I googled up info on mics on Broadway, and while I didn't find anything like
The History of Microphones on Broadway, there were a number of references
that show they were firmly in use in 1963, although perhaps not in every
number or not all players in a show. I can remember seeing shows at the
Fisher Theatre in Detroit where somebody suddenly seemed amplified who had
not been in the last number. I can remember body mics that were *so* bad.
By 1967 it seems that they were commonly in use, and by 1973 amplified
voices dominated.
Crystal Premo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: John Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: {Spam} Re: [Finale] Re: Broadway
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 22:30:54 -0500
At 9:44 PM +0100 1/2/05, Michael Cook wrote:
Does anyone know when microphones were first used for singers in musicals?
I'd be interested in finding a history of amplification in musical
theatre.
This is educated guesswork, but could probably be checked out. Certainly
not before 1961, if we're talking about professional theater rather than
community or school productions. (From 1957-61 I was in the USAF Band in
D.C., and got up to New York fairly regularly to see the shows.)
At a wild guess I'd say that the technology may have existed by the early
to mid 1970s. Area miking was possible before that, of course, going back
to the 1950s, but that's overhead hung mics or mics at the front of the
stage. (PZM floor mics came into use in the early 1980s.) Shotgun mics
existed before that, but require active aiming in real time by a mic tech,
like in movies or live TV.
Totally self-contained body pak or hand-held radio mics? The first show I
used them in was in 1978, and they were very expensive specialty items at
that time. (That show was at Disneyland, and only 2 of the 10 mics on
stage were radio mics. By 10 years later, everyone in a live show could
have one.)
The early problems, other than expense, involved frequency overlap and
reflectivity. Frequency overlap: turn on your mic and garage doors all
over the neighborhood start opening. Solution: more available
frequencies, switchable frequencies, and frequencies in different ranges.
Early cell phones had similar problems.
Reflectivity: radio waves can bounce off the steelwork in a building, or
be blocked by that same steelwork, leading to cutouts in the middle of a
song. Solution; diversity receivers using more than one antenna and (I'm
not completely sure about this) more than one frequency per mic. Again,
cell phones had these problems as well.
By the late 1980s, the Show Choir from BYU was using individual body pak
mics for each singer. For our community summer musicals, for at least the
last 6 years, we regularly use a dozen body pak mics. That's how much
things have changed in a couple of decades. The running battle now is
whether to turn the mics off during dialog and just bring them up during
songs. I think i've won that one: if we use them, we need to use them so
the audience hears continuous audio, not on-and-off.
The first show I saw that used individual mics was "The Wiz" on Broadway.
It was badly mixed and pretty dreadful. An audio mixing board is a musical
instrument and needs to be manned by a musician who is also a tech, not a
tech with little musical training.
And I agree 100% with Crystal. A voice that has been well trained to
project in a reasonable sized theater should not NEED miking, and will
almost always sound distorted when miked, just as an opera singer will.
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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