As the assistant sound designer to Michelle Ohumukini for Hale Centre Theatre’s Production of School of Rock, my primary responsibilities were to document the system, maintain drawings and paperwork, and come up with a solution to manage a large number of monitor mixes.

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Because of our large input and output list, one of the first things that Michelle had me do was document the system in such a way that any one of our team members, regardless of their experience, could refer to it and figure out step by step how each microphone would be heard through a speaker. This is evidenced primarily in the hookup list and the block diagram, the latter of which was the first time I was able to use the new USITT sound documentation guidelines. There was some existing paperwork that documented a rough input/output list, so I used that as the basis for the hookup list, which I expanded to include detailed descriptions of each connection, be it an internal patch in the console or a Dante patch to a DSP.

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For the block diagram, I had to do a lot of cable chasing to figure out where everything went. We have a rep system in our building, but no access to any paperwork outlining how connections worked. There was a lot of trial and error trying to ascertain what cables went where and what patches connected to what, but with the help of some team members who had worked there longer than me, I codified that information in the paperwork and made it readily accessible for everyone else. The block diagram and hookup list were incredibly useful during School of Rock as we managed a large input count for both the pit and student bands. We handed the paperwork to everyone on the team as we loaded in, and with a common set of drawings to look at, successfully loaded in the show in the one night we had to get ready for the musicians.

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To that end, another useful document that I created for Michelle was the Device Plot. This outlined where on stage the musicians would go, which then let us figure out where and how we could place our equipment. This document, more than the others, evolved and changed a lot as scenic elements were updated but remained an effective tool for Michelle to share with the design team where our equipment was going to be as they configured the tight confines of the pit. The device plot also let our team have an easy reference during load-in, so everyone knew where to place equipment, expediting the process significantly.

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For all these examples, the development process was relatively the same. I would often start out with a sketch outlining the rough ideas of what I was doing, and then once that was approved by Michelle, I would go and create the actual document. From there, Michelle and I would go back and forth until we were satisfied, then presented it to the team at large so they could ask any clarifying questions and comment on things that were unclear to them.

The other major project I oversaw was figuring out a way to manage the large number of monitor mixes for the show. We didn’t have a dedicated monitor engineer so we opted to use a separate console for a monitor desk that our A2 would manage in addition to their other responsibilities. Because we are double cast for all band and cast members (including the kid band), we found ourselves needing twice as many mixes as we had auxes available on our monitor desk. The console’s scene options were limited and wouldn’t handle daily deviations well, so I suggested that we use Max to talk with the console and create an external scene system. This seemed easier than having to manually save mix information every night, so Michelle encouraged me to pursue this. I was eventually able to create a Max patch that let us click a button for the performer for a given role that night and recall all their specific mix information on the console. I created the Max patch in such a way that when a change was made on the desk it would update and store any changes automatically. It took a while to get all of the details ironed out, and while there are some things I would change were I to do it again, on the whole it proved to be an effective tool that saved us a lot of manual work every night.