Thanks for the update. I remembered that in the 1980’s I came across several people who would swear the theater was haunted. Bob Brawley and others who were in the building restoring the 7th Street Sweet Shop, would tell me that they thought either someone was living inside the theatre, or there was a mischievous ghost. When they would come to work in the morning, they would find their ladders, paint, brushes, and tools either missing or scattered away from where they left them. Sometimes Items would go missing for some time, only to turn up somewhere else (the dressing rooms were mentioned) or back where they belonged. I remember there being all kinds of trap doors (one really creepy one in the midst of seats ahead of the projection room) and crawl spaces all over in there. It was a nightmare to search, and when I worked at the Police Dept as a Reserve, I found my share of open doors there. Almost every time we searched it, we would swear that someone was near the stage area. We were extra careful as I believe the coin shop next door was burglarized one time by the suspect breaking into the ticket booth and gaining entry thru a crawl space into the coin shop. During our searches, we never found anyone, but like our Sergeant always told us, it was impossible to completely clear. The only tragic thing that I could remember occuring there, a young male teenager lost his life in the narrow alley between the theater and the old Veteran’s Building next door. A crowd was waiting for a movie there and the kid climbed up the fire escape. I don’t remember if he fell or if the fire escape broke as this was the 1960’s, but the movie was cancelled and my firends and I ended up walking home in the rain.
Oh, I almost forgot. Dehumidifiers for the stage/backstage area would help. I remember the place smelling musty and some of the singers complained. It might help if the heat isn’t on all of the time.
Lane, you need to be careful with the theatre’s acoustics. When it was built, it had the natural amplification built into it’s construction and changing any of the design, material, or dimensions could also alter the acoustics. Remember the Merilee Rush & Three Dog Night concerts there? I was standing outside directly across the street and the first song came on. It was LOUD! People were rushing outside holding their hands over their ears. Inside, the band on stage complained their monitors were not loud enough. That was caused by the buildings acoustics amplifying the sound and projecting it to the audience. You need an acoustics expert, someone who deals in engineering live sound to properly fit a system for it. I agree that the movie sound and live sound should be two seperate systems. They are like comparing apples/oranges. For live concert/musical productions I would strongly recommend the following:
1. In-The-Ear monitors. Musicians and singers all have a different preference for monitor loudness during live performances. You can tailor them for each performer. You also do not run into the problem of the monitor sound mixing with the live sound and being bounced back out to the audience. I’m not talking about feed-back, but the differences of the same sound from two different sources traveling at different times causing a phase problem which can result in “dead spots” and different tonal preception. Plus, you don’t have those ugly floor monitors cluttering up your stage floor.
2. Your sound board & engineer need to be located in the theatre, probably directly in front of the projection room if that is possible. He needs some sort of partition, but not a “booth” because he needs to hear the sound, as it is in the theatre, not inside an accoustic booth over JBL Studio monitors, as that does not match the sound that is going on in the theatre! He can however, use headphones to reference and process input sound that is being used to record the performance, as well as cue up any sound effects that are being used in a play or program production.
3. Make sure your sound board is big enough to handle any programs you intend to do. At The Church of Living Water in Olympia, I thought a 56 channel Soundcraft board was a huge dinosaur. It was overwhelming at first, until we used almost every channel during our Christmas production with plays, and singers and a band.
4. Consult an audio engineer for your speaker placement. Perhaps you could get them off of the ceiling and off to the side, maybe hide them behind some planters, flowers, incorporate them better. A competent audio engineer who knows his live acoustics could make a spectrogram analysis of the theatre’s acoustics and target speaker placement.
Remember, keep long term goals in mind. I’d love to help you, but I moved to Chicago 3 years ago. There were some experts working the sound system at The Church of Living Water, you might ask Val Gonzales to locate any of them.
Thanks for the update. I remembered that in the 1980’s I came across several people who would swear the theater was haunted. Bob Brawley and others who were in the building restoring the 7th Street Sweet Shop, would tell me that they thought either someone was living inside the theatre, or there was a mischievous ghost. When they would come to work in the morning, they would find their ladders, paint, brushes, and tools either missing or scattered away from where they left them. Sometimes Items would go missing for some time, only to turn up somewhere else (the dressing rooms were mentioned) or back where they belonged. I remember there being all kinds of trap doors (one really creepy one in the midst of seats ahead of the projection room) and crawl spaces all over in there. It was a nightmare to search, and when I worked at the Police Dept as a Reserve, I found my share of open doors there. Almost every time we searched it, we would swear that someone was near the stage area. We were extra careful as I believe the coin shop next door was burglarized one time by the suspect breaking into the ticket booth and gaining entry thru a crawl space into the coin shop. During our searches, we never found anyone, but like our Sergeant always told us, it was impossible to completely clear. The only tragic thing that I could remember occuring there, a young male teenager lost his life in the narrow alley between the theater and the old Veteran’s Building next door. A crowd was waiting for a movie there and the kid climbed up the fire escape. I don’t remember if he fell or if the fire escape broke as this was the 1960’s, but the movie was cancelled and my firends and I ended up walking home in the rain.
Oh, I almost forgot. Dehumidifiers for the stage/backstage area would help. I remember the place smelling musty and some of the singers complained. It might help if the heat isn’t on all of the time.
Lane, you need to be careful with the theatre’s acoustics. When it was built, it had the natural amplification built into it’s construction and changing any of the design, material, or dimensions could also alter the acoustics. Remember the Merilee Rush & Three Dog Night concerts there? I was standing outside directly across the street and the first song came on. It was LOUD! People were rushing outside holding their hands over their ears. Inside, the band on stage complained their monitors were not loud enough. That was caused by the buildings acoustics amplifying the sound and projecting it to the audience. You need an acoustics expert, someone who deals in engineering live sound to properly fit a system for it. I agree that the movie sound and live sound should be two seperate systems. They are like comparing apples/oranges. For live concert/musical productions I would strongly recommend the following:
1. In-The-Ear monitors. Musicians and singers all have a different preference for monitor loudness during live performances. You can tailor them for each performer. You also do not run into the problem of the monitor sound mixing with the live sound and being bounced back out to the audience. I’m not talking about feed-back, but the differences of the same sound from two different sources traveling at different times causing a phase problem which can result in “dead spots” and different tonal preception. Plus, you don’t have those ugly floor monitors cluttering up your stage floor.
2. Your sound board & engineer need to be located in the theatre, probably directly in front of the projection room if that is possible. He needs some sort of partition, but not a “booth” because he needs to hear the sound, as it is in the theatre, not inside an accoustic booth over JBL Studio monitors, as that does not match the sound that is going on in the theatre! He can however, use headphones to reference and process input sound that is being used to record the performance, as well as cue up any sound effects that are being used in a play or program production.
3. Make sure your sound board is big enough to handle any programs you intend to do. At The Church of Living Water in Olympia, I thought a 56 channel Soundcraft board was a huge dinosaur. It was overwhelming at first, until we used almost every channel during our Christmas production with plays, and singers and a band.
4. Consult an audio engineer for your speaker placement. Perhaps you could get them off of the ceiling and off to the side, maybe hide them behind some planters, flowers, incorporate them better. A competent audio engineer who knows his live acoustics could make a spectrogram analysis of the theatre’s acoustics and target speaker placement.
Remember, keep long term goals in mind. I’d love to help you, but I moved to Chicago 3 years ago. There were some experts working the sound system at The Church of Living Water, you might ask Val Gonzales to locate any of them.