Munch’s The Scream
I suffered the ignominy of feedback recently. Oh, the shame! The horror! Me! With a microphone that howled like a banshee for a moment until I pulled back from the speaker that was complaining.
What went wrong? I’d done my usual checks before the presentation started, finding out where I could stand, where I could move, what I could do… of course I had – but still it happened!
The good news is that I knew what it was and reacted so quickly it’s unlikely that many of the audience even noticed, let along blamed me for it, but the bad news is that it happened at all! I may never live it down!
What had happened was this. The workshop space I was using was inside a big conference event marked out with five feet tall room dividers – resulting in a lot of background noise. That in itself didn’t cause a problem, obviously, but an amateur sound guy (may have been a girl, I don’t know!0 turned up my microphone half way through the presentation. Instead of turning up the output volume of the speakers however, he/she turned up the gain/sensitivity of the microphone I had in my hand. That made it more sensitive to the sound of my voice, of course, but also more likely to pick up the indirect sound of my voice as it it came out of the loudspeaker.
Blissfully unaware of the problem-causing-tweak to the set up, I cheerfully started to move around the stage to the limits I’d already marked out with tape. (Black tape on the floor that the audience can’t see but which I, as the speaker, could see out of the corner of my eye.)
What could I have done?
Well, I could have had my own team on the sound system, but it wasn’t my event – I was simply a guest speaker. I could have ring-fenced the areas of the stage I had to avoid, just in case, but it was a small space anyway and this would have left me with a tiny space to perform on. I could have done what I did – move sharply back out of the danger zone the moment things started to go wrong – but prevention is better than cure, obviously.
Truth to tell I’m not sure what I could have done, realistically, to foresee this. (Okay, let’s not get this out of perspective, the audience didn’t know there was a problem – don’t go thinking I’m an amateur! :) )… but it did give me an idea to jot down the things you should check before using a microphone.
- Batteries – are they new or freshly recharged. You’d be amazed at how quickly a radio mic can chew up batteries. Theatre technicians change batteries after ever show or even at the interval as a matter of routine… for good reason
- Range – how far from the pick-up box or base station or whatever, is the microphone when you’re at the far side of the stage and is that going to cause any possible problems
- Electronic interference – have the venue staff or the conference organisers (or you!) checked that the local taxi firm isn’t suddenly going to make an appearance on your system? No? You’d better!
- Buttons – nothing looks more amateur than struggling to turn the microphone on or off. Check where the mute and off buttons are before you start. (Mute is a better bet if you’ve got one.)
- Physical interference – is there anything around that could get between the microphone and the pick-up box? A pillar, perhaps, or some electronic equipment/cables etc?
- Are you wearing anything that could cause a problem? This is particularly important if you’re using a lavaliar (button) microphone that you wear rather than a hand-held but check anyway
- Remote controls – have you thought about what you’re going to do if you have to hold a microphone and the remote control for your laptop. Juggling only looks good if you don’t drop anything!alignment – how close to a loudspeaker can you go before things start to go wrong with feedback? (Mark the floor with tape or make a mentapattern of the carpet or something…)
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