Do Musical performers have their voices amplified? (example Phantom or Les Miz)?

Question

Having watched a number of broadway musicals, I'm curious to know whether the performers are aided in amplifying their voices, especially when singing. It looks like they sing in a way that's not possible for their own voice to be loud enough to fill a 500+ theatre. However I've not seen a blatant use of microphones on stage, and performers move around the stage a lot so fixed microphones would have problems capturing voices. Furthermore, the audience doesn't generally detect voices played out from speakers. The voices seem to emanate from the stage and fill the theatre evenly.
Any of you have been involved in a musical and could answer?

Answer 1

Any decent venue accounts for its own acoustics, and size, with regard to audience and seating, AND uses technology to enhance and project what occurs on stage. Certainly in a concert venue we see it more blatantly in face mics, etc.

Steven Wolf

Answer 2

Not only are most performers miked today, most musicals use pre-recorded vocal tracks to help fill things out.

If you're curious as to mike placement, look at actors' hairlines; you'll see tiny projections either where the forehead meets the hair or just over the ear -- those are the mics. (Those actors who are wigged will have a little more success in hiding things.)

Up until the 50s and 60s, actors and singers had to rely solely on their own lung power and projection, but as audiences demanded more sound, orchestrators and sound designers pumped up the volume from the band to the point where not even Ethel Merman could be heard over them. Unfortuately, even straight plays are having to resort to them, except in intimate Broadway houses such as the Booth and the Belasco.

Next time you're in a Broadway (or Broadway-size) house, look for the sound booth in the back of the orchestra or in one of the side boxes. You'll see any number of mixing boards, individual readouts for each performer's mic, and probably even a CD player or two.

All shows are miked somehow -- whether using mikes on the floor or in the flies -- so that the actors backstage and the stage managers can hear what's going on onstage. Those mikes don't carry sound into the house, though.

Answer 3

Yes, Broadway musical performers ARE mic'd. The speakers are well concealed in the theater's architecture. Of course, the theater is also designed to PROJECT their voices naturally.

I started theater-sound WAY back in the 1970's... when we'd hang "shotgun" microphones from the light-rail, or put "piezo" microphones along the foot of the stage. And effects were on reel-to-reel tape or 8-track cartridges !!

I remember when the FIRST wireless microphones came out... they were hand-mics with a BOX the size of two cigarette packs on the bottom. We staged a few "rock" musicals so we could use them without looking to foolish.... You just can't have Maria von Trapp singing "The Hills are Alive..." into a Shure 58 !!

Yes, today the performers wear those lovely tiny wireless mics that you see on all reality TV shows... a tiny lil pack concealed in their costumes... I wish I was working with that sort of equipment.

Answer 4

Technology has come so far in the past umpteen years. Microphones now are pretty small. The ones I use when I perform are about the width of a 22 gague wire, sometimes smaller. They are also painted to match flesh color so that they are less distracting. Also, people have started to place the microphones at their hair line. This eliminates the need for and "over the ear" system and the microphone is virtually invisible.

Answer 5

Wireless mics are easily hidden with the pick-up taped into the hair, onto glasses, attached under collars, etc., while the trasmitter part is concealed within the costume. Speakers, cleverly hidden near the front of the stage then distribute the sound evenly throughout the house,
Not all venues require this, as Steven said. But when it's necessary, this is the most common method.

Answer 6

Most larger theatres are equipped with a wireless microphone system. The microphones are very small, about half the circumference of a pencil, say, and are often concealed in the performers hairline.