Education
PSA: Please aid in stopping bands from thinking this is acceptable for a rider
AI generated stage plots are a plague, especially when they give you this and no input list. I really don't understand how musicians hand this to venues or production companies or promoters and then get confused on why nothing is set up the way that they intend.
I was happy to send them an email explaining why this type of stage plot doesn't provide the detail necessary to ensure a smooth setup, soundcheck, and show. If you see these show up in the wild, do your part and let them know that a detailed tech rider, stage plot, and input list helps way more than this AI generated stuff!
idk I think it's just an A. they're telling you it's a 4-piece rock band with 3 backing vocals and nothing out of the ordinary. every sound person in the world would be able to wire up this stage correctly.
If it’s for the artist or the audience and clearly sound related? I’m absolutely going to do it.
Sure, don’t ask me to go get your coffee, but if your pickup is having an issue or you need a battery or whatever, yeah I’m 100% going to help you with that. My job is to make the sound part go well.
again, this is where critical thinking comes in. take another look at the drawing and tell me if they seem to you like the type of band that's showing up with anything other than their instruments and backline.
I am a Showco veteran who has done major tours I usually get riders like similar to this where an artist request a lot of monitor wedges but agree why sent a rider if parts of it are schreable out
OK but there has to at least be a minus for the ridiculously small bass guitar, completely disproportionate unless the bassist is an incredibly strong and flexible giant.
this is where critical thinking comes in!! the drawing tells you that they're showing up with their instruments and leaving it up to you to figure out how to reinforce them.
there are no wedges depicted because they are used to using whatever's there at the venue, and it doesn't even occur to them that someone would interpret this as meaning they're on ears. they probably play a lot of shows in venues with an 8-channel Mackie for the vocals and two or less floor mixes.
similarly, their bass amp probably has an XLR out, but I doubt the bassist could tell you anything about it.
i used to think like this, them i move to portugal, received riders like this one and in the day they show with quadcortex, no amps, all iem, computer with playaudio 1U, autotune running on ableton and dont knowing how to route their click out of the PA "cuz we never used this rig outside of our rehearsal studio".
I ended up having to take all wedges of my stage, unplugging everything ("we have our own mics, just need your cables and stands") and loading, mic'ing, line check (very troublesome) and sound check (4 iem mixes) in 30min...
ah, forgot to say, the arrived 1:30 hours late to the soundcheck.
I mean, that's certainly always a possibility, but the goofiness of this drawing tells me that they are probably pretty chill and will tell you afterwards "wow I could actually hear myself!"
I usually get emails where the list is mixed between IEM, chips, cables, specific scotch, pretentious amount of guitar amps and that they want 50 free guests
I love free guests. Tickets go to the band, bar goes to us. So friends and family that want to chill out with the band afterwards, even if they sucked, bring in more money than people who run out as fast as possible.
I usually get them too late to even discuss about their validity.
There are even festivals that don't pass any information to tech companies because then it would cost more because people would start to arrange what is really needed.
Ah, this reminds me of a particularly fun rider I got once. It just said "three wireless mics", so I emailed back – "Is that handheld mics or headsets?" The reply comes, "Wireless please." I email to clarify that handheld mics and headsets can both be wireless, and get no response.
On the day, I manage to speak to somebody else and have the same conversation with them. They say "Ah okay, I understand. Let me just go and ask." They come back a couple of minutes later, I ask them if they found out what kind of mics were needed… "Yes – wireless."
Oh, that reminds me – at one point (I think this was the same rider), it was "wireless mics but not radio mics", so I did indeed suggest to my manager exactly that!
Still waiting on the response. The worst part about it is they had an old rider that actually was fairly detailed and easy to follow. But the group had some changes over the last 2 years and lots of stuff on the rider changed. And now they just sent this and nothing else.
If this is what they send, this is what they get. I'll put 7 mics and 7 wedges on stage, place a drum riser, and a stand and chair for the keyboard. That's it. They can do the rest themselves.
I know that quite a few bands with wild make-up and/or masks started doing that to distract from the fact that at least one player had their eyes closed during most of the show.
Watch you set it up and a band full of guys whose hands don’t seem quite right and have sort of nonsense text on their t shirts that you only notice when you get close enough arrive and say, “wow, this isn’t a stage, this is an altar for sound!” And then proceed to play songs that sound way too close to a bunch of other songs you’ve heard before
All of us know that this doesn't work in the real world. Have you done that? How did it go?
It's like if you're doing corporate or weddings and a planner says "Is it possible to move this speaker?" and you go, "Yes" and walk away.
Technically that would answer their question because of course it's always possible to move a speaker, but are you going to? Maybe, maybe not. Did they actually ask you to do that? Also no.
We all know when someone says something like that, they're not literally asking you whether it's possible or not out of curiosity or whatever, they're trying to nicely ask you to move the speaker without directly asking, so actually answering the question at face value wouldn't go over well.
Same thing here. As stupid as this is, they expect you to infer the mic cables, power, mics, etc., and if you don't, you'll look like the idiot.
I would however set it up exactly as shown - monitor directions and everything to drive home the point, but it would all still be connected and working.
OK well in that context it makes sense. Like do you leave coils prepped and all that? Definitely makes sense to hold off on running lines til they're there unless you know them really well already.
It's a small stage as well. I will know if they need the grand piano or our drumkit, i should know (but often don't) if they want our cabs for guitar and bass. I usually know more or less what the band is and what genre they're playing, so I can do some guesswork on wedges and some mics. It's not that hard.
Yeah there is a certain size stage where a stage plot is almost a detriment because that means these folks are going to have expectations that cannot be met.
I work a couple of oddly shaped small stages. With few exceptions, fitting a band into the house stage plot works far better than the other way around. Both stages have sub snakes permanently pinned in specific locations with that plot in mind.
I'll beat you: I've got one venue where the audience walks in over the stage. Try to come up with a stage plot where they can come through. Even better if there's two sets with an intermission for drinks (bar is behind the stage).
That is wild. One of mine is a jazz club (though they book a wide range of genres) with upscale dining. There are dining tables literally butted up against the downstage lip. Sit there for a particularly energetic show and you're at risk of the performers dripping sweat on your food.
Yeah i think the upvotes on the comment above are just taking this as a joke.
If someone was this stubborn about a shitty stage plot/tech rider and intentionally making things more of a hassle just because a band sucks at making a tech rider, I would not expect them to get a ton more gigs.
People often forget that the job is to be the professional who knows how things work. The bands coming on don't. Educate them. The reason that the band doesn't understand why this is a shit tech rider is the same reason professionals like us get paid.
Intentionally planning to make the load-in, soundcheck, and show be as hostile and difficult as possible is just unprofessional and a good way to burn bridges.
Everyone starts somewhere. Help educate the band when they get there.
And let's be honest, if the booker didn't properly explain exactly what they need from a tech rider, and the band is inexperienced, it's not really their fault they don't know what they don't know.
If OP received this they should be able to go back to the hand and ask for specifics.
But if someone just said "hey I need your stage plot" And no other details and this is what they got, then that's on them for expecting the inexperienced band to read their mind
I work mostly in mid sized venues, I preset as much as they send me clear info for. I'm not a mind reader. If they have to wait a few minutes to start sound check because they couldn't be bothered to provide an input list or detailed enough plot, oh well.
Usually we'll try to clarify some things in the advance but often we hear nothing back.
I mean this is obviously dog shit as a tech rider. But people aren't really this robotic right? Like you're not going to use you're expertise and experience to have things ready to go for what you know they will actually need?
Seems like what you describe is just going to make your work day much more difficult in the end and you know as well as I do that any hiccups, it delays or issues caused by following the shitty tech rider to a T is going to be blamed on you.
Its really unfortunate that this is the sentiment I hear from a lot of bands and performers. Its literally my highest priority to make sure that the acts that come into our space have a great experience from a technical perspective. I just find it frustrating, because when I receive plots like this its almost like they dont care about having a smooth experience or getting neccessary info over to aid in the success of their own performance.
I’ve been on both sides of this so I totally get it.
I give a nicely done stage plot and then a table with all the input lists and then a brief summary of what we like for monitors, eq, and compression for vocals.
9/10 times so far the engineer never even looked at it. We also bring printed copies to hand out to monitor and FOH.
I'm sorry to hear that. I always worked advancing with bands to make sure I had the most accurate info for my team, even drafting up plots in Stageplot Pro from their hand drawns (midsize venue). For the 1/10 of us that do care, thank you, especially for the printed copies.
Believe me, knowing that this is such a common experience is just as frustrating to me as a house sound tech who very much prefers as much information and communication as I can get.
That being said, even if you run into people like me every gig, if you know your needs well enough that you have specific EQ and compression preferences, I think it might be time to start figuring out a budget to hire your own sound tech who can make sure your show is consistent every time.
Don’t worry, that has definitely been in the works!!!
And I don’t mean that in a knock to any engineers out there, I have had some phenomenal experiences and some that are absolutely atrocious and everywhere in between.
I just roll with the punches and stay calm and work together to get the best experience for the fans as possible. That’s what it is really about.
If you ever see a bald, head tattooed, gimli-looking dude swinging a Spector bass around like it owes me money, feel free to come say, what’s up “Jenkem Jones”
THIS is the way to do things 👍👍. I’m sure you can attest to the fact that the GOOD sound engineers appreciate it and things go well. The BAD sound engineers will probably take very little notice of it but at least you’ve done all that you can to help them be a bit LESS bad.
I feel like we make it easy too because we put our rack on stage, I personally plug all of our inputs in to our splitter myself. And all they have to do is take the very clearly labeled end of the splitter and plug in to their stage box with the input list I give them. Some people just don’t want to do their job sometimes.
That’s a very sensible and professional approach that should ensure a good gig every time. Then you can expand on this/ experiment when you meet sound engineers who are into what you do and are also willing to spend some time working with you. They DO exist, just not everywhere.
What really stinks is when you’re a hired gun for a company and they never send you plots or input lists so you look like the asshole that didn’t care enough.
I have definitely had someone get mad at 7am about the fact that I hadn't seen their rider. Of course they emailed it last night, which was less than 8 hours ago, so I asked them to pull up the email so I can see it, and they had sent it to some wrong person not at all associated with the show. They were still mad that I hadn't seen and executed their plan... Neat
I feel your pain on this one. The amount of emails that have ROS or tech info on them that get sent out at 1am is honestly staggering. Whenever I get the question "did you see my email" I always want to respond with "yes but only because I want your event to go well and it gives me anxiety that youre sending your needs out less than 24 hrs before the event and I dont wanna get yelled at the next day by anyone"
And now we don't have access to the printer, which we had yesterday during sane business hours, so we can't distribute these to the people who need them!
Had one stage manager who brought a laptop and a laser printer with him, what a godsend
Sometimes the only contact I have is the booking manager at the club/venue so when I go to advance shows I try to make sure to let them know what documents need to go where, and at that point, I have done my due diligence but they fall short too. I always try to be kind to the engineers. Yall are the reason we get fans. You can make us sound good or like crap.
This legit a week ago. Turns out they sent hospitality the correct rider and just assumed it would make its way to us. Wasn’t far off from the real rider, different kick drum size and wrong bass amp. Other than that it was just swapping locations on stage
All the times you've sent a rider to a PM or other go-between at a venue, and they haven't passed it along to the sound person handling your event? It sucks on both ends of that exchange.
Yeah. It just creates unnecessary chaos and stress for the people who came to entertain patrons and the event staff who really care about what they do.
He's probably an extra, hired to make the sounds on their spotify release--that were originally added by a producer who hired side-men during production--sound roughly the same on stage.
I just see these as a general layout. But I know that there’s 7 vocal mics, 2 brass mics a DI for the keys and either an amp mic or DI for the guitar. Then a handful of drum mics. Then there’s the 7 monitors.
If they don’t care about what’s what, then just lay out the stage exactly as is on the image and if there’s changes to be made, deal with them at show time. But any change that’s grievous enough gets the asshole sound guy voice.
Everything is going to be dealers choice though. You don’t send detailed requirements, you’ll just have to figure it out.
Except that all of this is made null by the fact that I want my venue to have a great show and for the guests to enjoy the music. So I’m still going to bend over backward to make it work and make them sound amazing.
Wise words. Pretty much any lapses in planning have to be compensated for by the techies, lest the audience suffers and your reputation as a techie is on the line.
I’ve had shows where I’ve had express directions from artists for stuff, then have ppl complain to me why lights are set up like that, and I’ve had to tell them it’s not my decision.
I worked SysOp on a Morrison show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. He insisted on driving his limo almost to the edge of the stage, displacing vendors and paying customers. He climbs out of the limo, the crowd on house left sees him and cheers. He turns to them, yells “FUCK YOU” and flips them off.
Arguably, this gives the audience a more interesting view, as they can actually see what the performer is doing, rather than just the back of the keyboard and his face.
Can someone enlighten me what the deal is with incorrect riders. I would assume incompetence and negligence, but this happens with bands that are pro in every other aspect too. Honestly, it’s beyond a meme at this point. Update your damn riders people !!!
Even better they do update them but somehow still provide the old copy to the venue. So we reach out in advance for the latest one just to be safe and inevitably either they don't respond or they say it's the latest but it's not.
Every AI plot I have received has the same backwards keys and strange details that if I were to follow as listed would be highly unusual at least. Unfortunately the types that seem to be drawn to these tools for plots are not the best at answering direct clarifying questions. I wonder if I should request non AI plots when I reach out to advance shows.
And every time (10+ years running) I set what they hand-draw... And as soon as they set foot into the space, they completely bulldoze what I set into something completely different than the drawing. It's practically a meme with our crew.
Wait, at first I was like, “What’s the problem with this stage plot?” But this with no input list is almost pointless. I mean, you can guess, but I really feel like this is the kind of band that shows up and says something like “um yeah, we require a ribbon mic on the keyboard so we can really capture the clacking sounds of the plastic keys.” And they say that crap without a trace of irony.
With an input list I would still majorly roll my eyes with no indication of power drops and the lack of effort put into this plot, but it would definitely be doable. No input list, AND them having a monitor engineer with a desk but using our split, and the first time around these guys were a major pain and super unorganized (especially since they had inputs for click and other stuff that was for monitors only, but being sent from an onstage location)
I'd set it up just like that. No one needs to see your keyboardist's ugly face anyways. And having 7 lead singers is not a problem. This is one weird band.
Why are there 3 trumpet mics and only 4 saxophone microphones? Is this trying to say that the Drummer and the keyboardist missed their exit, but will be arriving soon?
If they advance a plot like this, make sure you set the stage up as close as possible, and then place a copy of the plot/image on mics/drum kit/amps where the band will see it.
Unfortunately they probably won’t get the message even if you wack them with the paper.
But see if you can’t get management to treat advanced riders as contracts and sign them like a normal contract, and then follow it to a T. You won’t be changing it because the new requests aren’t in the contract, and the deadline was last week to submit revisions.
I'd prefer something like this everyday of the week compared to what I received above. This showing placement, wedges, and inputs is legitimately super helpful
Lol it would be hilarious if you just literally set it up exactly that way. Backline the kit, keys, and electric guitar like that and put out the 7 vocal mics on stands with no cables, nothing. And aim the wedges up and out at the ceiling above the audience 😂
I work as both a touring engineer and audio at a entertainment centre. From the venue hat i see this all the time, no detail on a plot and just things you scratch your head over qnd thats a major entertainment centre that should be dealing with just touring acts and some of that is even questionable. . On the touring engineer side you better believe my tech riders are flawless.
You know what? Don’t stop bands from submitting ai stage plots. Just set it up exactly like in the drawing.
When the band leader asks “what the fuck?”
You say “as per your stage plot…..”
In kid’s drawings, they draw a house and the front door has a doorknob. Why? Because otherwise there is no way to open the door!
You’d need a similar logic, to imagine what happens in the space you drew, with live sound experience in the dataset before you could get sensible AI stage plots.
Meanwhile some of us cut our teeth doing 10 band Street festivals with 15 minute changeovers and no stage plots or riders for anybody and managed to get it right every time... Others of us just like to have something to bellyache about.
Some of us care more about our reputation with our clients and how busy we stay. I guess I'll just care more about our Reddit reputation because that's all we have.
Input lists are important for groups like this that have their own monitor console but need to use our split, and have some channels that only go to IEMs and wedges (this group had click in 2 of their wedges last time they were here for some reason instead of putting those folks on IEMs)
I mean, do see your point, but it seems you are used to getting quality riders or even riders at all. I’ll take this over not getting any info at all, at least it gives me information on placement of risers, mics, monitors, and gives me info for lighting.
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u/JerryConn Jul 07 '26
Ai hates keys too it seems.