Exclusive: Sound Mixer Simon Hayes Breaks Down WICKED's Live Singing

Wicked fans are no doubt familiar with Stephen Schwartz's score. From the now-iconic riff in Defying Gravity to Glinda and Elphaba's heartbreaking duet in For Good, the music is integral to the world of the Tony-award-winning musical. And now, that familiar music can be heard for the first time on the big screen.

The first part of the film adaptation is in theaters and continues to do well at the box office. The soundtrack is also breaking records, with Defying Gravity even debuting on the Billboard Top100 chart.

Preserving the audial integrity of the musical, along with the nuances of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's performances, was the job of sound mixer Simon Hayes- and it's one that he didn't take lightly. 

"The sound of Wicked is full of emotion, and that's what we wanted to capture," Hayes explained in an interview with BroadwayWorld. "But the second element that is just as important to the DNA of Wicked is its rhythm. It's a score that takes viewers on an emotional rollercoaster. So firstly, we've got these magical performances from the cast, which are full of emotion, but then we've got the score, which punctuates that emotion."

A crucial aspect of Hayes' job was capturing the live singing employed on the grand London sets. Hayes recalled director Jon M. Chu's concern that the enormous scale of the production might get in the way of the live singing. 

"He said to me, 'The sets that we're building are the biggest sets that I've ever heard of. Some of these sets are going to be as big as four football fields,'" Chu warned at the time. Still, Hayes was undeterred and confident in his ability to capture the best live performances from the cast, even with the sprawling sets and intricate choreography.

Hayes is not new to the world of live singing. After all, he won an Oscar for his work on the 2012 film adaptation of Les Miserables. "I don't want technical limitations to get in the way of the creativity of our cast. I want them to be wrapped in a blanket and be able to perform the way that they want to perform," Hayes said of his approach.

Speaking again on the rhythm of Wicked, Hayes explained that this integral aspect of the score made the experience differ from other live-singing projects like Les Miserables. "Les Mis was different because we didn't stick to tempo. Every single number on Les Mis was accompanied by a live keyboard, and the actors chose their own tempo through the whole movie," Hayes shared. In Wicked, the dance numbers and choreography required a different approach.

For this film, the actors used finished, studio-produced backing tracks on set. "They had their own personal mix in their IEMs. Ari liked one level of reverb, and Cynthia liked another," Hayes recalled. However, the production also had a live keyboard ready to go at any time, which was ultimately utilized in I'm Not That Girl per Erivo's request.

"At that point, we had the best of both worlds. We had Cynthia's emotional decisions driving the more sparse beginning of the song. And then, at a certain point where it finds its rhythm, we went to the pre-recorded backing track with her still singing live," said Hayes.

The sound mixer places a great value on singing live in movie musicals, which, of course, is also what audiences get on a Broadway stage. "They have an authenticity, and it's not just about how the vocal sounds; it's about the tiny breaths in between the vocals that match the pace of the actor's walking as she sings," Hayes added, referring to Erivo's jumping across rocks in The Wizard and I as a prime example.

One of Hayes' close collaborators is the music editor, who plays back the recorded tracks, sometimes even making edits on the fly like in Ariana Grande's rendition of "Popular." As previously reported, the film version includes an extended ending that utilizes the Shiz hallway set, a decision made last minute.

"The music editor, Josh Winslade, will immediately start editing the prerecord together and put extra time onto the end of that prerecord, just giving us a few more bars," explains Hayes. From then on, it can get fairly technical, with the crew again utilizing the live keyboard player and sometimes mixing that into the prerecorded track in real time. But all of this is happening behind the scenes to support the performer and, hopefully, they don't even know what's going on. "When we can do that, than there is nothing technical in their mind. They can just concentrate fully and immerse themselves in the creativity and the emotion of the moment," Hayes says.

The sound mixer is pleased with the positive response to the film and is particularly gratified that audiences are connecting with the emotional core of the story that he worked to capture. "I think we're touching audiences, and that's the important thing to me: that audiences are coming out of there feeling those emotions. That's what I think we managed to achieve with the live vocals"