251. Broadway Sound Designer Jessica Paz

In Episode 251, Tony-award sound designer Jessica Paz joins the show and talks about all things Broadway and touring sound design, including how to make a theatre sound like a stadium or an intimate office as well as the trials and tribulations of doing live theatre outdoors at New York’s iconic Delacorte Theatre for Shakespeare in the Park, and more. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Jessica’s the first, and to date only, non-male Tony-winning sound designer. She’s collaborated on Broadway productions that include Hadestown (Tony and Drama Desk Award, Best Sound Design of a Musical), A Beautiful Noise, Dear Evan Hansen, Bandstand, Disaster!, The Assembled Parties, and Fela! (Tony Award, Best Sound Design of a Musical).

Episode Links:
Jessica Paz Designs
Meyer Sound Profile Of Jessica Paz
Jessica Paz Tony Acceptance Speech
Theatre Avenue: Problem Solving in Sound Design
Theatre Avenue: Sound Design of Little Shop of Horrors
Krotos Interview With Jessica Paz
Episode 251 Transcript

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Transcript

Signal To Noise, Episode 251: Broadway Sound Designer Jessica Paz

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green


Andy Leviss: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and of course in the other chair is the one, the only, thank god, Sean Walker. How you doing, 

Sean Walker: y'all? I'm awesome, man. How are you? Jesus 

Andy Leviss: you? 

Sean Walker: Christ, bro. Don't put that hex on people. Come on. They're having a hard time wanting more of me. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, right. Um, 

Sean Walker: going on in your world these days? 

Andy Leviss: you know, just hanging, been, was doing a little bit of concert stuff the other week. I know a couple weeks ago we talked about us mixing an oratorio back at, uh, the Pearlman Center, uh, down, downtown, which was the, the venue y'all have heard way too much about when I was living there for six months last year. 

And now it's back. been just, you know, a couple weeks of corporate stuff, some stuff in town, gonna head up to Rochester in a little bit and maybe see if I can finally put a face with a name with Nate once we get up there and uh, 

Sean Walker: Sweet. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, just 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Andy Leviss: get that nice sweet, sweet corporate day right? 

Sean Walker: There you go. Hey, at least, at least the Pearlman's a nice venue to camp at. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it's, I mean, the, the, there's a complete and utter lack of daylight which is weird, but that's, I mean, that's, that's, that's Theater, you know, theater. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, right. Totally. I'm going to help a friend out tonight doing a bar gig, dude. First one in as long as I can remember. And I'm kind of excited, can I be honest, to like, Have a zero stress show. Like if goes well, fine. If goes train wreck, dumpster fire, eh, fuck it. Fine. You know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: Yep. 

Sean Walker: And I don't, you know, I don't really mean that, but. 

It's nice to not be like, some CEO's gonna fire everybody on site right now if one little thing goes wrong. But if it's like, I don't know, kick two went out. Well, fuck 

Andy Leviss: I, you know, I, the corporate event I was just on as a system tech this year had the most ridiculous quantity of DMV V series line array in not a small room, but way small room for having Four main arrays and three delay arrays, uh, and uh, it was only because last year they complained that they heard too much street noise, so they wanted to see more speakers this year. 

I don't think it was any louder than it was on that gig last year, but they saw a lot more speakers, so, so there they 

Sean Walker: yes, I'll send more speakers. Of course I will. Here's the, here's the new invoice. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it was four main arrays of eight each. So that's like six, 32 mains and then another three by six of delays. And there's maybe 15 or 20 feet between the main line and the delay line in a big square. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. And as, as a sound company, if we can get one more line of delays like that, sign me up, dude. Let's take that rental for the week, you know? 

Andy Leviss: right? Uh, yeah. It went from all house gear to like, we actually have to rent in 18 boxes. So that's what they did at that, for that gig. Um, 

Sean Walker: awesome. 

Andy Leviss: We'll talk, talking about like. Bar gigs in ancient history and, and working in theaters, that kind of segues nicely to this week's guest, who I have known for longer than either of us cares to admit, and we're going to claim we were in diapers when we met because it was so long ago. 

Uh, we have, 

Sean Walker: love those friends. 

Andy Leviss: Right, we have, uh, uh, I'm proud to be able to say now, Tony Awards, uh, winning Broadway sound designer, Jessica Paz. Hey Jess. 

Sean Walker: girl! 

Jessica Paz: how are you? 

Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm good. How are you? 

Jessica Paz: Doing all right? I'm awesome. Yeah, living the dream, you know, living the dream. 

Andy Leviss: So, uh, why don't, why don't we start there with where, where, where do you kind of start off and, uh, where'd that dream come in and how, how you got to where you are? Sometimes sounding not 

Jessica Paz: know, it's a pretty funny. I was, and I've said this in in other interviews or, or articles before, was that I was one of those audience members that thought it was all just a game. Magic. I would go to see a show, and it didn't even occur to me that there were people backstage, that there was someone mixing, um, and, uh, just sort of You know, by happenstance, I was, uh, seeing someone who performed in a community theater production of the Rocky Horror Show once a week, and so I'd go and dress up and do all the shoutbacks and everything, and I'd, you know, go every week, and eventually I decided that I didn't want to spend, you know, as a 19 year old, I didn't want to spend 25 every week to see this show. 

And I started volunteering at the theater, and I ran a fog machine, and I did some automation, and I did some props, and um, some backstage tracks, and then eventually they asked me to stage manage, I had no idea what that was, but I said yes, and I did. I figured it out as I went along. Um, and, and then eventually, uh, there was just a show that sounded absolutely terrible and it was just like feedback city all the time. 

And it was a show I happened to love called Bad Boy the Musical. And I asked a friend, like, how do you do a soundcheck? And they described it to me and I went in the next day and I did a soundcheck before the show and we had a show that I can't say that it sounded good, but it. Didn't have any feedback, so that was great. 

Certainly is, yeah, is the solid part to aim for. Absolutely. And I kind of just dug it. And the, the really interesting thing about sound for me, um, is that it is, it's tedious in a way, um, and very detailed. And, therefore, it's almost impossible to get bored of, and, and I say this because I know myself, because I've met myself, and I've lived with myself for years, um, 

Sean Walker: 22 or 23 at 

Jessica Paz: Yeah, 23, yeah, 23, exactly. 

I will, you know, I wanted to be a bookkeeper, I wanted to be an accountant, I wanted to be a scuba diving instructor, I wanted to be the manager of a scuba diving store, I wanted to go to college to be a forensic psychologist. Obviously, all of these things did not come to fruition, because I'm a theater sound designer, and I will say that of all of those other interests, you know, I get bored of them after about a year. 

And sound is the one thing that I've never gotten bored of. I feel like there's always something else to learn. You know, maybe not in, in the, the science of it, right? The physics of it, the science of it, all of the rules are the rules of the way sound functions, but the technology is consistently changing and updating and, you know, we're, we're making new tools to do our work and there's just always something to learn and implement. 

Yeah, that's sort of the short version of how I got where I'm going. And, you know, after, after that community theater, there were, um, a number of assistant jobs, associate jobs, et cetera. Um, luckily I was able to be the associate on Fela, the musical. I was. I was blessed enough to, uh, travel with that to London and other European cities and also take it to Nigeria, which was pretty incredible. 

Um, and, uh, then more associate work, A2 work, I've hauled cables across football fields, I've done corporate stuff, I've done, um, uh, a lot of, uh, Mixing in bars and music venues with a box of SM57s and you just got to make it sound good. And, uh, it's kind of how you learn, I think. So yeah, I've sort of done it. 

I've done it all. And, and then eventually, um, got a design on Broadway with Hadestown, which is wonderful. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. So for those of us not in the theater world, what does a theater sound designer do? 

Jessica Paz: So, um, It's a little different whether it's a play or a musical, it's a little bit different if you are also composing and sound designing, um, so that's just, let's just talk about, you know, uh, a play. So, I will come in and in smaller venues there, there may very well be a sound system already in place. Um, and so then I will come in and augment that sound system with other equipment or not. 

And then I will create the content for the show, which can be, if there is no composer attached, writing original music, would be me editing music to fit certain moments. Um, for instance, POTUS, which was a play on Broadway, uh, I, you know, specified the sound system and then we used all found music for the transitions, et cetera, which I had to edit. 

Uh, to fit into those like 10 second moments where we spun the set around. And what happens is the producers then have to go and license that music, uh, so that the artists get paid for their music being used. Um, if it's a composer coming in writing original music, then that music doesn't get licensed because it's being written for the show by that person. 

And I've, I've done shows where. There has been a composer and also me. So I would deal with the amplification and the sound effects and the specifications of the sound system. And the composer would write all of the music. And so then I take their music and implement it across the sound system. And, and we kind of bring our two mediums together for a musical. 

It's similar in the sense of, you know, I'm specifying a sound system. Uh, I'm specifying probably a beefier sound system for a musical than I am a play. And it depends on the venue, the architecture of the space, the needs of the show, etc. But the goal is always to make sure that the, every audience member hears the same show. 

Uh, within a certain amount of tolerance. Um, because you can't make it absolutely perfect in every single seat. And, um, And then, you know, I'm specking everything from the microphone that the actor wears on their head to the transmitter that they wear on their body that sends their voices to other equipment in, you know, Ampland and in racks into the trap room which is under the stage and that, you know, Then comes into the sound console, and then there's a person who, every day, mixes the show line by line, which means that, you know, there are never more microphones open than need to be. 

Uh, and they respond to the actor's performance every day. Uh, I then, you know, will create sound effects as needed for the musical. There's the implementation of various, you know, reverbs, effects. Um, You know, the bigger the show, the larger the console. There's also monitoring equipment for the musicians, um, the, the microphones that are used for those musicians and each of those chairs. 

There's, um, you know, implementing speakers within the scenery or the floors. To provide information to the actors on stage, um, for what they need to hear in terms of their note, uh, or tempo information, et cetera, and so on. So basically, and down to, like, you get a, you get a Broadway theater, you get four walls and a bunch of seats. 

Um, there's no cable, there's no speakers, there's no, there aren't even speakers in the dressing rooms. We provide all of that. If there are, I, I, God bless. I always love it when there are. But we bring in everything, so right down to the tape that the backstage audio person called the A2 is using to affix a microphone cable wire 

Andy Leviss: So, Jess, yeah, like, correct me if I'm wrong, just to restate for the folks in the music world and kind of categorize it, as far as the mixing goes, there, just like in the concert world, there are two folks who encompass a, the broad spectrum of the sound. In the concert world, you've got the SE and the, and the mixer, the A1. 

In the concert world, the A1 decides how it should sound. Mixes it, and it's the S. E. 's job to make the system bounce, to make that happen, and make it so that what the, what the mixer wants is what's happening across the theater, er, across the venue. In the theater world, we have two people, we have the same tasks, they get divided up a little bit differently. 

So the sound designer basically has the S. E. role, plus the choices over what microphones go where and how it sounds, and all the mixer does is mix. 

Jessica Paz: Yes. However, I will add to that. That when I am working with someone who's my engineer, the A1, and I have a long standing relationship with them and a rapport, and our styles are similar, which is likely why I chose them to mix that show, it's, it can become really freeing. Yes, I decide artistically what microphone I want on what instrument and what actor and what the equipment is, et cetera, but then having someone Who's behind the console, who I trust, and whose ears I trust, and who shares my aesthetic, I don't have to be commenting on what the show sounds like all the time. 

Or I can be, you know, down front listening, and then come back and talk to them and be like, that felt like that bit was a little too loud, and I think we want more reverb there, and here's how the moment needs to feel. I don't have to give them exact Numbers on a fader or values. I do sometimes, but like I said, if it's, if it's someone that we kind of then share the artistic vision and the way I like to describe it is, uh, talking about, you know, Alison and I on A Beautiful Noise, Alison was the A1 and we have a relationship from the Hadestown tour, which is how I met her. 

I will often say that, uh, she is my hands. Or any A1. They're my hands because I can't touch the console, right, as the designer. I mean, I can, but I, I, I can't mix the show. So I have to, she has to mix the show, and I have to communicate to her how I want the show to sound. And I'm her feet, right? She can't leave the console and go walking around the room. 

So, she has to trust that what I'm telling her is accurate for what it sounds like everywhere else. That she can't be, and I have to trust her to tell me what it feels like under her hands as she's mixing it, because I don't have that tactile information. 

Andy Leviss: sense. And yes, the, uh, the, the best relationships I've had as a mixer with designers and vice versa are, yeah. When there is that trust and that both knowing what the designer is going to want before they ask for that or the designer waiting to give you a chance to respond before they tell it to you. 

Like, like I've had experiences on shows with the designer that I've known, but haven't worked with before where like they'll like, With line by line mixing, as Jess was talking about, it's one of the big things we talk about is that we do a lot of the dynamics for vocals with our fingers, you know, so we'll be like, you don't have any compressors. 

No, I have 10 right here at the end of my hands. And it's a very dynamic responding to what the actor is doing. And I've had shows where like a new designer I'm working with, will start off kind of somewhat aggressively setting the dynamics, not knowing what they're going to get and wanting to make sure and like tech rehearsals stuff doesn't get out of hand. 

And it's like that great joy to watch as I'm mixing, you know. Watch that threshold slowly creeping further and further out of my way as they realize what I'm doing and are like, Oh, you got this. You don't need that. And responding to each other that way. 

Jessica Paz: Right. It's sort of like, um, I hate the term training wheels. It's just, it's just a way to get the show into a stable position, you know? You're, you're, you're kind of designing from the 10, 000 foot view, and then the 5, 000 foot view, and then the 1, 000 foot view, and then the 500 foot view, down, and, and, like, every pass that you make at it just gets you, like, deeper and deeper into the onion. 

Until you get to the center of the Tootsie Pop. And, um, 

Sean Walker: who doesn't love a tip off? 

Jessica Paz: yeah, yeah. And, um, you know, it gets more and more detailed. So, now depending on the style of the show, if it's a, if it's a rock show or a pop show, I may have more aggressive compression than I would on, you know, a spoken, spoken word poetry piece, or a jazz piece. 

It's a jazz style, um, piece as well. But again, it is what Andy's saying is that it's just a protection. And then once the A1 is comfortable and they know the show and they're, you know, doing it, I will, I will loosen that up and just give them more, more freedom. 

Sean Walker: Totally. And is it a safe bet to speculate that the system specifications vary widely based on the venue and the needs like it would in a concert, where it could be from like X32 and Speakers on Sticks to Ravage or DiGiCo with Meyer or whatever, you know what I mean, or some kind of big line array where maybe it makes more sense, or is it all pretty much a like, Here's the thing I really want and will really use. 

Like, what does the specification look like for something like this, audio wise? 

Jessica Paz: You know, it, it starts with the room, right? Because There's a few things, especially dealing with a musical, it begins with the room, the shape of the room, where you can physically hang speakers, and then from there, you figure out what speakers can fit in those spaces that are, you know, have a throw that's the width that you'd like, and then you decide, well, what kind of, you know, what kind of show is this? 

Do I want to use a point source speaker as my main left rights, or is this a big, giant rock musical? Do I want to use line arrays, right? And then, in the case of something like Beautiful Noise, I think this is worth saying, is that the, the show goes from these incredibly intimate scenes with two people, speaking, And in casual conversations, it's a therapist and the older Neil, uh, like, recalling his life. 

So there's these two person, like, super intimate scenes that are very much like a play. And then we have to be able to go from that to a stadium concert sound. Right? So, how do you do that? We could do an A B system in which the, the play vocals in those scenes, uh, are through point source speakers, or we can say, well, if we, like, what is the biggest we need to get? 

Let's accommodate for that. Which are these giant concert stadium moments. Let's make sure we can handle that with the PA, because we can always make things smaller, right? But you can't necessarily drive a PA that isn't powerful enough. to achieve a stadium moment. And then you're also looking at the, you know, the, the therapist and the older Neil sort of weaving themselves with dialogue in and out of the storytelling, in and out of these concert moments. 

Like sometimes we're going from two person scene, two concert, all within the same 60 seconds. So, yeah, I guess my point being is that I want to spec for the system what is going to achieve the largest I need to get so that I can then bring moments back as needed instead of trying to make a system do what it can't do. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a, I mean, yes, ultimately I was trying to picture in my mind, like, how big is theaters or rooms? Is it something that has, typically speaking, are there, like, left, right, center line arrays, or clusters, or, you know what I mean? Like, can you describe in more detail what systems you often find yourself speccing or falling on? 

Don't necessarily care about the brand, but more about like, point source here, or line array there, or, you know, if there's a brand, that's fine, but, um, like, how is that different from concerts, you know what I mean, or corporate events, which is what I'm used to, you know? 

Jessica Paz: Sure, yeah, I mean, When I've done some outdoor venue concerts, it's, you know, line array stacks left and right, and like, subs under the bottom of the stage, and like, front fills that sit on top of those, or maybe front fills sit on the, uh, the edge of the deck, there's monitor wedges, you know, there's none of that in theater, there, you know, there are small speakers set into the floor. 

So there are monitors, but it's not wedges like you would see in a concert venue. Uh, I tend to like line arrays very much, and especially the newer models that have been coming out the last 5 to 10 years. Um, I mostly go with either Meyer or D& B in terms of brand, and I always say, oh, like, let me play my little violin, I have to choose between one million dollar sound system and another. 

Like, they're both 

Sean Walker: right? Totally. 

Jessica Paz: um, in embarrassment of riches, um, you know, and I may choose one manufacturer over another based on, you know, what. What I'm doing, but they're, they're, you know what, you know what it is though. I tend to stick with, uh, the manufacturers. I know because it's a tool that I continue using. 

It's a color in my palette. It's. It's something that I know what it's meant to sound like, and so therefore I know whether or not something sounds correct or not. Right? I know I have this console, I have these speakers, I have these amplifiers, I expect it to sound like this. It's sort of like I'll give an example. 

The snare drum doesn't sound good. Okay, what microphone are you using? And I once, like, tried this, you know, weird, new microphone, and I just could not get this snare drum to sound right, and so we were like, alright, where's the, where, who's got a 57? Like, I don't know. If it doesn't sound right on a 57, then there's something else that's wrong, because you should be able to just put a 57 on a snare and it's fine, without all that much effort. 

So that's, that's part of why we, you know, I tend to give myself the same tools over and over, not because I don't ever change things, I do, I'm just careful about how many new things I introduce to a production, because I want to have, I want to have my toolbox. It's like, you know, um, 

Sean Walker: tried and true. You're getting paid for a result, and you need the tools you can to get your result. That makes sense. Totally. 

Jessica Paz: right. Like, I'm not gonna try to drill into 

Andy Leviss: I have a story about that from the Harry Potter loading, 

Jessica Paz: without one, 

Sean Walker: Totally 

Andy Leviss: that's for another day. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right. 

Jessica Paz: Yeah. 

Sean Walker: All right, so you got you, you like line arrays when you can, presumably for the coverage out front and the directivity behind it to the side where you got open headsets and lavaliers and stuff like that. Right. 

Jessica Paz: yeah, and, and so, uh, generally speaking, my center clusters will be line arrays. Um, unless the proscenium is lower than I expect, uh, and then I might be able to get away with point source, or if there's a sightline issue and I can't use a line array. For instance, Hadestown on the West End, the proscenium arch is very, very high. 

It's over 30 feet. I think it's 32 feet or something. Usually we're at like 29 feet to the top ish. Uh, and this is exceptionally high, and the, the theater's four levels high for seating, and so the Sightline angles get very, very steep, and there's just no way that we would be able to put a six or eight box line array at the center position. 

So we had to use point source speakers for that, but then we did line arrays left and right. And all of the fill speakers, so there's duplicates of the left and right, sort of halfway through the house, that just bring that left right signal back further. I like line arrays for a left right because it also gets, it gets really, it really shoots into that. 

Under Balcony. well, in a way that isn't as clean as a point source. Like I can get very, very specific and, and it also means that, you know, a point source may fall off by the time you get to that overhang and a line array doesn't. It almost gets all the way to the back of the theater, which I like. Um, but everything other than around the main proscenium is all point source speakers. 

So the under balcony speakers are point source, the surrounds, the, uh, the fill speakers, all of that is point source. 

Andy Leviss: So, I mean, somewhere maybe to go for that. Like, I, we've mostly been indirectly talking about Like a show on Broadway, the West End, it's a sit. What about, do you want to talk a little bit about translating one of those shows to a tour, and, and, which then brings the same show into a much larger variety of venues, and how you make the choices for what, what works and doesn't, and how to translate that. 

Jessica Paz: So for designing a tour, and I'll speak about Hadestown specifically. I, you know, because, to rewind, to tell people, we make these predictions, these speaker predictions when we're deciding what sound systems we want to install in these theaters. So it's usually a section, sometimes we can do these things in 3D, which helps us to envision the speaker with the coverage pattern, and how that's going to interact with the space. 

And whether or not the amount of speakers we have and their capabilities are going to actually do what we expect them to do. And so, for a tour, there are additional challenges, which are that you're traveling towers, left and right, and then you have to make sure that your towers can accommodate a two level theater, a three level theater, a four level theater. 

So what I did was I took the sections of each of those venues throughout the first year of the tour. Some of them can be 1, 000 seat houses, some can be up to 5, 000 seats. And I You know, choose how to pin the arrays to see if I can accommodate all of those venues with a single set of towers and a, and a single center cluster. 

Sometimes we don't have to hang our own center cluster. We can use one that's already installed in the venue. Some, some venues have them already. We will often tie into delay systems and fill systems that the venue has installed, which a lot of, uh, roadhouses do because they get shows put up. Coming through there all the time. 

We will travel some fill speakers and some delay speakers for like under balconies and things to use as needed. Um, sometimes we'll choose to use the ones that we bring over what the venue has installed. And. It's, you know, then you start getting into constraints of we have X amount of room on the truck. 

So, does sound get an entire truck or do we have to fit into half a truck and are we sharing that with musicians and, um, you know, and so, and then what happens is, you know, on Broadway we're doing a prediction for that singular venue. Before we go in, we install the sound system, the show runs. On the road, my engineer, and this is, I think, a little bit more like the concert world, Andy. 

It's, it's the A1 who's deciding what the show sounds like, based on what they've learned from what the designers desires are, right? They have to go and then replicate that at every venue. They have to do new predictions. They have to pin the arrays the way that they need to be. And they have to make sure that the show sounds as good as it can sound and as true to its design as possible in that new space. 

And they have to do it. Usually they get like eight hours to install the entirety of the system if there's no advance call, uh, but they maybe get an hour of quiet. Um, at every new venue to see if it sounds right. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. There, there, there are many venues where it's more damage control than it's. I'm going to, I'm going to try and make it sound the least unlike what it should sound like as it can. 

Jessica Paz: Exactly. Yes. Yeah. 

Sean Walker: intense. 

Jessica Paz: Mm hmm. 

Sean Walker: Same things happen in corporate or concert, right? You're making predictions and flying arrays and, you know, trying to make it sound the same again in every seat. 

Jessica Paz: Mm hmm. 

Sean Walker: To have it go from a 1, cap and the same thing, like, you gotta have a lot of PA truck. Cause those are very different specs in my mind for what a PA takes to do a 5, 000 cap versus a 1, 000 cap, right? 

Jessica Paz: Well, surprisingly It, I mean, the towers are the, the, the towers are the towers are the towers. They are the same towers if it's a thousand seats as it is if there's five thousand seats. Um, so in the bottom of the tower, the, the bottom section is, um, from floor up. It's a subwoofer and then two point source speakers. 

So for a fill and an, an inner and an outer. Right? And then above that is four leopards, and that's the bottom of the tower, so that's about eight feet. And then above that is another eight foot section of tower that's got eight leopards in it. And so it's just about the way you pin it, and sometimes, and there are on these gimbals, so you can actually take the whole yoke and just point that upper line array directly at, like, the back seat of the highest balcony. 

Um. And, uh, and then, of course, you're tying into the, these larger venues very often, if not always, have their own delay systems hung for those additional balconies that we tie into. Yeah, yeah, 

Sean Walker: So then you just take your Galileo or Lake or whatever you like and set those to match what you're off and running. 

Jessica Paz: exactly, yeah. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Jessica Paz: So, I mean, with like, you know, basically what I'm saying is, yes, these towers accommodate it, but without fill systems that the venues provide, we would, 

Andy Leviss: then you go to the Kansas City Starlight and all bets are off. 

Sean Walker: Alright, I got you. Alright, cool. 

Andy Leviss: So for those of the, the Starlight is, is one of the major Broadway touring houses, but it's, it is an outdoor amphitheater, which is nothing like any of the other venues any tour that goes through there ever is prepared for. 

Sean Walker: Oh, that's 

Jessica Paz: Right. And, and outside is really interesting. You know, I did, I designed for about seven years out at the Delacorte in Central Park, which is an 1800 seat venue. We've done musicals, we've done plays. It's a lot of Shakespeare, a lot of rewritten Shakespeare, re imagined Shakespeare. And, It's just really interesting to work outside because there are no walls. 

There are there is nothing for the sound coming out of a speaker to reflect off of back onto the stage. It just goes out. Just Which is, in some ways, really freeing because it will sound exactly the way you want it to sound. But also, in some senses, A bit jarring, because there are no walls. There's just, there's just no slapback. 

And the slapback actually helps the performers, right? Because they're hearing the reflection of the room coming back at them, in addition to whatever speakers I'm providing them on the stage. And then you take that away, the only thing they 

Andy Leviss: when you're doing, when you're doing stuff in the Delacorte, are you putting more vocals in Foldback than you would otherwise? 

Jessica Paz: I, uh, put vocals in Foldback 

Andy Leviss: It's, I joke and tease because it is, it is a, a longstanding thing in theater that because we've got a thousand Omni mics everywhere, we, we for a long time have been very resistant to putting vocals in fullback at all. So I'm, I'm curious to, 

Sean Walker: Ah, gotcha. Good to know. Good to know. Okay. 

Jessica Paz: And it gets, it gets really, really tricky when it's a lavalier worn in like a hairline position. Uh, and then there's like some tricks that I employ to handle that. It's much harder in those situations. Um, most of my shows are, the actors are wearing boom microphones. So they're wearing headsets, which, you know, puts the microphone right at their mouth. 

And I get a lot more headroom in the onstage speaker systems and I can get away with it and get away with it really well. Um, and so then, you know, I, I want to give that to them, but I, I also set up. separate paths to the speakers that are on stage. So for instance, I will do a, you know, the, each of the speaker systems on stage is coming from an aux, so it has its own mix and I can, you know, make different mixes across the stage. 

So, you know, the speakers that are really close to the drums probably don't need drums in them. Right? And, uh, I certainly don't want to put strings in the speakers that are right near the strings because I don't want feedback, right? So I have those separate mixes. However, when it comes to vocals, what I do is I set up an aux called vocals to stage. 

That aux then returns to an input of the desk and that input, that return input, then routes to all of the speaker systems on stage. So no matter where the actor is moving, they're getting their, the same amount of their voice. Ideally, the same amount of their voice no matter where they go on the stage. 

And that allows me to not only do I then EQ the speakers themselves to make their signal flat, make their frequency response flat, but then I also get to EQ the vocal to stage return. Which means I then get even more finite control over any problematic frequencies that I may run into, uh, just with the vocal mics themselves and that vocal mix. 

It also allows me to put some compression on the vocals to Sage, which I want because I want there to be an upper limit to how loud those monitors can get. Right, if I don't give it an upper limit, and this is for a number of reasons, I want to give it an upper limit because I don't ever want something louder than I'd like for it to be, to be coming back through the microphones in an uncontrolled way. 

But also, there's no monitor engineer who's actively listening to what's happening on the stage, because there isn't a person. All of those Vocals coming through monitors are controlled by the front of house engineer, who's in the back of the room, nowhere near the stage. So they, It's, it's a, it's a bit of a puzzle to set up, but once it's set up and it's functional, the engineer knows that it's safe to throw that fader to a specific place and there, it's not going to be a problem, right? 

So it's just a, it's just a matter of, it's some trickery, 

Sean Walker: Yeah, 

Jessica Paz: but different than the concert world in the sense that there is no monitor engineer. And that's not to say that there isn't ever, because there are some shows that do have monitor engineers, but. That would be like a show like Phela, uh, where, you know, you have to support a musician, an actor who never leaves the stage, right? 

So, uh, and so yes, we had a monitor engineer on that, but it's becoming less and less 

Andy Leviss: podcast hosts, we make a living on going 

Jessica Paz: I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in some of that, but 

Sean Walker: No, that's awesome. 

Jessica Paz: what you're 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally. That's awesome. So you, you must have a, Preferred console tool set also, right? Is that, is that 

Jessica Paz: I do. I, 

Sean Walker: like a Yamaha or DiGiCo platform or Avid? Like how much trickery do you need built into your desk to make this all work? You know? 

Jessica Paz: Well, I guess that goes back to the conversation about having the right tools, right? It's like, what's better? The tool that can do All the fancy things that you don't really know very well, or the tool that you know like the back of your hand and therefore can make do anything. Um, uh, so, that, you know, with that said, I, I stick to DiGiCo. 

Um, Yamaha is just everywhere, so it's ubiquitous in, in terms of concert venues and, and all of that, so I think every audio engineer knows Yamaha desks. Uh, but for my bigger shows, yeah, it's always there. It's DiGiCo, and at this point, I just know it so well, that, and I am so fast at it, that moving to something 

Andy Leviss: To their credit, DiGiCo has spent many, many years listening and seeking out support from those of us in the theater community and adding so many tool sets for us that others like RIVAGE and the last couple versions have added like theater mode features that start to get closer to there, but there's just so much power there for the unique quirks of how, how we need to work in theater that Other consoles don't necessarily have, even if they have other bells and whistles that would be great. 

Jessica Paz: Right. I mean, again, it's like the choice between an Avid desk, a Ravage, and a DiGiCo. You know, again, play me my little violin. I'm choosing between three different, multiple hundred thousand dollar consoles. This is 

Sean Walker: I mean, they're all world class platforms. I wasn't 

Jessica Paz: Hey. Yeah, no, no, no. 

Sean Walker: Just 

Jessica Paz: No. No, not at all. I'm 

Sean Walker: the right tool set for 

Jessica Paz: for me, for me, it's the Digi Co and it's, it's the Digi Co because I know it so well, because it handles theater as well as it does. 

Um, and because I find that the maintenance of a show, a running show, is a little bit simpler on a Digi Co because of the feature called players. So you could just say, oh, Sally's on for. Ensemble member number three today, instead of so and so, or there's a sub guitarist today. And so you can choose the players, which then brings over their EQs, their compression, specific to that person, 

Sean Walker: Oh my God, that's amazing. 

Jessica Paz: And again, that's not to say there are ways to go about that with the Yamaha desk, there are ways to go about that with the Avid desk. None of these are, 

Andy Leviss: Well, should we blow Sean's mind and tell them about Aliases too? 

Jessica Paz: platforms. 

Sean Walker: just not as slick or as easy as this. Yeah, I gotcha. That's killer. Please 

Jessica Paz: oh my gosh, yeah, 

Sean Walker: I've never done a theater show, so I'm stoked. This is awesome 

Jessica Paz: so basically a DiGiCo with its theater software, I'll try to explain this as simply as possible for a person who's never 

Sean Walker: for me. Thanks. 

Jessica Paz: is that, yeah, is that the desk itself will function as if it's analog. Until you tell it not to. For instance, you dial inputs into auxes, you make EQ changes, you all of that. 

It ripples through every cue of the show. Until you decide that, you know, Sally wears a hat in scene number two. And she wears a lav at the forehead position. She wears this hat and this, you know, when she puts the hat on, it makes her mic sound not great because it's reflecting off the brim of the cap. 

And so you can do things like add felt to the cap to make it less reflective. But then you can do something on the desk called an alias. And so this desk that has been operating as analog, This whole time, until you tell it not to, which you're going to do in scene 2 for Sally wearing a hat, you can say, I need this input channel to have an alias only for this cue. 

And in that cue, Sally will have a different EQ that will accommodate the hat. And then, in the very next scene, she'll go back to her standard EQ. And The standard EQ that is now in all of the scenes of the show, except Scene 2, if you make a change to that EQ while you're in any of the other scenes, will ripple to all the other 

Andy Leviss: and you can use it for like, instruments too, so like, if you're going between a nylon and a 

Sean Walker: I'm in love with 

Andy Leviss: and you don't wanna eat up two channels for that, cause you know he's never playing it at the same time. You do an alias for the nylon that changes the game, the dynamics, the EQ, but then also, he's got new strings on today and the nylon sounds a little weird and you gotta EQ around it a little different. 

Every time that nylon comes back in, those changes will track. Yeah, and RIVAGE has added a similar, although slightly more limited thing in their theater mode now called Banks, 

Sean Walker: is so cool. 

Andy Leviss: if you try, and there's some concert engineers on both of those consoles that specify the T software on the DiGiCo or the theater software on the RIVAGE for those tools and how they're applicable to concerts too. 

They're not just for theater, although they're primarily designed for theater. Mm hmm. 

Sean Walker: I was just thinking you could use that alias thing for a guitar solo. Like if it was all on time, could you could just, 

Jessica Paz: Oh, sure. 

Sean Walker: guitar solo. It gets a little bit brighter, so you don't have to like crank it up 2 million DB, but all of a sudden your solo is sticking out. Ah, that's so cool. All right. 

I want one. I want one. We'll call, call my DiGi guy. 

Jessica Paz: Yeah, it's, it's 

Sean Walker: mean, I have no use for it, but now I just like, 

Andy Leviss: that. Any, any of them that have the TSOC? 

Jessica Paz: exactly. 

Sean Walker: is that available on all the Digi consoles or just to select like the new quantums? Like a two, two, five or three, three, eight would, would have that, 

Jessica Paz: Yes. Uh, you cannot do T software on an SD8. You cannot do T software. There are some that 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, basically some of the, some of the more, 

Jessica Paz: is a bit of software 

Andy Leviss: of the more budget models don't necessarily have that option because they've got scale down 

Sean Walker: it's the theater package on top of their software. Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: that's not the market they're targeting that console for. But at this point, most of them, uh, yeah. And then, and once it's on there, it's like, yeah, you pay for that license. And then there's just like a 

Jessica Paz: I, yes, I believe 

Andy Leviss: tick a 

Sean Walker: all right, 

Andy Leviss: and check in. And it's, it's, It's definitely one of those things you, you, it's not a thing you want to enable without really reading the manual to understand how it works because the way it, because it's this overlay software on top of the regular console software, if you don't start building a show with it in mind and knowing you're going to use it, shit can get weird. 

Jessica Paz: Yeah, there's, like, a thousand ways to hurt yourself when you're, uh, when you're programming the desk. to start tech and the first time I did it, many, many years ago at this point, uh, I started over at least a handful of times 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and to their credit at this point, uh, DiGiCo does have a guide that says, here's a guide to using the T software, here's what you need to do, and in Big Bold Print, 

Jessica Paz: uh, 

Andy Leviss: how many mixes you could possibly need, add some extras, build those first, because if you try adding mixes, for example, later, it's going to screw up things based on how the T software interacts with it. 

So it's just a thing to, it's not a thing you want to add into the middle of the game. No, people like you hire people like me who read instruction 

Jessica Paz: but this is, this is Andy, this is you assuming that people like me read instruction manuals. 

Sean Walker: I knew I liked her. 

Andy Leviss: look, I'm, I'm at this point in, in my life 

Sean Walker: page. Like, I don't know. I'll figure it 

Andy Leviss: a Yamaha guy. When I'm on a 

Sean Walker: that's actually how I can work that way. It's fine, Andy. 

Andy Leviss: bet your ass. got Zac Jac's number on speed dial So 

Jessica Paz: Oh, 100%. 100%. I still have to call Zac every single time that I set up the iPad app to be used with an SD 10. Because for some reason when I set it up with an SD 7, it just, it connects. And it works. It's just like magic. Like it's supposed to. But when I try to set it up with an SD 10 It does not want to be happy for me 

Andy Leviss: but he is also just nice to talk to. So 

Jessica Paz: every time I call 

Andy Leviss: So for, 

Jessica Paz: would think that by 

Andy Leviss: yeah, for, for those who don't know, uh, Zac, 

Jessica Paz: so that I don't have to call you. 

Andy Leviss: the Go-to 

Jessica Paz: but then I'd have no reason to call him, 

Andy Leviss: guy, particularly for the Northeastern for Broadway. He lives in Manhattan. He's the, he's the officially, uh, sanctioned, officially employed by DiGiCo phone a friend for everybody on Broadway as well as other markets too and we, we all know and love him and ask him stupid questions all the time and he's very kind with answering them like we're not entirely stupid. 

Sean Walker: I 

Jessica Paz: And sometimes he, sometimes he comes out and makes a visit, if needed, right? But yeah, he's, he's lovely. He's really, he's 

Andy Leviss: They're, uh, England. Rural England, so almost Germany. 

Jessica Paz: he always has the answers. And if he doesn't, he calls Germany, right? It's Germany? England. Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay, sure. 

Andy Leviss: Um, so, 

Jessica Paz: Um, yeah, 

Andy Leviss: so I know we talked about, about Hadestown a bit, and then we, we sort of mentioned introing that, uh, courtesy of your work on Hadestown, uh, you won a Tony Award for, for, uh, for sound design and were shockingly and sadly, or not shockingly sounds wrong because it sounds like I'm shocked you won, but, which I am not, but, uh, sadly we'll say, uh, despite how many years into having a sound design Tony it was, which that itself is another conversation for how few those many years were, uh, you were the, the first, uh, female to win an award. 

Um, 

Jessica Paz: Sure. 

Yes, so they Thank you very much. I believe that was the 70s. Is that the 73rd or the 76th? I forget which one. It's one. In any case, um, I The first woman to ever be nominated for a Sound Design Tony was ten years prior to me, which was Cricket Myers for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and she was nominated for Best Sound Design of a Play. 

Um, up until me, there had been no woman ever nominated for Best Sound Design of a Musical, and then I won, so that made me the first to win a Sound Design Tony, period. So, um, and I believe, refresh my memory, I know that the 

Andy Leviss: Let's 

Jessica Paz: for Sound was like suspended in 2012, but came back 

Andy Leviss: was whatever South Pacific was, but hang on. I'm going to 

Jessica Paz: but when, when was the first year 

Andy Leviss: Uh, two thousand 

Jessica Paz: was that like 07 or 08? Something like that? 

Mm. 

Andy Leviss: 2008. Yeah, 2008. 

Jessica Paz: Mm hmm. 2008. 

2008. So, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, 

Jessica Paz: so 

Andy Leviss: there were, and then there were two 

Jessica Paz: was the beginning of there even being a Tony for Sound. Period. 

Andy Leviss: So, and if anybody, 

Jessica Paz: Which is, yeah, there were two years that it was, it was not in 

Andy Leviss: yeah, which 

Jessica Paz: But during those two years, there was a 

Andy Leviss: there was a stream of it at one point, and it is super cool to watch, because it was a show that 

Jessica Paz: The Encounter. 

Andy Leviss: with a performer making, like, basically live sound effects and performing both into a narration mic and a binaural head, and everybody in the audience had headphones. 

So you could hear all the stuff in like 3D space around you, and it was, it was It was fucking wild. And the cool, it's like super cool to see it live, but the fact that it was done by Gnarly means that it also streams really well, because as 

Jessica Paz: It was really cool. It was very, very 

Andy Leviss: a pretty close experience. Um, and, 

Jessica Paz: Mm hmm. 

Andy Leviss: uh huh. Yeah, it's like, it's a super cool story. Um, and while we're talking about 

Jessica Paz: journey through the Amazon, 

Andy Leviss: us back and we'll link in the show notes. We had another mutual friend of mine and Jessica's, Lindsey Jones, was on a while back and we kind of dive a little bit more into that story and how the award came and went. Yeah. Sorry, Lindsey. We spent far too much time on that, on that subject 

Sean Walker: I loved hanging out with 

Andy Leviss: Lindsay's episode, 

Sean Walker: dude. That was great. 

Jessica Paz: It does look like John Malkovich! 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Awesome. I. I, I love, I loved it, and I really, I just, I just thought John was the nicest dude, dude. You know what I mean? 

Jessica Paz: And, yes, Lindsay, Lindsay knows the backstory of all of that. Far better than I do, you know, with the collaborator party and the, that was how, um, TSDCA came about, uh, which is the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association, which I'm co chair of the board with John Malkovich. Uh, uh, so, but yes, he, he is more, uh, keen 

Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah, so if folks want to go back in the show notes, you can 

Sean Walker: Oh, we know. He, he gave us all the details. 

Andy Leviss: grew out of that and a little more about that. So we'll link that up for you. 

Jessica Paz: Mm. Mm hmm. Cool. Do you want to hear anything about, um, 

Andy Leviss: were coming around to the point of, is 

Jessica Paz: some of the trickery that 

Andy Leviss: And also I was going to ask specifically, I know, I know HadesTan is somewhat very 

Sean Walker: yeah, I do. 

Jessica Paz: Yeah? 

Andy Leviss: spots where you use Ear Trumpet Labs mics that I think folks would dig hearing about. 

Jessica Paz: Oh, well, so, originally, those mics were live. Uh, they are not live anymore, they are used as props, um, but we fake it with sound design. So whenever I'm designing a show, I try to think of, like, what are the rules, right? Like, what are the rules, and what are the rules that I came up with? for Hadestown was that the narrator never has reverb. 

Ever, ever. Ever, ever. So Hermes, no reverb. Because they're in the story, but outside of the story, and therefore, like, that sets them apart, but not so apart, just a convention, right? And that's not to say we can't break those rules, it's just starting from somewhere, you, you kind of have, like, want parameters. 

Andy Leviss: Even for 

Jessica Paz: uh, but everyone else is in reverb all the time. Like, there's everybody all the time. The, so the way that we fake this, yeah, but there's very, there's very little, well, maybe not dialogue, but there's very little dialogue in the show. It's like either talk sung or sung through the whole time. So maybe there's one or two moments where there's people aren't in reverb for dialogue, but it's so rare. 

Uh, so because we have a triple turntable on the stage, we can't have a wired microphone. Uh, trailing a cable across the automation. And I suppose we could have made it wireless, but that would require, you know, hiding transmitters. And so what we did was we used this double headed mic now as a prop. And the way that we fake it is, so whenever Hermes uses it, there's a duplicated input. 

There's Hermes. Hermes has three channels. There's Hermes, which is just their mic. There's the Hermes Evelyn, which is the name of that Ear Trumpet Labs microphone. And what we do is that duplicate input is like DigiTube, it's like the tube emulation on the input channel at like 3. 30. It's like really high. 

And that gets sent to, um, basically gets bussed out to the system in the same way that the effects reverb gets bussed out. So what happens is every time Hermes steps up to that microphone, they get this like crunchy tube emulation that then puts them in the surrounds. So he just gets a little bigger. 

It's very subtle. He gets a little bigger and a little crunchier. And then in the moment when we get to Wait For Me, which is like one of the penultimate number, the 11 o'clock number in Act One, the original thing was a push to talk mic, which we made wireless and worked and had this specific sound. And in London, we cut that microphone. 

And then all of a sudden that push to talk became the Evelyn, but not on a stand. And then I was like, Oh my God. And I deleted all of that stuff. stuff. I did the push to talk mic, so I had to make up like what we were gonna do to make this sort of radio effect. And so I just used that input that we made for when Hermes is on the Evelyn sort of normal, but instead I turned the DigiTube all the way up to maximum. 

So now it just sounded and like band passed the EQ. So now I had this fully wide open, dry sound of Hermes, and then the wet on top of it, layered in. So I have a 100 percent dry signal and a 100 percent wet signal, as opposed to doing some sort of like, uh, mix balance? I didn't want to jeopardize the full, uh, sound. 

The fullness of the dry signal. I just wanted to layer something on top of it. So that's how we fake the mic for Hermes. And then we fake it with reverb, uh, for Hades when he uses it, which makes him sound like he's like coming through every speaker in Hadestown. He's just like this booming voice. Um, And then we use that same effect, but we have it for Persephone when she uses the mic, which is just this subversive, like I'm using Hades microphone. 

Um, so that's how we do the, There are moments in the show where oh, uh, sorry, the other channel for Hermes is what I call the whistle. So Hermes has this train whistle that they blow, uh, at various points throughout the show, and it's got this long, like, six and a half second decay on it. This, like, long metallic reverb, uh, that just makes it sound huge. 

Uh, so that's a duplicate input, and that sends to the effects reverb engine, so it's the fully dry Hermes mic, and then the duplicate of their headset mic, that sends to the reverb for this whistle. Um, yeah, and another fun thing we do is, uh, with a subharmonic synth. So, uh, Well, that's a whole different thing. 

It's with the kick drum. There's two songs in the show called Chant One, Chant Two, and they have this very driving, pounding tempo and rhythm. And so I have the kick drum microphone. I have an outer and an inner. And then I have a duplicate of the inner mic, and the input to that, it's not actually a duplicate, I'm sorry, the input to this oscillator channel is an oscillator that's on the desk tuned to 55 hertz, which is the key of the songs, and it has a gate on it that's always closed and only opens when the kick inner mic hits, and it opens for like, Two milliseconds, but it just adds this like 55 Hertz thump in the subs Only in those two numbers of the show and in the very last number The entirety, it's a, it's a song called Doubt Comes In. 

The entirety of that song is done with only the kick oscillator, which is just elongated 

Andy Leviss: Now I want to go 

Jessica Paz: and there's no 

Andy Leviss: the show again. 

Jessica Paz: kick drum microphones turned on in that moment at all. So it's just this long, like, woofy kick drum sound. Uh, yeah, there's a couple, there's a couple of things. One of the fun bits is that, um, Right before the show went to Broadway, I was reading a magazine, I think it was in Mix Magazine or Front of House or something, about Anita Franco and the way she sets up her guitars for her concerts. 

And she's actually in the show right now, which is really wonderful. And, uh, so I was reading this article and I learned that she's got like a series of pedals in front of her. And what, and then she's got, uh, a mic, a di and then she has an amp off stage that has a mic on it. And with her pedals, she can decide how much mic di or amp she wants for each individual guitar. 

And she's got a bunch of guitars, of course. And so I asked Anas. The writer of Hadestown, who used to be on Ani DeFranco's record label, to call Ani and be like, I, tell me the details of, like, what it is exactly that she does. And I woke up one day, a few weeks later, to an eight minute long voicemail. of Ani DiFranco describing how her guitars are set up. 

And so then I learned this. And so Orpheus's guitar, he plays this like three quarter sunburst Gibson guitar, uh, is wireless. We use the pickup with a transmitter and then I duplicate, so it's a dry channel with just EQ on it and then I duplicate that and I send that to an amplifier, an amp emulator, uh, and it's like a tweed amp and I just mix that in some amount underneath the guitar to just beef it up, put it in the surrounds, give it some harmonics and uh, it's worked out really well for those moments when Orpheus is using it. 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Jessica Paz: It was pretty fun. Yeah, it was 

Andy Leviss: so what about, do you want to talk briefly about, uh, Beautiful 

Jessica Paz: of anything else that we 

Andy Leviss: one, one thing that occurs to me that I would love to hear is we recently had, uh, Burton Ishmael, who mixes Madonna's current tour on, and one of the things we talked to him about was taking all these very, like, period specific songs and making them work in ways that are true, perfectly to what we remember of those songs and what we hear on the albums, but also translates to a modern audience. 

And I'm curious how I imagine similar dynamics come into play with doing a musical about Neil Diamond in 2023 2024. 

Jessica Paz: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 

Yes, and, you know, part of it is that there has to be a decision made in the early creative process about what is equipment you're going to use, right? There, there are significantly more microphones and processors and reverb units and all sorts of things that exist now that didn't exist when Neil Diamond was recording his songs, right? 

Was recording in a studio. So you need to decide, like, are we going to use that equipment? Are we going to emulate that equipment? Or are we going to use the technology that we have now and, you know, make it, make it what it was and representative of what it was, but. specific to this show. And that happens in conversation with the music department. 

But also I rely on the music department quite a lot to inform me about orchestration choices that they've made, right? The orchestrations for the songs in A Beautiful Noise are not exactly what they were on his albums, right there, because we're, you know, a band of 12, whereas they, you know, he maybe had 15 people. 

I don't know what he had, but There's, the instrumentation's a bit different, and uh, so I rely on the music team a lot for that. But what I can say about the big stadium sequences is that there's a lot of layers happening. So we have, sometimes the mic that comes up out of the stage is not used, it's actually just his headset, but we do use a 58 that's wired at the top of Act 2. 

In any case. So, it's Neil. microphone and then Neil's mic sends to a very short room reverb which then makes his voice just a little bit bigger and puts it in the surrounds a bit with the reverb. Then the ensemble is also going to a tight room, actually a little bit tighter than the room itself. The room that I'm sending Neil to, because they're 10 voices, not one. 

So it's a pretty tight room. Again, that makes their voices a little bit bigger and puts them in the surrounds. Then I'm sending Neil, the ensemble and the band to the surrounds dry. So I'm just putting them in the surrounds, period. So now they're in the surrounds. Dry in the surrounds with reverb that's really tight. 

And then of course the band has their own reverb and the pre delay and the decay of that reverb is based on the BPMs of the tune. Uh, so that changes with every number and then all of those things. So Neil, Ensemble, Band. And his guitar that he plays. So each of those things go to their individual room reverb, and then each of those things also goes, like I said, to the surrounds dry, and then also goes to a giant reverb that's got like 100 something milliseconds of pre delay on it, and is like an 8 second decay. 

Or something that just like gives you that slapback of the stadium. So there's, yeah, there's dry, there's like the normal dry, there's dry to the surrounds, reverb in the surrounds, and then a whole reverb that's just on top of all that other reverb. There's a lot of layers happening in those stadium moments to make it feel. 

Again, how do we go from this tiny little two person scene? that needs to sound very natural and realistic to these giant stadium moments and pull it off and make it sound big. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean, at that point, I think we're kind 

Jessica Paz: I think we achieved 

Andy Leviss: hour mark. And now I will ask, although we sort of got to it already, is there anything else you wish we'd thought to ask of you that we haven't asked you about yet? 

Jessica Paz: I don't think so. Um, 

I mean, the only thing I'd like to add is that, you know, as much as I've worked in theater and I, I love it, I also really loved some of these audio dramas that I got to work on during the pandemic. And I am becoming increasingly fascinated with film and, uh, streaming mediums and, uh, you know, and I miss, I miss mixing concerts. 

So, uh, but I love what I do. And I. I feel really blessed to be doing it and, and I really hope that there are more and more women who choose to get involved in this field 

Andy Leviss: And do you have any strong feelings about doing theater in the rain? 

Jessica Paz: That's all. That's my 

Andy Leviss: I've got, I'm, we won't use it on the photo, but I, I might, I might break out in the discord photos of me and Jess drying 

Jessica Paz: rain. Oh my God. 

Andy Leviss: rain, many, 

Jessica Paz: Ugh. 

Andy Leviss: 10 years to the day before she won her Tony, 

Jessica Paz: Ugh. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's funny. Yeah, and then, you know, there, of course, were, um, multiple Incidences in the rain at the Delacorte where, you know, we, it was like 10 minutes before the show was supposed to end and the New York Times was there to review it and it happened to be the artistic director of the public theater was the person who directed it, so there was no stopping, right? 

We weren't going to hold for rain. So it's just like this absolute downpour and you've got 80 people on stage in 40 microphones and then Shaina Taub playing She's got she's double miked, and she's got an accordion that's got a mic on her, so there's about 5, 000 worth of equipment, or maybe more, like, probably like 6, 000 or 8, 000 worth of sound equipment on her body alone. 

And that's not counting what anyone And then the accordion. And we're just, we are just doing the last 10 minutes of the show in pouring rain. And of course by the next day we had about 17 lavs that didn't survive. And the bellows 

Andy Leviss: was gonna say, does it, does it meet or exceed, uh, three DM 2000s 

Jessica Paz: just like, when you added it all up, I think it was Like, 15 grand of damaged equipment for 10 minutes. Oh my god, I think, I think it probably is equal. Yeah, I think it's equal, but I was just, like, 

Andy Leviss: They waited online for those tickets long enough, they are not 

Jessica Paz: and that audience, man, they are diehard. They are diehard. They sit there. They sit there in the pouring rain and they watch it. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. 

Jessica Paz: And you're not allowed to take out umbrellas, because it'll block other 

Andy Leviss: not like the images I'm getting in my brain, 

Jessica Paz: there in the rain. It's crazy. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. And nuts. 

Sean Walker: Don't do it. Don't you do that to me, Andy. 

Jessica Paz: Well, the, the, the bellows got wet and so then what happened was they dried overnight and then they just cracked because they, they just got brittle. They got, yeah, 

Andy Leviss: what's the definition of a gentleman? 

Sean Walker: their accordion crispier 

Andy Leviss: who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn't. 

Jessica Paz: Absolutely. 

Sean Walker: not playing. There you go. And on that note, thanks Jessica for coming and hanging out. You were awesome. Thank you Allen and Heath and RCF for the sponsorship. That's the pod. See you guys next week. 

Jessica Paz: Thank you.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green