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5 -ary it fr fk'wJ k'8'1 P' By JAMES 1 xA WHMIIJ1W 1 111,1 I. I'l" jjj COLl'MXS of Iroops licanl down llic aisle of a tlic-alrr, even tlioiiuli aisk- is einply. Or a line of tanks rumbling over llic lirads of tlic audience airplane flying around Ilie auditorium, crashing in the orchestra pit. Annel voices all around, coming from no apparent source. These are some of the newest sound elTects for theaters.

They have been worked out experimentally by Harold Burris-Meyer, in the Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, N. J. Already they have been tried at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York with highly favorable results. Perhaps next season they will be used with a regular production, and will give the opera a new degree of realism. In fact, the elTects that can be produced lead some to believe that this may be the advent of a new era an era that may allect the movies, television and many other activities.

The Rockefeller Foundation thought enough of the work to support it with a grant. Mr. Burris-Meyer expressed his philosophy in this way: "We have a theory that the whole auditory component of a show should have enough unity and dramatic significance to form a complete work of art, even if divorced from the visual component. That doesn't mean a radio play. Most radio plays would be intolerable if anything were visible.

"It does mean that speech, prop STOKLEY MkMU kfca Oscar the Dummy, with microphones for ears, has done his part in helping sound technicians develop the new theatrical effects. iP rPHE technique has been described 1 thus: "For every group of loudspeakers used in the theater, there had to be a separate source of sound synchronized with the picture. So when Mickey Mouse appears on the right, a control mechanism switches on the loudspeaker directly behind him and veers the sound to another speaker when he moves. Stokowski directed as he would ordinarily and the orchestra played with its familiar fire and skill. But there all convention ended.

For the music had to be divided up in such a way that later it could be blended at will and reproduced through the required loudspeaker wherever Disney wanted it. do this, the orchestra was divided into five sections strings, basses, woodwinds, brasses and percussions. Each section was covered by three microphones, and recorded on a separate track. Also, there were three additional straight recordings, two on film, one on records, and a beat track giving the beat, entrance cues, which the cartoonists used to synchronize the action to the music. Each of these tracks could be blended in any way with any other track or combination of tracks, so that actually any single instrument, section or the whole orchestra could be heard coming from any one point on the screen.

"It worked out like this: During the recording, the music approaches a clarinet solo. The Disney engineer, sharing the podium with Stokowski, signals the engineer in charge of the woodwind section to look out for the clarinet, and gives him the level at which it is to be recorded. In the final blend, the clarinet's loudness is played up or played down depending upon what purpose it fulfills in the finished production. And it may be heard in the theater from any desired loudspeaker." Mr. Burris-Meyer has used the same sort of technique in his work.

For instance, in making the sound come from any desired place, it is possible to make it come from an actor. In one presentation, a dancer, performing a complicated, breath-consuming routine, was made to recite an Irish chant in a deep stentorian voice. And it has been suggested that the problem of getting good actors into opera might be solved by having actors on the stage, for the action, while good singers, off stage, do the singing. Perhaps all these studies and experiments indicate the beginning of a new type of musical and theatrical entertainment, one in which the sounds will be worked out in as much detail as the words, action, lighting, or music itself. And all this is possible as the result of the invention of the same vacuum tube that has made modern radio possible.

So, in the theater of the future, if you're literally knocked in the aisles, don't say you weren't warned. Super-colossal will be a mild way buildings will rock and tanks and at you from the cians. There are the devices for reproducing recorded sounds, some from discs, others from film, or from magnetized wires. And in addition there are other, novel, sound-producing devices which feed into the electrical circuits. One of the most useful of these is a "thunder screen." This consists of a square frame to which a copper fly screen is attached.

The center is fastened to a pick-up like that of a microphone. Rubbing or tapping the screen energizes the pick-up and produces a variety of sounds. Sometimes the screen is touched lightly with a brush, again it may be stroked with cloth, or hit with a stick. rPHE research program really began in 1930, when recorded sound was being used as the background for a motion picture in a performance at the Stevens Theater. It was found that the sound intensity affects the posture of the audience.

They could be made to sit up straight, to move forward in their scats, relax, merely by changing the volume. "With present-day audiences hardened by much theater-going," Mr. Burris-Meyer says, "an emotional response to a dramatic episode must be strong indeed if it is to be physiologically observable or measurable. Any device by which it is possible to achieve an obviously strong emotional response may constitute a powerful too for the artist in the theater." As a matter of fact, it was later found that an impression of great loudness can be produced even when the sounds themselves do not reach extremely high intensity, simply by shaking the building itself from a direction different from that in which the sound really comes from. A very loud sound does shake the building.

Consequently if you shake the building when any sound is made, it seems loud even if it isn't! rpHEN the researchers experimented with changes in frequency, that is, pitch, or "shrillness" of the sounds. Their most celebrated effort was in a play by Elmer Rice, called "Adding Machine." in the "brainstorm" scene. Here is Mr. Burris-Mcyer's description: "We tried to achieve expressionism in sound, in conformity with the idiom of the play, and drive the audience crazy as the principal character lost his reason, We almost did. And the principal device was an almost pure tone warbled and raised in frequency and intensity for about 32 seconds while the stage spun around and Mr.

Zero turned killer. The 'Adding Machine' episode showed that you could use control of frequency very simply to achieve the dramatic objective of (EveryWeek Magazine nd Sc or describing future shows, when airplanes will seem to conic right stage or screen. the playwright." In- a production of "Hamlet," the voice of the ghost of Hamlet father was obtained by distorting electrically a human voice to give it the right sepulchral effect. And sometimes music is deliberately distorted. This was done with a play called "Spread Eagle." "The tag line delivered during the playing of the music is as bitter as anything in that angry plav.

To leave the audience no chance to miss the intent of the scene the music was made harsh and sharp, and, as the curtain closed, it swelled to fill the house with a snarling dissonant final phrase." This of course represents an entirely different approach to the use of amplifying and reproducing equipment from that formerly made. Then its function was to make up for shortcomings, either in the acoustics of the hall, or the powers of the performer. Or perhaps the limitation may be one of distance. This was shown in a now historic demonstration made in 1933,. when the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing in its home city's Academy of Music, was heard in Washington in Constitution Hull.

The demonstration was arranged by the" Bell Telephone Laboratories. Three microphones, placed at strategic points among the musicians, picked up the music. Each had its own channel and fed a loudspeaker in a corresponding position on the Washington stage. Leopold Sto-kowski, the orchestra's regular conductor, sat in a box in Constitution Hall manipulating the knobs of the controls for the speakers. 1 you had been a member of that audience, and had closed your eyes, you would not have been able to tell that you were not listening to the actual orchestra.

Violins, trumpets, basses and contra-bases, harp, tym-pani and others, all sounded from their proper positions. In addition, Dr. Stokowski, by use of the controls, could effect a range in volume quite different from anything that could be accomplished with the orchestra alone. With all instruments playing, the intensity could be reproduced to a pianissimo softer than that of a single muted violin. Or crescendi could be developed to a fortissimo louder than the musicians themselves could ever produce.

In demonstrations made more recently, the Bel! Laboratories' scientists have produced the same effects in recorded concerts, using what they call "stereophonic sound." The sounds from each microphone channel are recorded on film, as with sound movies. The film, instead of a single sound track, has three, and also there is another control track to regulate the output of the speakers. ience Service rrinted in U. S. background music, all the sound in the show, if planned according to the principles of musical composition, can have many times the dramatic power that they now have.

We have made a number of experiments to test the theory. They have been exciting. A production in which the whole auditory component is composed as music has all the advantages of opera minus the heavy soprano or the limitations of the human voice or musical instrument." A a result of his experiments, he tory component of the show are off. The players may speak with the tongues of men and of angels. With sound you can compel the audience to laugh, to weep.

You can knock them off their seats, you can lay them in the aisles, you can make them believe what you will. It has been done. We will one day see the production of the 'Tempest' Shakespeare envisioned, and a 'Gotterdammerung' which would have satisfied Wagner." Many kinds of equipment are used to obtain the effects. The actual sounds, of course, come from loudspeakers, placed at various positions around the theater some on the stage, others in various places in the auditorium. In some productions, as many as 16 have been employed, though never more than half that figure at a time.

There are electrical controls to energ various speakers, or groups of speakers, and to fade smoothly from one to another. There are the amplifiers, one of which must be provided for each channel in use, so that different sounds can be combined. Eight are used in the complete installation. These can be adjusted to give the greatest fidelity, or, desirable in some cases, to deliberately introduce distortions that may give special effects. There are the microphones, of various types and characteristics, to pick up sounds from living actors or musi- The sensitive fingers of Conductor Leopold Stokowski manipulate the stereophonic sound controls and produce musical com hi nations he never could obtain directly with an orchestra.

A similar system is in use with Walt Disney's feature picture "Fantasia." Engineers of the Radio Corporation of America helped work this out. Mr. Disney 'first had the idea several years ago when he watched a bee buzz off the screen in one of his own cartoons. The finality of the disappearance dis-urbed him, and he felt that it should be possible to have the bee around even if it were not required on the screen. At about this same time a Mickey Mouse short was being filmed, based on Dukas' music, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," the score conducted by Stokowski.

As it progressed, it became more elaborate, and was expanded into a full-length feature, with other musical numbers added. The recording of th music was done in the Academy of Music, with the Philadelphia 3E.