Microphones for Dummies

Microphones are not that complicated, they really aren't. But some people seem to have an unnecessarily difficult time using them, so here are a few basic rules:

1. Anything said to you by an actual, breathing microphone tech or sound engineer immediately overrides anything on this list. This is a general overview only; there are many different types of microphone, many different types of sound setup, and many different types of sound engineer. It's impossible to cover everything in one list.
2. A note on the different types of microphone:
1. You do not know anything about the different types of microphone (unless you do). This list does not equip you with significant knowledge about the different types of microphone. DO NOT ARGUE WITH YOUR SOUND TECH ABOUT WHAT TYPE OF MICROPHONE YOU ARE WEARING.
2. A handheld mic is a microphone you hold in your hand. Hopefully that makes sense to you.
3. A lapel mic is a mic that is worn on your lapel (weird, né?), on your collar, or between the first and second or second and third buttons on a button-up shirt. It is not interchangeable with a handheld; you cannot hold it in front of your face. If you do so, you will sound like a robot from an '80s sci-fi film doing an impression of a gale-force wind with laryngitis, in a war zone.
   Once again for the benefit of our lecturers: You cannot hold a lapel mic in front of your face.
4. A "Countryman" is a microphone that hooks over your ear and runs down the side of your cheek. They can be bent slightly to allow the microphone tech to get the actual microphone the right distance from your mouth. The R600 microphone is not a toy, and nobody is impressed by the fact that you can bend a wire. They will be substantially less impressed when you break it.
5. A "Lavaliere" microphone has different meanings depending on where you are; in the South African lexicon (the one I know, at least) it is a microphone that is hidden inside your fringe. For crying out loud, people, try not to smear hair gel, hair cream, hair wax or anything else all over the R1000 microphone...
3. The ideal distance between your mouth and a handheld microphone is about 10cm.
1. If your life is so devoid of human interaction that you feel the need to make out with the microphone, you need to a) Consider therapy, and b) Stay the hell away from my expensive sound equipment.
2. Conversely, the microphone is not going to bite you, and at most 25% of the various species of bacteria deposited on the microphone by people ignoring 3.1) are dangerous. Please don't hold the microphone so far away that it's closer to the audience than it is to you.
4. More important than precise distance is constancy. A decent sound engineer can generally account for anything between 5 and 20cm, but if you constantly move the mic around, nobody human will be able to keep up. In summary: If it looks like you're fellating the microphone, you need to fix that (not least to avoid becoming the joke of the week).
1. Very experienced singers can use microphone movement as a vocal effect in and of itself. If your monthly income from singing alone is not enough to feed you for the month, you are not experienced enough.
2. Contrary to what appears to be popular belief, your voice does not emanate from your forehead, your neck, your breasts, your navel, your shoulders, or either of your ears. Nor does it magically issue from the air ten centimeters in front of your face. Point the microphone at your mouth.
5. Microphones are not magic voice generator boxes. They do not collect your thoughts and transform them into words; nor are they magically attuned to your voice alone, at the exception of all background noise.
   What I'm trying to get at here is that just because you are holding a microphone does not mean you no longer need to put some oomph into your voice. It is ridiculously easy for the whisper most people assume when they get a mic to be drowned out by pretty much any other noise on stage. This is particularly, but far from exclusively, a problem with lapel, Countryman and Lavaliere microphones.
6. If you are carrying a microphone, it is in all likelihood the most expensive thing in your possession. Endeavour not to throw it at the ground or at the mic tech, juggle it, use it as a crew-prod or backscratcher, wash it off with tap water when it is still on, or wager it in a game of poker. If you can possibly restrain yourself.
7. The monitor mix - the mix you hear onstage - is completely different to the house mix, which is heard by the audience. There are two valid complaints you may give to the sound engineer: "I cannot hear myself well enough to sing", and "I cannot hear my accompaniment well enough to sing". That's it. Nothing else.
8. You may have noticed that if you point your microphone towards speaker or wander too far forward, into the projection range of a speaker, you get a horrible screeching noise called "feedback". I dearly wish I did not have to explicitly state this, but don't point your microphone towards speakers or walk in places where you get feedback.
9. If you are wearing or carrying a microphone, it is on at all times. Yes, the sound engineer will mute it whenever possible, but when 20 different mic'd actors have just left stage at the same time, it's going to take a while. Endeavour not to swear at the audience when it's possible that your voice will be broadcast to the very same audience.
1. There is a feature of almost every mixing desk called AFL, which allows a sound engineer to listen to a mic that, to everybody else, is muted. It allows microphones to be checked, balances to be sorted out and general "admin" to be made a lot easier. Unfortunately, it also means that we will probably hear at least some of what you say backstage. For some reason, girls are particularly bad culprits. I have no desire to hear about your period, your sex life, your pregnancy scare, how much of a bitch "she" is, how horrible you think the sound engineer is, how much you want to slap/kiss/slapkiss/kissslap/<censored> "him", what you think the director should do to himself, how drunk you were last night, or who you want to jump at the cast party - all things I have heard before. Please, keep your mouth shut backstage.
10. The microphone tech has willingly decided to spend two weeks of his life taping wires to your sweaty skin, running around after you like a toddler constantly in need of nappy changes, freaking out every time you sit down on a R600 battery/transmitter pack, meticulously removing the hair gel you somehow managed to get inside a microphone, and staying an hour after you leave every single night to wipe your sweat off of his ridiculously expensive equipment, all so the audience can hear your solo. Be nice to the poor bastard.

&nbsp;10 Social Life Lessons It Took Me WAY Too Long To Learn...

I've always thought that at some point in my development, somewhere between being an embryo and a toddler, somebody, perhaps me, said "Yeah, I'll take the extra academic skill, you can make space by scrapping the social and sports skills. Thanks."

I spent most of my formative years with only a few friends, and nearly all of those were only according to my unique definition of "friend", namely "Someone who will tolerate my presence for any reasonable length of time." I don't blame anybody - looking back, I can imagine why people didn't want to be around me - and I've improved considerably, although there's still a lot of work to be done in some areas.

That said, there's some lessons that, looking back, I really should have figured out earlier. I still struggle with some of them; I've gotten to the point that I'm consciously aware of them, but actually putting them into practice isn't so easy.

Anyway, here they are:

1. Listen to yourself: If you think you shouldn't do/say/mention X, don't. Believe it or not, I never suffered any particular shortage of social acuity - my "social sense" worked fine most of the time. Sure, it missed out on a lot of the subtleties, but in terms of the gross details of what is appropriate or will be well-recieved, it was generally right. It was just that, for some reason that I still don't understand, I wouldn't listen to it. I'd think "I shouldn't say X" and then say X anyway. I don't know why, and it took me forever to stop, considering how basic a problem it was.
2. How to calm down: Nobody (decent) going to disown you for one small thing. I still have a problem where the moment there is any chance that one of my friends is annoyed at me, my brain stages a panic attack of truly epic proportions and the part of my subconscious that remembers what it was like to have no friends many years ago starts yelling "Fix it fix it fix it!" It's taken me a while to realise that even when it is something that I did, as opposed to a miscommunication, misunderstanding or random act of God that looks like it might be my fault, most people will get over it. More importantly:
3. When to let it rest: You can't reverse something you did by sheer quantity of apologies. When I do freak out, as above, I do two things: Try and find out what I did wrong, and then apologise profusely and endlessly. For a long time, it never occurred to me that the former can very easily seem, to the person you've offended, more like an interrogation than anything else. In the same way, the latter can just be annoying when the last thing the person wants is to be reminded endlessly of what you did.
4. Give them space: Not just when apologising, either. Different people operate at different levels of contact, a lesson I learned the hard way quite recently. What may seem to you like showing friendly concern may be nagging or even borderline stalking to someone else. Most friends will obviously give you some leeway; the closer the friendship, the more leeway you get. It can also be annoying hard to figure out where somebody's "line" is, but at some point you're going to have to work it out.
5. How to change: It's easy to use "I am who I am, and they don't like that" as an excuse for not fitting in, and to a degree it's valid; changing who you are just to fit can end very badly. But bluntly refusing to change even the slightest mannerism has pushed me away from a few good friends over the years. You don't need to change the core of who you are, but the fact is that everybody has negative attributes, and if you're not willing to at least work on getting rid of yours, people are going to have a hard time accepting you.
6. When to shut up: Somewhere between Grade 9, where I barely spoke at all, and now, a dial labelled "Utterly quiet - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - Never shuts up" got turned up. It needed to happen, since I was sitting on a solid 1 maybe edging slightly towards a 2, but it got turned a bit far, and for a while I ended up in the 8-10 range. Everybody likes talking, but if you don't listen to other people they aren't going to listen to you. Simple as that.
7. Sometimes they don't want to know: Even if you have the right talking:listening ratio, sometimes the stuff you're talking about just doesn't interest people. I love theatre, and I love talking about stuff I've done in theatre. Many people find my stories interesting or amusing, but there are some that just don't want to hear, for reasons of their own, This is a prime example of Lesson 1 as well: I would be aware of their disinterest and just carry on regardless. But the fact is, it's not their responsibility to feign interest in whatever you're talking about. Find a topic of common interest instead of driving them off with sheer force of disinterest.
8. They have better things to do: Yet another of my faults is a tendency to get angry when I need - really need, not just want - someone to talk to, but everybody is busy. One of the harder life lessons in general is the fact that the world doesn't revolve around you, even when you really need something. A good friend might make a change to their schedule to help you out, but it's unfair to expect anyone to change their life drastically to fit you it.
9. People are complicated: I'm a logical person, and I spent a long, long time thinking that just being logical would make me a good friend and get me good friends. As it turns out (surprise, surprise!), people aren't logical. People will get offended at stupid little things, people will remain angry at you even after they accept that something was a miscommunication instead of being your fault. It's a fact of life, and learning to deal with it is an important part of maturity.
10. When to let go: In some ways, I'm an optimist, or at least an idealist. I treat every friendship as a permanent thing, and for me, the bond of a friendship lasts no matter how long you go without speaking to or seeing the friend. Even if someone else betrays my loyalty, I think that sinking to their level is childish.
    It took me a while to learn that the world doesn't always work like that. Sometimes friendships end. Sometimes it's just people drifting apart. Sometimes the situation changes in ways that make the friendship unviable. Sometimes it's because, despite your best intentions, you hurt your friend in a way that can't be taken back. Learning that sometimes you need to just let go is the hardest lesson I have ever learnt.

Drama

Welcome to James's Amateur Genetics Hour. Our topic of discussion for today is drama. Not dramatics, drama, of the interpersonal sort.

So it turns out that drama is actually a protein. It's coded for by a gene located, unsurprisingly, on the X chromosome, although a few XX individuals do show inactivation of the paternal gene, leaving them with only one functioning gene.

Expression of the protein is very complex, with multiple combinations of transcription factors capable of initiating gene transcription, but the following is known:

1. Adenocorticoids ("stress hormones") accelerate expression.
2. Compounds found in most common brands of makeup can cause a large short-term spike in drama production, along with a long-term increase with continued frequent use.
1. Stage makeup contains sufficiently large amounts of these compounds that, in certain susceptible individuals, just a handful of applications can cause an enormous, life-long and irreversible spike in drama levels.
3. Through an unknown mechanism, genes associated with low body weight in females are linked to increased expression of the drama gene.
4. It is strongly suspected that the raw materials used in the manufacture of many Apple products contain (thus far unidentified) compounds which greatly accelerate drama production.
5. In individuals possessing a slightly modified version of the gene coding from drama production, the cascade activation of complement proteins as a response to injury - even a minor injury such as a papercut - causes an immediate drama level spike.

It should also be noted that although alcohol does not "create" more drama per se, high blood alcohol levels drastically increase the activity and noticability of existing drama.

Although the drama protein is present in both sexes, its effect on mental processes differs between sexes. 

In men, it often interacts with testosterone to produce yelling fits, violent outbursts, needless power struggles, a need to assert or prove one's masculinity, and occasionally a near-total shutdown of the prefrontal cortex (the "thinking part" of the brain) in favour of the paleocortex, a more primitive area.

In women, drama interacts more readily with the area of the brain associated with social interactions and hierarchies, leading to so-called polarisation of social views: people previously viewed positively are viewed more positively, while those viewed negatively are viewed more negatively. Socially "violent" actions become increasingly frequent as the high drama levels continue. Drama also noticeably heightens the intensity of emotional responses and lowers the threshold for initiating such responses.

In both sexes, drama strongly affects the limbic system. Since the limbic system is responsible for memory, drama has noticeable effects on memory. Firstly, a regular occurrence is temporary amnesia affecting "old" memories. Very often, an individual in the throes of a drama "high" can remember only the most recent events, generally those which resulted in the heightened drama secretion, especially forgetting anything good the person(s) responsible for the drama spike had ever done before the present. Secondly, memories of even recent events often become strongly distorted; in a bizarre example of a positive feedback system, accurate memories are generally replaced with the distortion which most justifies, and therefore fuels, the drama production.

No known substance exists which can directly suppress drama production or the effects of drama on the brain. Symptomatic treatment is recommended.

Some individuals have a genetic condition in which drama production is decreased to a greater or lesser degree, known variously as dramapenia, adramapoeisis, hypodramapoeisis or hypersensibility. The exact mechanism is unknown, but clear heritability and a spectrum of effect severity indicate polygenic inheritance. Although the lack of what is otherwise a common social reaction can cause minor social problems, the disease has sufficient positive psychological and physiological effects - the latter being largely due to reduced stress levels - that treatment is not advised and has not been investigated in much depth.

This has been your Amateur Genetics Hour. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.