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The email blast from the head of my son and daughter's theater group relayed a frantic plea: "We need to raise $16,000 before the upcoming spring performances," Anya Wallach, the executive director of Random Farms Kids' Theater, in Westchester, New York, wrote in late May. If the money didn't materialize in time, she warned, there could be a serious problem with the shows: nobody would hear the actors.
Random Farms, and tens of thousands of other theater companies, schools, churches, broadcasters, and myriad other interests across the country, need to buy new wireless microphones. The majority of professional wireless audio gear in America is about to become obsolete, and illegal to operate. The story of how we got to this strange point involves politics, business, science, and, of course, money.
Story: https://www.wired.com/story/wireless-mics-radio-frequencies-fcc-saga/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday August 13 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
It is only _recently_ that I've managed to clue in to how to project when I sing on the street:
Open your mouth all the way. Now pretend a doctor is pressing an tongue depressor on the inner end of your tongue. That will open up a much-larger resonant cavity in your throat. That will make you much louder.
I don't clearly understand but possibly the reason it works so well for me could be that I'm impedance matching my vocal chords with the air around me. That's the same reason trumpets have exponential curve profiles.
You can download my original piano compositions [soggywizards.com] from my street performer website. I don't have any vocal recordings but this fall I'll release an album that I'll call:
Michael David Crawford
LIVE!
On Broadway[*]
[*] And Morrison, Portland, Oregon
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Monday August 13 2018, @11:07PM
Assuming a vocalist has some skill already, they mostly do what is necessary to get the tone/volume for their style of singing, and will already be 'projecting' to some degree. If I sing pop/blues/ballad type music, I can't project in the same way as if I'm singing a classical operatic/broadway style. Opening up the vocals that much and lifting the soft palate to tighten up the nasally 'edge' gets a big operatic and loud resonant vocal that cuts through the mix of instruments and projects well. But, you can't really do that when singing an intimate ballad, or trying to remain true to the genre. This also applies to spoken roles, where the old Shakespearian style of vocal projection sounds very different to the modern more personal/natural styles of acting. Hard rock vocals can be projected very loudly within genre too, but the ambient noise of the other instruments will far out-power the vocalist for most normal performance situations.
The other problem is that the venue dictates what sort of sound reinforcement is/isn't necessary. In an old school resonant church or auditorium that is designed for good live un-amplified acoustics, it isn't too much of a stretch to 'project' like it would have been done before the days of speaker systems. Whereas modern venues are designed to absorb the sound which makes them much more effective when used with installed sound systems. In fact it is difficult to install good sound reinforcement in older buildings because the reflections and reverb tails make a mess of the sound as it bounces around the room from the multiple speaker sources (causing feedback problems - and even if it's not feeding back, the open mic(s) amplify the reverb, further reducing intelligibility). In contrast, modern venues are designed to avoid this problem and make live sound reinforcement much less problematic, but also much more necessary, especially when the crowd size grows.
So, for years, it has been ubiquitous to use sound reinforcement, which has shaped both the style of performance, and the actors' skill sets. For better or/and worse.
BTW, I'm a big fan of the old school classical theatrical and musical singing styles.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:54AM
Careful here... don't spill the beans!
There may be politicians, salesmen, and preachermen lurking nearby. This is the last thing we need to teach them!