The Sound of Music Tour

Orbital Sound Tours UK with The Sound of Music

Orbital Sound reports on the massive touring production of The Sound of Music, featuring sound design by Mick Potter, as it continues to attract capacity audiences around the UK. Involving nine trailers' worth of equipment and scenery, The Really Useful Company's take on the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein original requires a backstage crew of 92, a cast of 28, a 14-piece orchestra, and scenery on a mountainous scale requiring five-ton stage lifts. Orbital has provided an equally impressive complement of sound equipment, with Mick Potter adapting his original design for the 2006 West End production to cope with the venue variations and the tight schedule on the extensive national tour.

Overall, the touring version of the show matches up closely to the West End production, with the exception of a slightly re-organised orchestra to allow for the logistics of touring a 14-piece band. The sound system revolves around Mick's trademark Yamaha PMI-D console, with the Meyer M'elodie ultra compact line-array system and 600HP Subs in conjunction with Meyer UPJ-1P, d&b audiotecnik EO and E3 cabinets. His focus was on maintaining the much-loved naturalistic quality of the original show, while reflecting the essentially cinematic nature of the current production, as he explains:
"All of the scene changes and action take place directly in front of the audience, presenting the musical in a similar way to the original movie. From a sound design point of view, it's a very dynamic show, involving getting the right balance between retaining the naturalistic sound of a stage musical while conveying the cinematic feel, with all its incredible automation and effects. The M'elodie line array is a great-sounding system, giving the completely naturalistic sound I was looking for, while still handling rock levels with equal ease. I have used the M'elodie and d&b audiotechnik combination for the main system for some time now, and love the partnership - with the d&b EOs and E3s for the auditorium delays and side fills, complemented by Meyer UPJ-IPs and UPM -IPs for the cluster delays, the fills and the pit. Onstage FX are handled by UPM-IPs and EOs."

Mick's relationship with Orbital Sound is also a long-standing one, dating back to one of his first big West End shows - Bombay Dreams:
"Orbital is without doubt one of the most experienced theatre sound companies around. Their attention to detail and professionalism shows in every aspect of what they do - the way the equipment is racked, the interfaces and how the whole show runs - complemented by having an excellent, direct relationship with the people at the top. It gives me great confidence in their ability to support my team throughout the duration of the tour, no matter what challenges turn up."

The touring sound system includes a Meyer Sound LCS Matrix 3 Audio Show Control system, and a fully-specced TCS 6000 16 in/out system, with Massenburg Designworks plug-in EQ. The large complement of radio mics is are all Sennheiser SK5012 transmitters with miniature DPA 4061 microphones. The orchestra mics are a mix of DPA 4061s, DPA 4022 and DPA 4011 compact cardioid units, together with Neumann U87 Ai condenser microphones, DPA 4007s, and a AKG D112. The touring system is divided up to handle three venue combinations - small, medium and large; enabling the teams to work rapidly within the tight load-in slots. Either Mick, or his associate sound designer Paul Gatehouse, visit each of the venues when they load-in to fine-tune the system, with Crispian Covell, production engineer, and the No 1, Andy Waddell and No.2 Rob Bettle as the core sound team. The current schedule is set for a 12-month run, with Birmingham representing the finale in August 2010.