Musical Theatre workflow

[SeanParticipant]

Please help a newbie figure out the best workflow for a musical. The show I am working on has nine characters, eight of which sing solo at some point, and all sing backup in other songs.I trying to prepare to do line by line mixing using our new SQ5, our first digital console.
Should I just put individual soloists on a DCA and the backup singers on another DCA and reassign the DCA’s on a scene by scene basis?
Or should I create a mix group for each group of backup singers, so I can add some extra compression/processing to smooth their sound, then assign the group to a DCA? If I do this, am I correct that in each scene I would need to assign soloists to L/R mix and unassign any previous soloists that are now part of the backup singer group and of course make sure that group is assigned to L/R mix? Is this extra programming worth the ability to process the backup singers as a group?
Lastly, how are people doing musicals dealing with the fact that DCA labels and faders are joined together on the same safe?
Thanks

[MilowParticipant]

Hi Sean!
When you are really mixing line by line, reading your script, you should use the DCAs – although labels safe is still an issue and you have to live with “DCA1”. I mixed a children musical last week an faced the same decision. I preferred groups in this case, because of lacking rehearsals and a lot of improvisation. So it was not line by line mixing but scene by scene with an ensemble and a vocals group I assigned my channels to. With about 40 scenes this is ok to program. This way it was easy to add processing and effects to the groups instead of each single channel. Be aware that mute groups are unfortunately in the same safe category as DCAs, so you can not use them to put your effects on/off by scene. You have to use the faders (or channel mutes) instead.

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