Interesting take by dancer Ms. Preeti Vasudevan's husband:
http://www.narthaki.com/rtindex.html
I am referring to the post "Amplification is Killing Live Music".
Sound System in concerts
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srikant1987
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- Joined: 10 Jun 2007, 12:23
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vasanthakokilam
- Posts: 10958
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01
I attended a dance arangetram last weekend. There was a live orchestra. The amplification was not too bad. But after the first two numbers, the orchestra complained loudly that they can not hear a thing and it was very difficult to sing/coordinate etc. We can sense that they were quite annoyed by this but somehow pulled on for the first two songs. There was a flurry of activity by the volunteers and a monitor ( a big box ) was setup near the orchestra. Things seem to be OK after that. At the end of the program, I talked to the vocalist and she said it was quite a strange experience until the monitors were set up. She could not hear herself properly let alone the violin, flute and the mridangam.
Fortunately, the audience experience was no different, they did not increase the amplification, the Monitor being perpendicular to the orchestra did not cause any feedback ( though one can sense a slight difference in tonal color ). We can hear the dancer's steps and the anklets etc. clearly.
I do empathize with Bruno Kavanagh for that bad sound experience in that concert and that kind of situation is all too normal and somthing has to be done. But he is muddying the issue by questioning the need for a monitor.
Fortunately, the audience experience was no different, they did not increase the amplification, the Monitor being perpendicular to the orchestra did not cause any feedback ( though one can sense a slight difference in tonal color ). We can hear the dancer's steps and the anklets etc. clearly.
I do empathize with Bruno Kavanagh for that bad sound experience in that concert and that kind of situation is all too normal and somthing has to be done. But he is muddying the issue by questioning the need for a monitor.
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mahavishnu
- Posts: 3341
- Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 21:56
srikant, Whether one can do without monitors also depends on the size of the auditorium. If you wait for the sound for the PA to be available, there is upto a 200-400ms lag that could make music production quite difficult. Not to say that this cannot be done. Organists in large medieval European churches with a long reverberation time perform with no monitors at all. But in modern large auditoriums, even for the most gentle carnatic vocalist, monitors are essential.... a reality as VK raman calls it. A good acoustics engineer should be able to make sure the gain and levels that the audience and musicians hear are equivalent. Places like Krishna Gana Sabha are especially bad at achieving this.
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Nick H
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- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03
400ms may not sound much, but it is nearly half a second! Church organists have to somehow disassociate themselves with the music they hear, because it is what their fingers did half a second or more ago. I have no idea how they succeed in doing that: it is one of the wonders of music to me.
srikant1987, it is not appreciated, even by many musicians, include a lot of seniors, that they can never hear what the audience hears, and never will until the day they are able to leave the stage while they are performing and go and listen. The unreasonable demands of musicians who think they can, along with the absence of monitors, are among the reasons for dreadful sound quality.
Monitors allow musicians to hear themselves and each other, and to play together. Without them the experience of sitting next to someone who is playing an instrument, but being unable to hear them, is perfectly possible. Stages can be acoustic black holes.
Monitors also free the good sound engineers from the tyranny of those performers I've mentioned. When the singer demands to be louder, the engineer, knowing that the hall volume is correct, can tweak the monitor setting without inflicting anything on the audience --- and the performer, hearing this only, is happy!
srikant1987, it is not appreciated, even by many musicians, include a lot of seniors, that they can never hear what the audience hears, and never will until the day they are able to leave the stage while they are performing and go and listen. The unreasonable demands of musicians who think they can, along with the absence of monitors, are among the reasons for dreadful sound quality.
Monitors allow musicians to hear themselves and each other, and to play together. Without them the experience of sitting next to someone who is playing an instrument, but being unable to hear them, is perfectly possible. Stages can be acoustic black holes.
Monitors also free the good sound engineers from the tyranny of those performers I've mentioned. When the singer demands to be louder, the engineer, knowing that the hall volume is correct, can tweak the monitor setting without inflicting anything on the audience --- and the performer, hearing this only, is happy!
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kmrasika
- Posts: 1279
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 07:55
I believe the contact-mike is the best solution for concerts. There's less problems with adjustments with vocalists craning their necks or moving their bodies or looking away at their accompanists. I remember watching a few concerts in Trivandrum on TV last year and this worked out well and the audio technicians did a splendid job with filtering out external noise from the mikes and the vocalists' enunciation was heard audible clearly.
Last edited by kmrasika on 26 Aug 2008, 06:42, edited 1 time in total.
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Viju Chandran
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 16 Aug 2008, 13:58
Sound amplification is an art and can enhance or mar the listening pleasure of a concert. I agree that not much attention is paid at Carnatic Music concerts either by the sound engineer or by the artists themselves.
Having said this, I would also like to point out certain aspects of carnatic Music which makes a feedback absolutely necessary. As you all know, Carnatic Music, unlike western music is not pre-set. The main artist performs a lot of portions extempore which require spontaneous responses and repartees from the accompanists. This makes it absolutely necessary for the artists on stage to hear every bit of what the others are singing / playing.
Vijayalakshmi
Having said this, I would also like to point out certain aspects of carnatic Music which makes a feedback absolutely necessary. As you all know, Carnatic Music, unlike western music is not pre-set. The main artist performs a lot of portions extempore which require spontaneous responses and repartees from the accompanists. This makes it absolutely necessary for the artists on stage to hear every bit of what the others are singing / playing.
Vijayalakshmi
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Nick H
- Posts: 9472
- Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03
I also think that the contact mic is the ideal for a vocalist.
The usual mics mounted on stands are very directional, and there is a huge difference between singing one inch away from them and singing six inches away. Whatever the distance for the sound check (if there was one), the artists will not sit in exactly the same place, and vocalists move their heads; it would be unnatural to expect them not to. Thus, even without turning to communicate with mridangist or violin, the sound engineer may have to cope with input levels of way-more than double to way-less than half resulting from very small movements by a vocalist. An array of two or more mics can help cover the directional aspect, but makes matters much more complex for the engineer. There are some aspects of bad sound that we cannot blame the engineer for!
However, good contact mics are very expensive gadgets: all the technology, at highest quality, is being squeezed into something little bigger than an earphone plug. Forgetting it is attached can be a costly accident, and there is little point in adding wireless technology when the artists do not actually move around the stage.
I do not see too many sabhas, or independent sound engineers, rushing to invest,I'm afraid.
I also feel they would be less popular with artists, for whom the mic stand has become a familiar prop, something to fiddle with. It also gives them the illusion (in most cases they are wrong: they cannot hear what the audience hears) that they can successfully adjust their own levels by adjusting their distance from the mic.
The usual mics mounted on stands are very directional, and there is a huge difference between singing one inch away from them and singing six inches away. Whatever the distance for the sound check (if there was one), the artists will not sit in exactly the same place, and vocalists move their heads; it would be unnatural to expect them not to. Thus, even without turning to communicate with mridangist or violin, the sound engineer may have to cope with input levels of way-more than double to way-less than half resulting from very small movements by a vocalist. An array of two or more mics can help cover the directional aspect, but makes matters much more complex for the engineer. There are some aspects of bad sound that we cannot blame the engineer for!
However, good contact mics are very expensive gadgets: all the technology, at highest quality, is being squeezed into something little bigger than an earphone plug. Forgetting it is attached can be a costly accident, and there is little point in adding wireless technology when the artists do not actually move around the stage.
I do not see too many sabhas, or independent sound engineers, rushing to invest,I'm afraid.
I also feel they would be less popular with artists, for whom the mic stand has become a familiar prop, something to fiddle with. It also gives them the illusion (in most cases they are wrong: they cannot hear what the audience hears) that they can successfully adjust their own levels by adjusting their distance from the mic.
Last edited by Guest on 26 Aug 2008, 13:20, edited 1 time in total.