Evolution Of Theater Sound Effects Towards Players And Theater Live Playback Software
Posted by scott kane - ceo at 1:30 pm
I know what you’re thinking, you’ve been stuck mixing a band or doing sound for actors who look exactly like the guys on the left!
But seriously, theater sound really has evolved over the years. Now, if you’re a bit worried I’m going to mess with your head in this article on the whole “evolution” subject, please relax, the picture is for amusement – not argument. 
In theater audio the sounds we have to work with have changed drastically. Before the 20th Century you were pretty much stuck with sound created by people literally making noises off stage, actors getting audibly creative (with often painful results) or musicians.
I’ll be honest here, I think musicians are awesome! I love live music and firmly believe new technology should compliment live musicians. But sometimes music simply can’t be included via “real musicians” for reasons running from budget, venue size, target audience and indeed the nature of the production we’re working on.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
The reasons sound in theater have changed are as much a result of society changing in other areas – cultural – as they are technological. Clearly recorded sound effects simply weren’t possible before the invention of devices to record and playback sound. To get an inkling as to how sound effects were created – if they used at all – watch the movie “The Night That Panicked America“ which is about the 1930’s Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. It features some radio “sound effect guys” making “live sound effects”.
To continue – It follows the “do it by hand” method was the only option. Frequently that meant you made noises offstage, as already stated, that for the audiences of the day worked extremely well. However cinema changed that forever. Once cinema got sound – once known as Talking Pictures or “Talkies” – it began to be on even footing with theater. While there were silent plays and mime has been around for thousands of years, by and large the cool thing, in the early 20th Century, about theater was that it has sound and movies did not.
Of course early silent films were frequently played to audiences with a live musician, pianolas and a variety of other tools. Even live “sound effects” were attempted. But once movies got sound and that sound started to progress from the boxy sounds of the 1920’s and 1930’s replete with music and real sound effects that were carefully chosen – indeed often created specifically for movies – things changed and it was tough for theater to compete in the technical sound wizardry department. For example, real thunder storms have lighting but nothing in nature sounds anything like a Hollywood thunder and lightning sequence. In fact Hollywood movies turn thunderstorm reality on it’s head and lightning cracks are louder than the rolling thunder we are more familiar with in the real world. Those sounds were created for movies, not taken from nature, and over time became “the sound” and anything less simply didn’t cut it with the audience. 
Clearly some entrepreneurial theater folks would be drawn to experiment with introducing live sound into theater. Italian Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, cobbled together mechanical “sound-making devices”, dubbed “intonarumori”, for Futurististic theatrical/music performances sometime around 1913. Russolo’s contraptions were designed to simulate natural and manmade sounds, including trains and bombs. Some sounds in theater never seem to change! 
However one of the first recorded, no pun intended, uses of pre-recorded sound in the theatre was indeed a gramophone or phonograph playing a recording of a baby’s cry in a London in 1890. Most theater audio engineers today of course recognise that this was not necessary as a sound effect as you can always rely on a baby in the audience to perform this effect for you on or off cue and with frequency and gusto!
For the bulk of the 20th Century there wasn’t a huge amount of progress made. Let’s face it, cueing a gramophone is no mean feat! The introduction of magnetic tape was promising, but again it wasn’t “theater friendly” as anybody who has worked “live” with reel to reel tape machines will attest. Cool tools in the controlled environment of the recording studio, but live they were cumbersome, difficult to cue and confusing. I won’t even touch on the horrors of trying to use cassette or cartridge tape here!
To be fair a lot of creative theater audio guys and gals experimented with things like tape loops and so on for “beds” of sounds and had some success with them.
But really it wasn’t until the 1980’s that some real revolution started to take place. MIDI became a reality as did digital and analogue sampling. Though it’s use was restricted due to it’s cost and in many cases the computer equipment was simply to chunky and operationally cumbersome to “do it live” for most productions. Ever tried to work with an early Fairlight CMI live?
The photo on the left gives you and inkling as to how this might have been if you had…
Now if you were Disney and it was for a fixed venue like Disney World you’re on a good thing, but for those of us working in most other venues it was “cool” but to “cumbersome.”
However, back then in the 1980’s, when the writer of this article was cutting his audio teeth in the studio and for stage, there was a reprieve. The ubiquitous CD or “Compact Disk”. Finally something you could cue relatively easily, was sonically brilliant, was cheap and on a level almost as good as that “Dolby Surround” stuff they were pushing in the cinema at the same time in history.
The only real problem with CD’s was that they tended to be a little awkward to change quickly, burning them yourself was not an option and if you’re gopher put their sticky fingers on the disk after they ate a hamburger you, like it or lump it, got to perform the d-d-d-d-d-digital stutter to the delight – not – of all present on stage and in the audience. Further, these goofs were not seen as creative expression but rather a mega stuff up by a mega incompetent sound engineer.
Yes. It’s always our fault, isn’t it?
Rather than go on and depress you irrevocably with how unhelpful CD’s could be, there is good news. The age of the computer is here and it’s here for live theater too. Theater sound software is a reality in the 21st Century and it’s potential is only just starting to be tapped. In a sense, if you’re using a computer in theater, you’re still breaking new ground. You are literally a pioneer and there is enormous scope to do something stunning that will make your audience (and director/producer) sit up and take notice.
What’s more most modern computers, or even laptops, have the necessary grunt to pull it all off!
As you know, if you’re reading this blog, one of those theater sound software packages is our product MixAction. More than a sound effects player or theater live playback playlist software package, the focus on MixAction is to create. Like the early pioneers at the dawn of the last century, but with tools and clarity that would make Russolo and his “intonarumori” weep.
Theater is, always has been and should be, an immediate experience. A movie evokes different reactions from audiences – and actors – than theater. It’s up to us, as theater sound cue engineers, to push that envelope and bring a whole new feeling, a whole new experience to the world of theater.
Are you up to this challenge?
Scott Kane
CEO and Primary Developer – MixAction Theater Sound Software
