Just last week, my regular gig hosted a show for The Puddle Mountain Ramblers. During the show advance, Amanda proposed an idea.

What if we set up the stage so that the layout was an arc, instead of a straight line?

I thought that was a pretty fine idea, so we went with it. The way it all came together was that fiddle, bass, and banjo were on the stage-right side, the drums were upstage center, and guitar plus another fiddle were on the stage-left side. The setup seemed very effective overall.

Why?

Visibility, Separation, and Such

The main reason for the setup was really to facilitate communication. PMR is a band that derives a good deal of comfort and confidence from the members being able to see what each other player is doing. Also, it’s just generally nice to be able to make eye contact with someone to let them know that it’s their turn for a solo. Setting up in an arc makes this much easier, because you can get essentially unobstructed sightlines from each player to every other player. An added benefit is that all the players are closer together on average, which reduces the difficulty of reading faces, identifying hand movements, and keeping time. (An arc is geometrically more compact than a line. In a linear configuration, the farthest that any two players can be from each other is the entire length of the line. Bend that same line into a circle or circle-segment, and the farthest that any two players can be from each other is the line length divided by pi. That’s a pretty significant “packing.”)

Another benefit of the configuration is (potentially) reduced drum bleed. In a traditional setup, an upstage drumkit is pretty much “firing” into the most sensitive part of all the vocal and instrument mics’ pickup patterns. In an arc layout, with the drums at the center, the direct sound from the kit enters any particular mic at some significant off-axis angle. This bleed reduction can also extend to other vocals and instruments, especially because the mics can easily be at angles greater than 90 degrees relative to other sources.

Of course, it’s important to note that – especially with wide-pattern mics, like SM58s and other cardioids – compacting the band may undo the “off-axis benefit” significantly. This is especially true for bleed from whatever source is commonly at the midpoint of the arc’s circumference, like a drumkit probably would be. For the best chance of bleed reduction, you need tighter-patterned transducers, like an ND767a, or Beta 58, or e845, or OM2, or [insert your favorite, selectively patterned mic here]. Even so, the folks closest to, and at the smallest angle from the drumkit should be the strongest singers in the ensemble, and their miced instruments should be the most able to compete with whatever is loud on deck.

A third “bit of nifty” that comes from an arc setup is that of reduced acoustical crosstalk from monitor wedge to monitor wedge. With all the wedges firing away from each other, instead of in parallel paths, the tendency for any one performer to hear the wedges adjacent to them is reduced. Each monitor mix therefore has more separation than it otherwise might, which can keep things “cleaner” overall. It may also reduce gain-hungry volume wars on the deck.

Downsides

There are some caveats to putting a band on stage in a circle-segment.

The first thing to be aware of is that you tend to lose “down center” as a focal point. It’s not that you can’t put someone in there, but you have to realize that the person you’ve put down-center will no longer get the visibility and communication benefits of the arc. Also, a down-center wedge will probably be very audible to the performers standing up-center from that monitor, so you’ll have to take that into account.

The more isolated that monitor-mix sources become from one another, the more important it becomes that each monitor mix can be customized for individual performers. If you were on in-ears, for instance (the ultimate in isolated monitor feeds), separate mixes for each individual would be almost – if not entirely – mandatory. Increasing the mix-to-mix acoustical isolation pushes you towards that kind of situation. It’s not that shared mixes can’t be done in an arc, it’s just that folks have to be inclined to agree and cooperate.

A corollary to the above is that the show complexity actually tends to go up. More monitor mixes means more to manage, and an arc layout requires more thinking and cable management than a linear setup. You have to have time for a real soundcheck with careful tweaking of mixes. Throw-n-go really isn’t what you want to do when attempting this kind of layout, especially if you haven’t done it before.

Another factor to consider is that “backline” shouldn’t actually be in the back…unless you can afford to waste the space inside the arc. If at all possible, amps and instrument processing setups should utilize the empty space in front of everybody, and “fire” towards the performers (unless it’s absolutely necessary for the amps to combine with or replace the acoustical output of the PA).

If these considerations are factors you can manage, then an arc setup may be a pretty cool thing to try. For some bands, it can help “square the circle” of how to arrange the stage for the best sonic and logistical results, even if pulling it all off isn’t quite as easy as “pi.”

I’ll stop now.