Mainstreet Radio's Cara Hetland reports that creating a performance hall is not just design and construction...acoustical engineering has become a science all its own. With the opening of the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science in Sioux Falls, the city's oldest high school is the shell of the country's newest and only multi-use center. It houses a children's science and discovery center, a visual arts center, and a performing arts center.
The 22 million-dollar, five year project opens with a season featuring big names such as the New York Philharmonic, Yo Yo Ma, and Dione Warwick.
Transcripts
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CARA HETLAND: As the first audience enters the Great Hall, jaws drop with a wide-eyed escapable gasp. With its curved lines and strategic lighting, the interior of the new fine arts pavilion is modern. Designers worked hard to match interior building materials with the exterior 90-year-old quartzite stone of the old school. Mahogany frames quartzite wall panels, a stone not mined for decades, which are set into the walls lining the Great Hall. Upholstery, carpeting, and curtains in deep plum accent the expansive theater.
Today's audience-- third, fourth, and fifth grade classes from schools in and around Sioux Falls-- are here for a concert. What they don't know is that they are part of a scientific experiment in sound.
As 1,900 school kids anticipate the upcoming program, there's one member of the audience with a different mission. With miniature microphones wrapped around his ears, a digital recorder in his lap, and a keen sense of what to listen for, Ed McCue isn't here just for the music. He listens while the hall is filling up. He listens as the orchestra tunes, and only then is he ready to listen to the music.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Ed McCue is an acoustician. He helped design the Great Hall and has spent several days tuning and fine tuning the acoustics of the facility and inspecting its workmanship.
ED MCCUE: The kind of acoustics I do, there is no book. There's no textbook. There's no law of physics. There's no building code. There's nothing written that says what's right or what's wrong. So when people say, well, does the room have perfect acoustics? It's perfect if it works for the people who are using it. So acoustics differ from space to space. And our work is just to find out what's going to make the people happiest.
CARA HETLAND: And from the looks of the children squirming in their seats with tapping toes and waving arms, they are very happy. This staged concert is just the Great Hall's first acoustic test. McCue returns to the hall in the evening for tests that require a backdrop of silence.
The orchestra shell, acoustic panels, and movable drapery are designed to reflect or absorb sound. These elements are only part of what makes the Great Hall a pleasant place for musical or theatrical performances. McCue touches the stone and concrete walls as he describes his excitement over the materials used to build the Great Hall.
ED MCCUE: That is as hard as a rock. Look at that stuff. And so we worked really hard to make sure that most of the surfaces here in the Washington Pavilion were just as solid as could be. Then we go up to these plaster columns-- solid, nothing flimsy here.
It's not like if I went up to my house-- if I went up to a wall in my house, it'd have a very hollow sound. But this kind of solidity here is what makes-- there's the stone. That kind of solidity is what makes this room have a wonderfully, wonderfully warm and lush sound. So it's very ravishing from the point of view of orchestral sound.
CARA HETLAND: Everything in the Great Hall is curved or has texture. The seats are also solid, not hollow. And there is minimal use of carpet. Each is designed to ensure sound will be properly directed during a performance.
To insulate against outside noise, like aircraft or thunderstorms, the ceiling is a 6-inch slab of concrete with an attic between the hall and the roof. Finally, the Great Hall is completely separate from the other parts of the building to assure no noise bleeds through. To guarantee that, Ed McCue flushes toilets, shouts in the lobby, and opens and shuts doors.
ED MCCUE: Right now, what I'm doing is I'm getting ready to calibrate my sound-level meter. And so this is what's called a precision sound-level meter. And it's able to distinguish loudnesses of tones, whether it's music or noise, to a degree that's even more sensitive than my own awareness of loudnesses.
CARA HETLAND: McCue's ears are trained to be sensitive to most sounds in their dynamics. And when tuning a hall, he has to be precise. McCue chooses two seats on the main level and two seats on the mezzanine level. He calls these his listening chairs. On the stage, he turns on a primitive-looking, 50-year-old, army-drab circular fan with attached motor.
ED MCCUE: And some smart acoustician, about, I don't know, maybe 40 years ago, realized that the characteristic of sound that comes out of this-- more than 40 years ago-- anyway, that comes out of this fan is quite remarkable because it's very constant across the entire musical spectrum, the amount of sound that comes out of it. And it sends the sound out as a great circular or spherical wavefront. And so it's incredibly more useful to me than using, say, a loudspeaker.
CARA HETLAND: From his listening seats, McCue measures the sound moving directly into the seats, a measurement that can be made only when the house is empty. Another test, which he calls the metronome test, measures the presence of feedback the musician hears while performing.
ED MCCUE: You hear the return back from the hall. What I do is-- from a musical point of view, what I do is I listen for the click from the metronome. And then I listen for the reflection from the hall. I try to make it so that it falls exactly halfway between the pulses from the metronome.
[METRONOME CLICKING]
Hear how it's going? Da-dida-dida-dida.
CARA HETLAND: McCue says good acoustics can improve a musician's performance. The musician can concentrate on playing rather than focusing on feedback from the hall.
ED MCCUE: Da-dida-dida-dida.
CARA HETLAND: His last test seems a little bit silly to the volunteer stagehands when they're asked to blow up several balloons until they burst. He'll time the sound of the burst.
SPEAKER: So you want me to blow this until it blows in my face?
ED MCCUE: Yeah. That's going to be great, isn't it? That's what--
CARA HETLAND: Acousticians record this response time to show the quality of the hall. McCue returns to his listening seats, fits his miniature microphones around his ears, and places his digital recorder on his lap.
[BALLOON POPS]
The reverberation lasts several seconds. Acoustically, that's wonderful. McCue says the success of his testing will only be known when the orchestra comes back, and he listens to the reaction of the audience. For Ed McCue, that's where the science of hall tuning gives way to art, to pleasing patrons, and to keep them coming back. In Sioux Falls, I'm Cara Hetland, Minnesota Public Radio.