I have a confession. For the first two years that I used music in my performances, I set the volume at a single level and left it there for the entire show.
I did not know any better. My thinking, to the extent that I was thinking about it at all, was simple: the music should be loud enough to hear and quiet enough that it does not overpower my voice. So I would arrive at the venue, do a sound check, find that one acceptable volume level, and leave it there. Music came in at that volume. Music went out at that volume. Every transition, every routine, every emotional beat — all at the same sonic intensity.
It was like painting an entire canvas with a single shade of gray. Technically adequate. Emotionally dead.
The shift happened at a conference in Vienna where I was watching another keynote speaker — not a magician, a motivational speaker — and I noticed something that I had never consciously registered before. Her AV technician was constantly adjusting the music levels throughout her presentation. When she told a story, the background music dropped to barely audible. When she hit a punchline or a moment of triumph, the music swelled underneath her words. During her transitions between sections, the music came up to fill the gap. During her most intimate, personal moments, the music disappeared entirely.
The volume was not a setting. It was a performance element. It was moving, rising and falling, appearing and disappearing, creating a dynamic soundscape that supported every emotional shift in her presentation. And the audience — including me — was responding to it without being consciously aware of it. The music was shaping our emotional experience, not through melody or rhythm, but through volume.
I went back to my hotel room that evening and started thinking about volume as a curve rather than a line.
The Principle of Dynamic Range
In music production, dynamic range refers to the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds in a piece. The music industry has spent decades compressing that range — making everything louder, flattening the peaks and valleys. But in live performance, wide dynamic range is your greatest asset. The audience’s nervous system responds to changes in volume, not to absolute levels. A track that plays at a consistent moderate level becomes wallpaper. The same track, played with deliberate rises and falls, becomes a living emotional force.
This applies not just to music but to your own voice. The performers I most admire speak softly when they want the audience to lean in and raise their voice when they want impact. The music should mirror this vocal dynamic range, creating a unified soundscape where voice and music work together rather than competing.
When to Crank It
There are specific moments in a magic performance where high volume serves the show. Understanding these moments turned my relationship with music from passive accompaniment to active storytelling.
The walk-on. Your entrance music should arrive at a volume that commands attention. Loud enough to change the energy of the room, not so loud that you have nowhere to go.
The climactic reveal. When the impossible thing happens, the music should hit its peak. Not before, not after, but precisely at the moment of maximum astonishment. This requires exact coordination between your performance timing and the track.
The applause bridge. After a big moment, music should sustain the reaction. Applause in silence fades quickly. Applause over music sustains itself, because the music gives the audience permission to keep celebrating.
The transition between routines. Music can fill the gap and maintain energy — the play-on and play-off concept applied to the entire show structure.
When to Kill It
The moments of silence are as important as the moments of volume, and in some ways more powerful. Silence after sustained sound creates a vacuum that the audience fills with heightened attention. It is the sonic equivalent of a spotlight — it isolates the moment, makes it feel important, strips away everything except what is happening right now.
The intimate revelation. When you are about to say something personal, something that reveals who you are rather than what you can do — kill the music. Let the audience hear only your voice. Alexander talks about the vaudeville tradition of ending on a warm, personal note. If you have used music throughout the show, the sudden absence creates a powerful contrast that frames whatever you say next as the most honest moment of the evening.
The moment before the reveal. Fade the music to nothing in the two or three seconds before a major revelation. The audience, without the comforting presence of music, feels exposed. Their nervous systems register the absence as a signal that something is about to happen. The reveal lands in that silence with maximum impact.
The moment of genuine audience interaction. When you are talking to a volunteer on stage — a real conversation, not scripted patter — the music should be gone. Silence makes the interaction feel real. The audience can hear the volunteer’s voice, the nervousness, the laughter. These human sounds are more compelling than any track.
The Architecture of a Volume Curve
Let me describe the volume curve of a typical thirty-minute set as I design it now.
Pre-show: ambient music at moderate volume, creating atmosphere while the audience settles. This is background. It sets mood without demanding attention.
Walk-on: music swells to a confident volume as I appear. Energy is high. The room shifts from passive to active.
Opening routine: music fades quickly as I begin speaking. If the opener is a musical piece, the track takes over at full volume. If it is a talking piece, the music drops to nothing within the first ten seconds.
Between routines: music bridges the transitions at moderate volume. Enough to fill the gap, not so much that it competes with whatever I am saying during the transition.
Volunteer walk-up: play-on music at celebratory volume. Energy is maintained through the dead time.
Volunteer interaction: music drops to nothing. The conversation is unmediated. The audience hears two people talking, not a production.
During the routine: if there is background music, it sits at a low level, barely noticeable, creating subliminal emotional support. During key moments — the build toward the reveal, the moment of impossibility — the music responds. It either swells to meet the moment or drops to silence to frame it.
Volunteer walk-back: play-off music at moderate-to-high volume. Celebration. Acknowledgment. The audience claps over music.
Mid-show musical piece: full volume. This is the routine where the music IS the show. No voice, no patter, just visual magic and sound. The volume can be the highest of the entire set because there is no voice to compete with.
The intimate moment: music fades to nothing. Just my voice. The most emotionally honest passage of the show. The audience feels the shift. They hear the change from produced to personal.
Final reveal: silence before the moment. The reveal lands in a vacuum. Then music crashes in, full volume, as the audience reacts. The applause and the music merge into a unified wave of energy.
Walk-off: music at confident volume. I exit the stage, the music carries the energy through the applause, and the event transitions back to its regular programming.
That is the curve. It rises and falls, it breathes, it has quiet passages and loud passages, and every change in volume is a deliberate choice in service of the audience’s emotional experience.
Working With the Sound Technician
None of this works without a competent, engaged sound technician who understands your show. This is the collaboration that most performers neglect, and it is the collaboration that separates good shows from great ones.
During the sound check for every event, I walk the technician through the entire volume curve. I give them specific cues — verbal phrases, physical gestures, structural markers in the set — that signal each transition.
Harlan’s advice is essential here: what you hear on stage is not what the audience hears. The only way to know is to have someone sit in the audience while you rehearse and report back. I do this whenever possible during sound check.
At events where I do not have a dedicated sound technician, I run my own sound from a wireless controller. This gives me complete control but adds another layer of execution to an already demanding performance.
It is worth it. Every time.
The Capstone Lesson
This is the fifteenth and final post in the sound section of this blog, and I want to end it by stepping back and looking at everything we have covered from a distance.
Sound in magic performance is not one thing. It is a web of interconnected elements — voice projection, microphone technique, speaker placement, music selection, music-effect pairing, walk-on music, transition music, play-on and play-off cues, and the dynamic volume curve that ties everything together. Each element matters on its own, and each element interacts with every other element to create the total sonic experience of your show.
What strikes me most, looking back on my own journey with sound, is how invisible these elements are when they are done well. When the volume curve is right, the audience does not notice it. They do not think, “The music got louder at the perfect moment.” They think, “That was incredible.” The technical execution disappears into the emotional experience. The audience feels the impact without understanding the mechanism.
This is, when you think about it, exactly how magic works. The method is invisible. The experience is everything. And sound, when treated as a design element rather than an afterthought, works the same way. The audience does not hear the sound design. They feel it.
I started this section of the blog by talking about sound quality mattering more than your best trick. I meant it literally. If the audience cannot hear you, nothing else matters. But I also meant it metaphorically. The quality of attention you bring to your sound environment — the care, the intentionality, the willingness to design every sonic moment of your show — reflects the quality of attention you bring to your entire craft.
Dan Harlan treats sound as one of the animate elements of theatre, a living force that moves and changes and creates meaning. Scott Alexander talks about music as the element that can transform a decent routine into a show-stopping highlight. Both of them are pointing at the same truth: sound is not a technical detail to be handled and forgotten. It is a creative medium, as expressive and as powerful as any other element of your performance.
The volume curve is the last piece of that picture. It is the tool that gives all of the other sound elements their shape, their dynamics, their emotional impact. Without it, your sound is flat — a single shade of gray. With it, your sound breathes, moves, rises, falls, whispers, and roars.
Learn to think of volume as a story. Give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. Give it quiet passages and loud passages, dramatic peaks and intimate valleys. Design it with the same care you bring to your effects, your script, and your character.
The audience will never notice. And that is exactly how you know it is working.