Orbital Sound Ltd

Silence Is Blue

A voiceless trio relies on split-second audio support to create one of the most sophisticated sounds you'll hear in the West End or Broadway

Only a few of the routines require a SMPTE click, however. Otherwise it's a very live mix jon, with opwn mics all over the band and concealed within the troublesome percussion tubes that hallmark Blue Man Group musically. Troublesome, because they're mad of relatively soft, very quiet plastic. "They're cut to lenth for pitch,"explains Humphrey, "and clustered together so that, in theory, a single mic could pick them up. But it's just physics. They don't make that much sound. So we started X-Y mic'ing them, and now we have a dozen Audix mics on each one. Plus we came up with a little home-made pop filter to deal with the amount of air coming out them. They're a challenge: getting them full and audible, and not scooping out a bunch of frequencies that would normally feedback 12 gained-up condenser mics!

Orbital Sound supplied the system for the Londno production, which includes d&b audiotechnik like arrays ("Throw a couple of B2 subs on the floor and you're done," says Humphrey), a PM1D at FOH and two Midas Venice 320s as the band's self-operated monitor mixers. Monitoring is all IEM, courtesyof Shure although, diplomatically, it's Sennheiser for the Berlin show, In fact, Humphrey enjoys a close working relationship with Cliff Castle at Audix, Shure's Ryan Smith and Sennheiser's Paul Hugo, all of whom recognise the show's pioneering reputation.

"The choice of gear is about how you deliver the same show to the entire theatr, however big or small," reflects Humphrey. "The design is the same."

It's remarkable how important sound can be for a mime troupe. They don't say a word, they don't sing a note. But they have on of the most sophisticated sound designs in the West End. And Broadway. And Vegas. Plus an invisible glass box full of other key cities in Europe, the US and Canada. They are Blue Man Group.

It's almost a franchise. Seven productions of the three-man show are running concurrently, meaning that with understudies there are about 42 Blue Men at loose around the globe, doing their surreal showbiz thing. This involves spitting paint, pouring paint into kettle frums and gleefully bashing them, catching 15 plus marshmallows in one mouth from 6m away, and generally re-inventing theatre from the stalls up.

Music and sound effects are crucial. And keeping all of the productions up to speed on music technology and sound reinforcement is the job of one, not blue at all, man. He is Ross Humphrey, Sond Designer/Supervisor for BMG, based in New York. Recently he was in London, where the show opened lst November at the New London Theatre on Frury Lane, catching up with London FOH engineer Jon Clarence.

"With any show that is fundamentally analogue, you set up a design you're satisfied with and you leave," Humphrey comments. "Then night by night, one engineer might adjust something that sounds a little strange, and not reset or pass on the change. People get used to hearing the show that way and, incrementally, it drifts. So as a team my department tries to listen to each show regular and get everyone back on the template in each city".

That template is very rock concert-orientated. Humphrey has been a live sound FOH engineer with rock bands for many years, and was drafted in on that basis. Although essentially a three-man mime show, a full-tilt band accompanies them live on raised, acoustically isolated platforms at the back of the proscenium, interjecting with burst of loud rock. Humphrey's brief was therefore to update the sound of the production without losing its essence - bearing in mind it had been running regularly for 10 years before he joined the crew in 1999.

"The Vegas show set a new standard," he says, referring to a break through residence at the Luxor following very off-Broadway origins. "It demanded new microphones, loudspeakers, everything. And of course the requirement to keep up with technology continues. Certain things become obsolete, or just stop working. Our original playback was MiniDisc, for example, and now we're using 360 System's Instant Replays."

Humphrey consolidated a trove of arcane sound effects - found on everything from DAT to cassette - into Pro Tools files, necessitating a lot of sound restoration along the way. "When you start using better technology, with better loudspeakers and mixers to reproduce the sounds in the theatre, you notice the flaws," he says. "A lot of the cues needed updating, too. Part of my job has been to level out all of that and tighten things up."

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Only a few of the routines require a SMPTE click, however. Otherwise it's a very live mix jon, with opwn mics all over the band and concealed within the troublesome percussion tubes that hallmark Blue Man Group musically. Troublesome, because they're mad of relatively soft, very quiet plastic. "They're cut to lenth for pitch,"explains Humphrey, "and clustered together so that, in theory, a single mic could pick them up. But it's just physics. They don't make that much sound. So we started X-Y mic'ing them, and now we have a dozen Audix mics on each one. Plus we came up with a little home-made pop filter to deal with the amount of air coming out them. They're a challenge: getting them full and audible, and not scooping out a bunch of frequencies that would normally feedback 12 gained-up condenser mics!

Orbital Sound supplied the system for the Londno production, which includes d&b audiotechnik like arrays ("Throw a couple of B2 subs on the floor and you're done," says Humphrey), a PM1D at FOH and two Midas Venice 320s as the band's self-operated monitor mixers. Monitoring is all IEM, courtesyof Shure although, diplomatically, it's Sennheiser for the Berlin show, In fact, Humphrey enjoys a close working relationship with Cliff Castle at Audix, Shure's Ryan Smith and Sennheiser's Paul Hugo, all of whom recognise the show's pioneering reputation.

"The choice of gear is about how you deliver the same show to the entire theatr, however big or small," reflects Humphrey. "The design is the same."