Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

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Simon Eves

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May 12, 2013
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(repost after accidental post in X32 sub-forum)

So, to those of you who automate mutes and maybe DCA assignments on musicals...

How often are you creating a new cue?

Per scene? (assuming enough DCAs for people who aren't on the whole scene)
Per entrance/exit? (this seems the most likely, at least for mutes)
Per line? (I hope not...)

Any suggestions for assigning DCAs?

Obviously it depends on the show (in this case, IN THE HEIGHTS) but I'm thinking trying to keep consistently to something like...

Man 1
Woman 1
Man 2
Woman 2
Other Men
Other Women
(this DCA left intentionally unassigned)
Band

I've not run a show by myself like this before, and I'm a little scared I'm going to get myself confused, especially having to reach quite a long way from the DCAs to the "GO" button on the X32.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

If he doesn't respond send a PM to jake Scudder either here or as PSW. He's done FOH for several Broadway touring shows. I had a chance to watch him during the tour of in the heights and as I recall he had around 150 cues for the show.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

I don’t know how urgent your needs are and I would like to give you a long reply but I am just setting up for a Musical using 2 M32 mixers.

There are different techniques to do musical theater and there seem to be big advantages to the all control on the DCAs but not for me. The shows I wind up doing don’t run for long enough to set it up that way so I use the input faders moving in cue recalls so I know what mics are supposed to be on for a cue. I use Palladium with the companion programs Moves and MicPlot from http://chsounddesign.com/ the latest version that is about to be released very shortly has a lot of the OSC protocol built in and will have even more capabilities with the X32/M32 line of mixers. And you can reassign DCAs on the fly if need be.

I couldn’t control the recall of cues using 2 mixers if it wasn’t for the capabilities of Palladium.

This is my short reply if I can be of any help I will try to answer in more detail later. I am not affiliated with CH Sound Design but I did write the initial Mixer file for the X32 and M32 and more functionality has been added with it using the OSC protocol. But if you down load the demo and the files for the X32/M32 it will give you an idea of what you can do with more to come shortly as I said. The present Quick start guide will help you get started. I hope to update that shortly.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

Thanks, Kevin, for the Palladium tip, but my question was really more about the data rather than the tools.

It seems to me that there are four ways of running a show...

(1) Manual. Have all the faders in front of you and push up what's required. Don't use mutes at all. This is how I've always done it with up to 16 channels.

(2) Automate mutes only. Leave all the faders up for adjustment as required. Still need to see all the faders for adjustment, so doesn't really help much for > 16 channels. Harder (for me, at least) to visualize who's on and off from just the mute button lights. Faders can be set manually (in advance of un-mute if required). Cue frequency is at least every entrance/exit, and perhaps more with in a scene if a character doesn't vocalize for a while.

(3) Automate faders rather than mutes. Automation pops "on" faders to zero and drops "off" ones. Easier to visualizer who's on and off, but still need to see all the faders for adjustment, so still not ideal for > 16 channels. Need to get gain structure right so that "zero" is always a valid initial level. This is what I'm interpreting Kevin as doing, using Palladium for the automation. Cue frequency presumably the same as above.

(4) Automate mutes and DCA assignments. Use faders (rarely) for gross level adjustment. Dynamically assign individuals or groups to DCAs and mix only using DCAs. This is how I'm led to believe the pros do it. Mute cue frequency presumably still the same as above. DCA reassignment perhaps less often.

If aiming for (4), my questions are then...

(a) What's a good frequency of DCA assignment cues (as opposed to mute cues)
(b) What's a good layout for DCAs
(c) How the hell do you not get confused when the same fader means different people from one minute to the next (maybe I'm getting old!)

As for programming the cues themselves, do people do it just right there on the console (saving mutes only, naming, inserting etc. on the fly using the mixer's UI)? I'm sure the pro consoles are much nicer in this respect. Whenever I've tried it on the X32, particularly before Snippets, I've wanted to throw the thing out the window.

My current plan (and I've started already) is to do all the programming in a spreadsheet on a computer (with a nice big screen and a proper bloody keyboard!) and then I have a Python script in development which will read in that file and spit out a sequence of X32 Snippet files (named, mute data only for now, but DCA assignments obviously possible too, once I've decided how and how often) which I can then just bulk-import into the console via a USB stick, and then put it in Snippets sequence mode and wail on the GO button. No, editing isn't instant, but I don't see that as a big deal, since the moment has often passed anyway so you just have to make sure you note the problem to fix later.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

The number one screwup that sound ops make is not having a mic live when an actor appears on stage, or the mic remains live when the actor leaves and something unintentioned is heard. As a lone sound op, to get this right 100% of the time, you really do have to know the show and actors backwards, and have a lot of attention to detail, irrespective if you use mutes, DCAs or push faders.

At our last outing, we drove the mutes off the lighting computer, putting in additional cues as necessary so that the mutes were always correct. This leaves the sound op free to concentrate on what is important to the show, rather than who was piling on or off stage, which is often not the same thing. Clearly, the sound op still need to know the show and the characters, as op's fingers really ought to be on the fader(s) as the actor's mouth(s) is/are opening!

We might aim for more next time. DCAs are interesting in the digital world, as they can be reassigned on the fly, and thus, for example, a backing chorus DCA could change its membership throughout the show. Computers automating affordable digital mixers really does allow small scale theatre to get their sound presentation right up there, given a bit of investment and effort.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

As I said I personally think the moving faders is the best way as long as you have all the cues written. That way if I have to grab a fader quickly to make a change on the fly I don’t have to hunt to see which one isn’t muted if all the faders are already up.

I like the capabilities of the Avid SC48 with its DCA spill function. I think the Midas Pro series has a similar capability but I know nothing about it. I can give you details of how it works on the Avid if you want. But since that isn’t available on the X32 or M32 I won’t waste the time here except to say I would love it if they did incorporate that kind of functionality.

You could use a Behringer BCF2000 or when it comes out an X-Touch Compact as a fader wing and that would give you up to 24 input faders at your fingertips. I don’t know if you could add another one to get the full 32 inputs in front of you.

I am really cheating on the show I about to start, I am using 2 M32 consoles with one as a sub-mixer and I have spread out the inputs across both mixers. And they are both being controlled at the same time by Palladium. I will eventually in one of these threads post a picture of the setup. I have one in front of me and one to my right. I start Monday with the first rehearsal with sound and we open on Thursday and close Saturday night, 4 public performances only.

We had one of the kids (who will be next to me giving me the cues) enter all of the movements in CH Sound Designs Moves program. I just take that do some minor manipulations in MicPlot and then import it to Palladium. I haven’t run a single cue live yet and I have the show already written. It all depends on how good the kid did as to how much fixing we will have to do on the fly.

BTW DCA reassignment has recently been added to Palladium using the OSC protocol and the next release (coming very soon) will have even more capabilities by using OSC for the protocol.

A lot of how much you get into the different methods is how much time do you have to set it up and how quickly can you work with it. Especially if you have to make changes on the fly.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

I did a theater tour a few years back, 40+ shows in a few months. I did the following in rehearsals:

- Made a cue for every change. Mute/fade/EQ etc. for actors on/off, music/FX playback etc. on the desk.
- Made a CUE-list in QLab for every change. I used QLab for music playback/FX and added MIDIcues for everything else.
- Controlled the desk from QLab by MIDI.

That way I could concentrate on monitoring the stage, all I had to do was press space on my cues which I had written down in QLab with large bold letters and the desk would load the correct cue. I had one manual fade in the whole show.
Missed one cue in all those shows, still annoys me.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

I used to have the mutes recalled in cues but I had an actor actually break the mic and it made a really loud noise. I manually muted that channel and then every time I hit a cue recall the channel un-muted so I had to hit mute constantly until we could deal with the problem. After that show I changed and safed the mutes. So if I have a problem with a mic or an actor missing their entrance I can mute the mic manually and it stays muted till the actor enters stage or we fix the problem I manually un-mute it.

I am just sharing what I do and why I do it I am in no way telling anyone that they have to do something. Please feel free to develop your own methods that work for you.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

Kevin Maxwell said:
I used to have the mutes recalled in cues but I had an actor actually break the mic and it made a really loud noise. I manually muted that channel and then every time I hit a cue recall the channel un-muted so I had to hit mute constantly until we could deal with the problem. After that show I changed and safed the mutes. So if I have a problem with a mic or an actor missing their entrance I can mute the mic manually and it stays muted till the actor enters stage or we fix the problem I manually un-mute it.
Click to expand...

That's a good point, although as I'm now using DCAs (I'm trying to do it the full-on "pro" way), I could just pull down that channel fader to kill the mic, regardless of whether it was muted or un-muted by being moved in and out of a DCA.

I was up until 3am last night in a spreadsheet collapsing 200+ mute cues down to 35 DCA assignment cues, plus writing a Python script to read in that spreadsheet and spit out X32 Snippet files. Now I just need to get my brain around mixing with 8 faders that aren't always the same person. By tonight. Yawn.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

Mike Locke said:
Try writing the DCA assignment number in your script. Much more of a mix by number, which always stay the same. I'm currently prepping my script to run Cabaret next month.
Click to expand...

That's what I figured too. Unfortunately, I failed to leave work early, so I suspect this is not going to get done by 6pm today! :)
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

David Buckley said:
Does your Python script the spits out snippets update the scribble scripts? Change their colours??
Click to expand...

Yep. Here it is, if anyone wants to adapt it to their own needs...

http://eves.us/public/X32Snippets.py

You will need the pyexcel-ods Python module (on Mac, "sudo easy_install pip" then "pip install pyexcel-ods"), but it would be trivial to adapt it to use other spreadsheet-reading modules.

Here's an example of a spreadsheet it reads (OpenOffice .ods format)...

http://eves.us/public/micplot_003_collapsed.ods

...which was a "collapsed" (as the filename says) version of this one, containing all the entrances and exits (I had originally intended to automate mutes)...

http://eves.us/public/micplot_002.ods

Here's an example of the Snippet files it spits out...

http://eves.us/public/ITH.013.snp

Mute-ons for channels not in DCAs, then DCA assignments, then mute-offs for channels in DCAs, then DCA labels and colors.

Then you just bulk-import them on the board (select Snippet slot 0 first) and put it in Snippets automation mode (as opposed to Cues or Scenes).

Just remember that you can only have 100 (why, Behringer, why?!)

I tried generating a Show File as well and running in Cues mode, but then it bundles up the Scene file too, and I didn't want that. With Snippets only, the rest of the board setup is completely separate and isolated so you don't need to worry about safe-ing stuff. The Snippets touch the specified channel mutes and DCAs only.

I wish I'd tried this years ago (well, not that I could have before I got my X32...)
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

Obviously it completely depends on the show, but I prefer to use a combination of the layer 1 input faders and the DCAs on the X32, rather than trying to mix solely on the 8 DCAs.

So, for Annie, for example, I might have the orphans on inputs 1-7, all assigned to DCA 1, so that I've got a DCA to bring them up and down as a group, but also with the flexibility of grabbing an input fader for individual lines. Then the other main characters may have their own DCAs, and for some scenes, I'll end up with various people assigned to a chorus DCA.

I mix all the entrances and exits manually, and generally line by line for dialogue. I do use cues, but only to vary DCA assignments for scenes, and to black out the scribble strips of input channels who's characters aren't in that particular scene. Also to vary EQ as necessary.

For most shows you're going to need a lot of cues to be able to mix solely on the 8 DCAs, and I prefer to concentrate on the stage than recalling cues. Obviously if you're on a bigger console then it'd be more feasible.
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

We (theater) have an LS9 but would likely run an X32 the same. Once we have the channels labeled, we Safe everything but the faders (this allows gain and EQ changes as the tech rehearsals and shows require them). We usually have a scene change every time an actor enters or leaves. Using fader changes instead of mutes allows the operator (and assistant) to see at a glance who is on and who is off. If an actor needs to always be louder or quieter on a particular scene, just adjust the fader accordingly and re-save that scene. (Our max was Fiddler, with 147 scenes. I think the min has been in the 50s.)
 
Re: Musical Theatre Mute/DCA Automation "Granularity"?

Tim Padrick said:
We (theater) have an LS9 but would likely run an X32 the same. Once we have the channels labeled, we Safe everything but the faders (this allows gain and EQ changes as the tech rehearsals and shows require them). We usually have a scene change every time an actor enters or leaves. Using fader changes instead of mutes allows the operator (and assistant) to see at a glance who is on and who is off. If an actor needs to always be louder or quieter on a particular scene, just adjust the fader accordingly and re-save that scene. (Our max was Fiddler, with 147 scenes. I think the min has been in the 50s.)
Click to expand...

So as not to hijack this thread I started another one about Cue management.

https://soundforums.net/threads/12634-Musical-theater-cue-management?p=95212#post95212
 
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