Recording - May 2015 - 16

By Scott Dorsey
Normally, I spend my time making
recordings that sound like live sound, but
on my vacation I found myself making a
live performance sound like a recording.
There's a lot to be learned from this.
The World Science Fiction convention
is a large gathering of science fiction fans
and authors, which has been put on
every year since 1939. Every year it is
moved to a different city somewhere in
the world, and this year it was held in
London. One notable thing about
Worldcon is that it is entirely run by volunteer labor. Everyone from the clerk at
the registration desk to the sound crew to
the chairman is a volunteer, getting paid
nothing and putting in insane amounts of
time to make everything come off well.
This year one of the major features of the
event was an 86-piece orchestra consisting
of members from the London Symphony,
the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC
Symphony and Concert Orchestras, and
the Britten Sinfonia, performing a long list
of science fiction and fantasy pieces. The
set included everything from John
16

RECORDING May 2015

Williams' "Superman March" and "Star
Wars Suite" to part of Haydn's Creation,
Ives' Unanswered Question, "Mars" and
"Jupiter" by Holst, and Dvorak's "Song to
the Moon", sung by soprano Sarah Fox.
All of this was to be presented in a huge
and cavernous but really somewhat dead
room in a convention center.
No good deed goes unpunished
I have been sound designer and done
major sound crew work for Worldcon in
previous years, but this year I was pretty
much taking it easy; I only expected to
volunteer for a few hours doing some miscellaneous sound work. I'd brought a couple of microphones in my kit; I'd offered
to bring some other equipment, and had
been told that "none of it was needed"
(always a bad sign), so I just brought a
few things I might need for a small job
here and there.
The UK is a strange and wonderful
place. They use gaffer's tape ("gaffa") for
mic cables instead of velcro ties, funny
3
/8" mike stands instead of normal 5/8-27

ones, and all the motors hum more than
two notes flat (50 Hz vs. 60). I was quite
prepared to let the local crew do all the
work... and I didn't know that I'd be
called upon to do sound reinforcement for
an orchestra.
Syd Weinstein, the video guy, came to
me the night before and asked if I would
mind doing it. I figured it couldn't be that
much work, but really I had no idea what
I had volunteered to do.
So, coming into this without any real
knowledge of what the concert is, what is
on it, or what it's for, I show up for the
rehearsal and ask the producer, Adam
Robinson, what he's looking for. Does he
want it to sound like a live orchestra, a
Pops group, a film soundtrack, or something in-between? He tells me that it's up
to me, but that he wants spot mikes on
harp and the vocal soloist, and direct
feeds from the electric piano and the
theremin. At this point I haven't seen the
score... I haven't even seen the program!... and the orchestra is coming in to
start rehearsal within minutes.

Recording - May 2015

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