“I walk in, they hand me a wireless mic immediately,” the comedian Ed Night wrote in his own worst-gig account on Chortle. The booking was a work Christmas party. He goes on: “I do my opener to complete silence.” Then comes the bit that is going to happen to somebody reading this in the next six weeks. He wrote: “and then my mic runs out of battery and everyone sort of slowly turns back to their conversations.” By his telling, he and the organisers decided it was only fair that he try to carry on his set without the mic. He put it this way: “we decide that it’s only fair that I try and carry on my set without the mic.”<\/p>\n
Nobody sits a new comic down and teaches them the microphone. You get taught joke structure, you get told to do more gigs. Then one December somebody in a lanyard hands you a cold radio mic next to a buffet. You discover that you have firm opinions about punchlines and none at all about which end to hold. Get it wrong and nobody in the room hears the three years of craft underneath it. The volume is in the hands of a bloke from accounts.<\/p>\n
Hold it by the handle, low down, with your hand nowhere near the metal grille at the top. Every source I could find agrees on that one, and it’s the only bit of mic technique I’d call genuinely non-negotiable. DPA Microphones’ guidance on vocal mics, reprinted by Canadian Audiologist, says it with no hedging at all. Its wording: “The primary way to avoid problems is to hold the microphone on the handle not around the microphone grid.”<\/p>\n
A live-vocal guide at My New Microphone makes it a flat prohibition: “Do not cup the head or grille of the microphone.” NYC Stand-Up Comedy Classes, a comedy school, writes it in the dialect comics actually use. “Don’t cup the top of the microphone like a rapper, it will create bad vocal distortion.” Three different trades, one rule.<\/p>\n
The mechanism is worth knowing, because on its own the rule just sounds like fussiness. A hand wrapped over the top of a mic covers the vents that make a directional microphone directional. My New Microphone’s guide gives the first half of that plainly. “Holding the microphone by its head or grille is not optimal either since it blocks the rear ports of the capsule.” And then the consequence: “This effectively turns the directional microphone into an omnidirectional microphone.” You have taken a mic that was listening to your mouth and asked it to listen to the whole function room, kitchen door included.<\/p>\n
There is a second effect stacked on top of that, and it’s the squeal. The DPA guidance describes the little cavity your palm makes as producing a resonance, then names what it does in the room. “This resonance is audible (coloring the audio) and is a source of acoustic feedback in the PA system.” So the rapper grip muddies you up, and DPA puts it among the documented causes of the feedback as well. Worth knowing before you spend a set glaring at whoever is standing near the mixer.<\/p>\n
This is where mic technique guidance stops agreeing with itself, and I would rather tell you that than pretend there’s a settled answer. NYC Stand-Up Comedy Classes gives a number: “The microphone should be at a forty-five-degree angle to you.” The Authentic Comedian newsletter describes something different: a mic held close, with the voice going over the top rather than straight down the barrel. The advice is to “Hold the microphone close to your mouth and speak slightly above it, rather than directly into it.” Firing dead into the capsule, it says, is what gets you muffled or booming.<\/p>\n
The two sources describe the angle and the position differently, and neither gives a distance in centimetres. Honestly, any number would fall apart on contact with a different mic, a different PA and a different ceiling height. Check the mic, the stand and its position before the show, rather than assuming a room you know is set up right.<\/p>\n
Distance is a dial you keep turning all the way through the set. The comedy-class guidance treats it as part of the act: “Move mic closer when whispering, pull mic all the way away when screaming.” Your whole dynamic range lives in that elbow. It matters for crowd work<\/a>, where the instinct is to swing the mic at the table you’re talking to. It matters for a heckler put-down<\/a> too.<\/p>\n Stand handling is the half of mic technique nobody films, and it’s where you break somebody else’s equipment. Take the mic out, then lift the stand by the middle. NYC Stand-Up Comedy Classes is specific about it: “Pick up the mic stand by the middle.” It also gives the reason, which nobody tends to mention until after the crunch. “Do not hold it higher, as that’s how mic stands tend to fall apart.” Grab a stand by its upper shaft instead of the middle, and the comedy-class guidance says that is how mic stands tend to fall apart. <\/p>\n Then get it out of your way. The same guidance says to “Make sure to move the mic stand behind you.” In a function room it means anywhere it won’t be walked into by somebody heading for the toilets. While you’re there, set the height to you rather than folding yourself down to meet it. <\/p>\n The cable is its own small disaster. Ollie Horn, a circuit compere writing a guide to MCing for Chortle, frames the cost in terms of what you spend. “If your first five seconds on stage are uncoiling a microphone cable from the stand” is how he opens the thought. Those five seconds were your first impression, now gone on string. Unclip it from the stand before the intro, or leave enough slack that the mic comes free in one movement. If you’re the one running the night, this is part of the gig. Our guide to compering<\/a> covers the rest of what the MC quietly owns.<\/p>\n The organiser’s December temptation is to decide the room is small enough to skip the PA entirely. Keith Lowell Jensen, a comedian who writes about the circuit on his Stand Up 101 newsletter, argues the other way. He is talking about precisely the dozen-people-and-a-buffet booking:<\/p>\n Even if you only have a dozen people in a small room, it makes a big difference having the comedian mic’d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n His reason is the one that applies at a work do, where the gig is a thing happening near the dessert table while half the room queues for pudding. “It makes it a real show, and allows me to rise above any chatter and busy-ness,” he writes. That’s the line to have ready when a booker tells you there’s no sound because it’s only a small group, by which they mean forty people and a Bluetooth speaker somebody’s nephew brought in a tote bag. It belongs in the same phone call as our piece on what to ask before you say yes to a Christmas party gig<\/a>.<\/p>\n There’s a second reason to care about the grip at these bookings, which is that bad mic technique follows you home. Cupping colours the audio, per the DPA guidance, and that colouring is in the file before you’ve opened an editor. If you’re filming at party gigs, the way your hand sits on the handle is part of the clip you want bookers to watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whose job is it to check the mic before the show?<\/strong> The MC’s, where there is one. Horn’s Chortle guide tells comp\u00e8res to arrive and verify the setup rather than assume a familiar room has been left as they found it. The instruction: “Check that you’re happy with the seating arrangements, the microphone, the stand and its position”. Get in early enough to pick the mic up and say something into it while people are still filling plates.<\/p>\n What do you do when the mic dies mid-set?<\/strong> Ed Night’s answer, in his own account of that Christmas do, was to press on without one. His words: “we decide that it’s only fair that I try and carry on my set without the mic.” Whether that works depends entirely on the room, and by his telling his room had already turned back to its own conversations. My own view is that the fix happens well before you’re anywhere near the stage. Ask whoever hands you a wireless mic whether there’s a spare battery or a spare mic, and ask before you’re on. The hunt for a AA takes longer than the set does.<\/p>\n If you take one thing into your next booking, make it the handle. Walk in, lift the mic off the stand, wrap your hand round the bottom third and leave the grille alone for the whole set. You have removed one cause of feedback that DPA Microphones’ own guidance names in writing: the resonance of a cupped mic, which it calls a source of acoustic feedback in the PA system. Then pick the stand up by its middle, park it behind your heel, and go and ask the person in the lanyard about the battery.<\/p>\nMic stands come apart when you lift them by the neck<\/h2>\n
Twelve people in a function room still want a PA<\/h2>\n
Two questions that come up every December<\/h2>\n
Sources<\/h2>\n
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