"Hear, Hear: Spotlight on Sound Design," Articles 1 & 2

 

[Periodically, American Theatre magazine, published monthly by the Theatre Communications Group, runs a special section on an important theater subject, usually one with which most theatergoers aren’t familiar.  In the past, I’ve republished several of these series, such as “Light The Lights” on lighting design (October and November 2018) and “Arts Administration” (December 2020).

[In July/August 2019, AT published eight articles on the art of sound design.  (Only three articles appeared in the print edition of the monthly; the other five were posted on TCG’s website, https://www.americantheatre.org/category/special-section/hear-spotlight-on-sound-design/. 

[As part of my ad hoc series on theater work about which most people don’t know—in the past I’ve covered stage managers, swing dancers, and wigmakers on Rick On Theatre, among others—I’ll be running these articles in six posts, starting below with the editor’s introduction and a piece on a computer app useful to singers.]

This installment of [the American Theatre] annual design issue turns up the volume on one of the most under-sung—and commonly misunderstood—branches of the design department. What exactly do sound designers do (and not do)? How do they learn to do it? And how are new innovations in technology changing the way they work? Read on to sound the depths of these and other topics.

“LEND ME YOUR EARS”
by Rob Weinert-Kendt 

Stage sound comprises more than dialogue, effects, and music, and the folks who design it are doing more than mere augmentation.

One dividing line that’s often posited about narrative art forms might be summed up as visual vs. verbal. It’s a common formulation that film is a visual medium and theatre a verbal one, or at least that each occupies a roughly opposite place on a continuum between those two poles. There are elements of truth in this popular dichotomy, but not a lot, I would argue. The main difference between recorded and live media, it seems to me, is neatly suggested by those descriptors: One is packaged and predetermined, often intimate in feeling but fixed in its outcome; the other is blessedly, unnervingly indeterminate, simultaneously distanced from a crowd’s gaze and irreducibly immediate.

But there’s another important thing the visual/verbal contrast leaves out: the aural element. The sound of plays (and films, for that matter) does not comprise simply dialogue, after all. And theatrical sound design, as we learn in a package of stories in this issue, is more than the business of crickets and phone rings. It starts with the very shape of the space where theatre happens, the people who fill it, and the air in the room, as Naveen Kumar details in an excellent overview of acoustic design and science behind it [posted on 3 April]. Indeed acoustics are related to dialogue in this way: You can’t always know what works until an audience is there to reflect or absorb it.

One thing we hope to do with this issue is clarify some of the misunderstandings that still persist around sound design. Jerald Raymond Pierce’s overview of the field highlights one common misconception: that sound designers and composers are effectively interchangeable, and/or that a person with either title automatically can do both jobs. Indeed many do—which makes sense, as designing sound for a show is roughly akin to composing a score for it [posted on 9 April]. But knowing exactly who’s expected to do what, and just as importantly who’s getting paid for it, is as crucial a distinction as knowing the difference between such overlapping but not identical job descriptions as dramaturg and director, or fight choreographer and intimacy choreographer.

And though we’re challenged in a magazine—a medium both verbal and visual, but alas not aural—to show you the work, we have Caroline Macon Fleischer’s vividly descriptive roundup of some exciting sound innovations and experiments from around the nation and the globe, from Amazon rainforest soundscapes to biorhythms [posted on 6 April]. (We are planning to include audio clips for as many of these as we can, so be sure to check out the online version of Caroline’s piece at https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/07/02/6-productions-that-push-the-sonic-envelope/.)

Since 2016 each July/August we’ve put our focus on some aspect of design: magic, theatre architecture, lighting, and this year sound. [The July 2020 issue of AT featured a focus on costume design.] If this year’s focus feels like a homecoming, or at least like it’s been a long time coming, it may be not only because sound design is an often overlooked and easily misunderstood field. It may also be because sound itself is elemental, pre-verbal. Hearing is the first sense we experience in the darkness of the womb, and many believe it’s the last sense to leave us. In the beginning was the light? Maybe in the beginning was the bang.

[Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theatre for the New York Times, Time Out NY, and the Los Angeles Times. He studied film at the University of Southern California and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.

[Readers might note that ROT published a post called “Words and Pictures?” on 25 July 2014.  Inspired by the film Words and Pictures of that year, it looks at the debate set up in the movie between language and image.  Later, on 16 September 2014, I posted “Words with Pictures / Pictures with Words” which discusses some artists who used both text and visual imagery in their work.]

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“HARMONY HELPER COULD BE A SINGER’S BEST FRIEND”
by Allison Considine 

The new app is designed to make vocal parts easy to learn for the rehearsal room and the stage. 

CHALLENGE
To create an innovative app to help performers learn music 

PLAN
To build an app with a library of songs that separates out vocal parts

WHAT WORKED
Building and creating an app with beta testing

WHAT NEEDS WORK
Promoting the app, building a full song library, incorporate testing

The Harmony Helper app was born of a stage disaster. Andrew Goren was just 13 years old when he booked his first professional theatre production, and his preparations for the musical—which featured an opening duet—fell apart at the open dress rehearsal. It wasn’t stage fright. Goren was equipped with a microphone and, for the first time, could hear his duet partner singing their harmony in his ear.

“I walked out onstage, opened my mouth, and I lost it all,” recalls Goren, now a sophomore at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “It was like I had forgotten how to sing, and that was devastating for me. I realized I had no idea how to harmonize.”

Goren started working on building the Harmony Helper app a few years ago with a team that has grown to include more than 40 designers and consultants, and a Chief Technology Officer. After several rounds of beta-testing, the app is slated to launch at the end of July. [The app is available now: https://harmonyhelper.com/.  A YouTube “User Guide Tutorial” is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ4M7kLdruU.]

Harmony Helper is designed for both beginners and experienced harmonizers. It claims to offer users a “24-hour rehearsal room in their back pocket,” says Goren. The app guides beginners through a five-step process that breaks down all the vocal parts, singles out a track, and gradually adds the harmonies back in after the user learns their own part.

Users don’t need to be able to read sheet music for Harmony Helper; vocal parts are displayed in varying colors and delineated lines. “We call it the great equalizer,” says Goren. “It doesn’t matter if you have a voice coach or an accompanist to teach you the music,” he says. “You can just pull out this from your back pocket, add your music, learn your song, and feel just as confident and prepared for whatever you’re rehearsing for.”

At this time, the app’s beta song library has just 7 public domain tunes, including “Happy Birthday” and “Star Spangled Banner.” Users can choose a song, select a voice part, and adjust volume controls for the parts, the metronome, and the accompaniment. Songs can be recorded and played back, and a proprietary algorithm provides users real-time feedback on harmonizing skills. When the full app launches, users will have the ability to upload PDFs or photos of sheet music or download songs through the app. Two subscription models will be available: An unlimited monthly subscription for $7.99 or an annual $75 subscription.

The concept for the Harmony Helper app was announced three years ago at BroadwayCon, an annual gathering of theatre fans, performers, and industry folks in New York City. “We came out first year just with a vision, some mockups, and wireframes, and the next year we came back with a proof of concept,” says Goren. The BroadwayCon community has been instrumental in beta-testing the app, offering feedback about the app’s usability and interface. “We really spent a lot of time making sure this process is as intuitive and familiar—just like a rehearsal process—so people don’t have to learn some new confusing technology,” says Goren.

This year Harmony Helper produced a tent-pole event at BroadwayCon, the Rising Star Singing Contest. Attendees, many clad in theatre-inspired costumes, performed 32-bar cuts of songs to accompaniment. Their performances were recorded and viewed by a group of celebrity judges, including Laura Benanti and Billy Porter. (The grand prize winner received tickets to Beetlejuice and a backstage tour from actor Rob McClure.) Aspiring stars and onlookers could interact with the app and learn about Harmony Helper at the BroadwayCon booth.

Other beta testers included students at the Paper Mill Playhouse’s conservatory programs, who learned all their music through the app last summer, and members of the American Choral Directors Association. The feedback from the development process led to the app’s ability to turn the accompaniment on or off, to more clearly delineate vocal parts, and an upgrade of the interface. Looking forward, there are plans to offer a subscription model designed for music directors, which will allow them to share music and voice parts with groups. Harmony Helper also plans to add a selection of choral music in the public domain to the app’s song library.

“Music directors have such little time to teach the music, and they are sitting there after rehearsal plunking out notes,” says Goren. “But now the cast members can learn the music on their own at home, come into rehearsal, and the music director can spend that valuable rehearsal time putting the finishing touches on the music.”

Goren’s ultimate goal is for the app to help other performers better prepare and avoid onstage mishaps—from theatre professionals to summer campers, from choir leads to shower warbling. Let the harmonizing begin.

[Allison Considine is the senior editor of American Theatre. She studied literature and cultural studies and theatre arts at Pace University.

[The next sound design articles, on taking inspiration from video games to make musical “underscoring” more like film soundtracks and training, both in class and on the job, for working in sound design, will be posted on Sunday, 28 March.  Please come back to ROT for the next installment of “Hear, Hear.”]