The five essentials
- Stage plot (where each musician stands, with monitors and DI boxes marked)
- Input list (channel by channel, with mic type per channel)
- Monitor requirements (how many mixes, wedge or IEM)
- Power (number of 13A sockets on stage)
- Hospitality (dressing room, water, food if 4+ hour call)
One page, PDF, dated
Venues receive dozens of riders a week. If yours is 8 pages of PDFs and legal boilerplate, it gets binned. One page, cleanly formatted, dated with a version number, is what production teams actually read.
What to skip
- Backline you can bring yourself
- Legal terms — those go in the contract, not the rider
- Overspecified hospitality ("organic almond milk") on £2k gigs
- Duplicate info spread across multiple pages
The load-in question that saves an hour
Add: "Is stage load-in flat, or via stairs / lift? If lift, dimensions?" This single line has saved every professional band a delayed setup at least once.
"The best riders read like a checklist a stagehand can execute in 10 minutes. That's the goal — not a legal document."
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