I recently completed sound design for Annex Theatre's new play: The Moon is a Dead World.

The play is written by Mike Daisey, his first actually, who is a fairly successful and lively monologist. 

When I was asked to do the show I nearly gave my knee-jerk "NO." that I've been cultivating for a while now.  It's taken a lot of work to get to where I can turn these things down, since I always say "yes!".  But, between Fog People, Hands of Kali, and mixing the Deepsleep Narcotics Company record I've got my hands MORE than full. 

But, the director mentioned he was thinking of more ambient soundscape type sounds, which of course is my bread and butter and something I excelled at before I even knew anything about audio.  Also seeing an opportunity to try and turn the delivery process on its head a little bit and do something a little more than put a bunch of sounds on a CD and I was hooked.

There were three big challenges for me in this design:

• upgrade Annex's sound system (which has always been, um, challenged)
• create and fine-tune the interface for the operator of the show
• the actual sound design

The first item was my main focus for the first several weeks.  Ordering gear, testing it, returning it, and ordering a few more things to make it all work.  Pleased to say it was a MASSIVE success.  For less than $2K Annex Theatre now has quad sound and two BOOMING sub-woofers.  Furthermore, the speaker lines are all balanced, so no lame radio noise, AND the new mixer allows sounds to be placed among the four speakers in various ways.  Not total surround yet (that requires a little more gear and software) but very close.

I attended early production meetings and brainstormed with the other designers, and happily many of my early suggestions became key approaches for very large design solutions.  Granted, I lifted the biggest one from the Blue Man Group (and cited it at the time), but simply being around in the design "think tank" is a place I really enjoy a great deal and think I do excellent work at.

My second problem, the interface, was something I was going back and forth on until quite late in the process.  At first I wanted to use a drum controller and have more automated cue-switching, but as I realized how impractical that would be I settled on my backup MIDI controller keyboard, which actually gives way more control options.  I was going to hook that up to my spare computer (which is not only getting donated to Annex after the run, but I sourced a montior, mouse, keyboard, AND a second sound card I'll tweak after the run as well...with the software already on the computer they're getting a $5K rig for FREE) and use some software I've been dying to start working with anyway. 

Anyhow, not knowing the software did not set myself up for success.  Especially since I had ony done very minor actual design at this point.  This problem dogged me until the actual tech of the show.  In fact, the night before I realized the software I wanted to use (Cakewalk's Project 5) was not going to cut it, and I switched ideas entirely and went with Ableton Live, teaching it to myself and laying the show out at 12:30am the night before tech.  I don't know what gets more credit, the software for being so intuitive or myself for focusing like a laser beam and learning it in just a few hours.

Finally, that left me with the actual design.  While I had played with several sub-themes in the design, including taking actual dialogue from the play and using it as the palette to generate ALL the sounds, I ended up mashing together several ambiences, and basically making sure there is nearly ALWAYS some sound going on, but almost all of it is very subtle, almost subconscious. 

The few major effects I designed to take advantage of the quad speakers and subs, and to great effect.  With the added control of the keyboard interface, I was able to add volumes, filters, and even pitch de-tuning to critical sounds, allowing for some dynamic effects that can follow the action as it changes from show to show.

Ultimately, the goal was turn over as much "playability" to the operator for the run of the show as possible.  I'm not such a diva that I need everything to remain the way I envisioned it, and now I think the tools for someone who is going to see this show for 15-20 times exist to customize and evolve along with the actors and other tech crew. 

Finally, here's a pic of the main mixer, note the bizarre signal routing and the "cordoned off" areas where I'm doing something funky.


So, consider this my plug to the see the show. In addition to my sound design there's some fantastic things that occur during the show, and the overall design is one of a kind of comic-inspired hyper-reality.  The jokes are funny, the heavy moments are heavy, and the whole think is a brisk 70min.  That's how I like my theatre: mind-blowing and brief.