level. Once I reached the level of mixing a Broadway musical, which I consider the gold standard of theatrical mixing, I learned what is possible when you have a huge budget and plenty of tech time and previews to perfect your mix in a way you just can’t do outside of Broadway. Now when I go back and work at a regional theatre or black box 50-seat theatre, I take the lessons I have learned with me. I don’t lower my standards or expectations or my techniques. I work with the limitations of the theatre but I have a bag of tricks that I use to push that theatre as much as I can. I bring a knowledge that I know I didn’t possess when I was at that level, and I am writing this book so anyone at any level can hopefully take bits and pieces of knowledge used to mix on Broadway and apply it to his or her situation. I am so passionate about theatrical sound and mixing musicals. I think we, as mixers, are such a special part of a show and I want theatrical sound to continue to evolve as the most artistic technical aspect of technical theatre, and I want to do anything I can to help people become better mixers. I am writing this book because I wish it had existed when I finished my first load-out on Tap Dogs. So now I find myself sitting in coffee shops tapping away about sound. I guess it is a good thing I studied English in college so I know, where to put, commas. 
How is this book laid out? What I want to do is lay out the book in the logical progression of a typical Broadway musical. I have different Parts for the book that represent the different major parts of production on a musical. The first Part is the general overview of what the career path is and the different players involved. After that, the Parts move through the beginning to the end of a production. I break the Parts into Chapters that highlight the major areas of that part of the production. Some Chapters have Sub-Sections to further break down the concepts of that part of the production. I am laying it out this way so it is easy for you to jump to an area where you need reference on a certain issue. The point of the structure of the book is to make you feel like you have gone from the beginning to the end of the process of a Broadway musical. After that, hopefully you will have added to your bag of tricks and will be able to apply some of these lessons to your process.
I hope you will see this book as a companion book for books like Bob McCarthy’s Sound Systems: Design and Optimization, Second Edition: Modern Techniques and Tools for Sound System Design and Alignment or the classic Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook or John Leonard’s book Theatre Sound. This book is intended to complement those books and fill a hole I think exists about mixing. I don’t plan to go very deep into design theory or system design in this book. People smarter than I have done a better job with that than I could ever hope to. Instead I will relegate my thoughts mostly to having your hands on the faders. Remember… up is louder.
As for the last question, if a speaker feeds back in the woods, will anyone hear it? The answer is yes. Somewhere some sound person will feel a disturbance in the force and grab his ears and not know why. Ears are muscles and the more you use them the stronger they become. This has a positive and negative effect. You will be better at your job, but you will be miserable when you hear a faint 60-cycle coming through in the speakers at your local coffee shop. Everyone else will be laughing and having a great time and you will be in agonizing pain. But it is worth it to have the opportunity to mix someone like Sutton Foster singing a love song. It is completely worth it.