RiderSmith · Reference
The tech rider, section by section — what venues read and what they skip.
A tech rider has one reader: the house tech, twenty minutes before your load-in. This walkthrough covers every section a rider needs — input list, monitoring, backline, power, hospitality — with a worked example and the mistakes venues actually complain about.
RiderSmith, the tool that builds these riders from your existing stage data, is still in build — it is not on sale yet. Everything on this page works with any editor today; the tool just makes it faster when it ships.
One document, one reader
A tech rider is the document a band sends ahead so the venue can prepare the stage before anyone arrives. Its reader is not a promoter and not a fan — it is the house tech, skimming it twenty minutes before load-in with a patchbay in front of them. Everything in a good rider serves that person: what goes into which channel, what has to be on stage, what the band brings, what power it draws, and how the evening runs.
That also settles the format question. A rider is not a design piece; it is a table-heavy, one-glance reference. Two to four pages, dated, with a contact number on page one. Below is every section it needs, walked through with a working example — a fictional 4-piece, Velvet Nova, playing a club show at the Molotow in Hamburg.
Section by section
Contact & versioning. Band name, tech contact with a phone number that will be answered on show day, and a "last updated" date. An undated rider is worthless to a venue — they cannot tell whether the 6-channel wireless rig on page two still exists. Version the file name too (velvet-nova-rider-2026-09.pdf, not final_final2.pdf).
Input list. The heart of the rider, and the one section every venue reads in full. One row per source, in the order the house desk will patch them: channel number, source, preferred mic or DI, stand. State preferences, not ultimatums — a club that owns no Beta 91A will still patch your kick.
| Ch | Source | Mic / DI | Stand |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kick in | Beta 91A | — |
| 2 | Kick out | D6 | Short |
| 3 | Snare top | SM57 | Clamp |
| 4 | Bass | DI (post-EQ) | — |
| 5 | Guitar | e906 | Short |
| 6 | Lead vocal | Wireless HH | Tall boom |
Monitoring. How many mixes, wedges or IEM, and who hears what. "4 mixes: drums (wedge), bass (wedge), guitar (wedge), lead vocal (stereo IEM, own belt pack)" tells the monitor engineer everything. If you carry wireless — mics or IEM — list the count and frequency range so the venue can flag conflicts with their own rig: Velvet Nova travels with 6 channels in 606–614 MHz.
Backline. Two lists, clearly separated: what the band brings and what the venue must provide. The single most common rider failure is blurring these — a drum kit that both parties assumed the other one had booked is a show-stopper, not an inconvenience.
Power. Total draw and where it is needed. Velvet Nova's stage — backline, pedalboards, IEM rack — totals 4.8 kW across three stage drops. A number like that lets the house electrician say "fine" in one breath; no number means someone guesses.
Hospitality. Keep it in the rider but on its own page, so the stage crew can ignore it. Realistic asks for the room size: water on stage is universal; a warm meal for four is a club-level ask; anything beyond that belongs in the contract, not the rider.
Schedule. Arrival, soundcheck length, set length, changeover. "48 min set + 15 min changeover" is the line a festival stage manager actually builds the day around — it matters more to them than anything else on the page.
What venues complain about
Ask any house tech what is wrong with the riders they receive and the same five answers come back.
- No date, no version — the venue prepares for a lineup that changed two tours ago.
- Demands instead of preferences: a rider that "requires" a console the club will never own gets put down, and with it everything else you wrote.
- Input list order that ignores patching convention (vocals first, kick last) — the house tech re-sorts it on paper, and errors creep in.
- Hospitality mixed into the technical pages, so the one document the stage crew needs is half catering.
- A 10-page PDF for a 4-piece. Length signals carelessness, not professionalism — if it does not fit on four pages, it will not be read.
The pre-send checklist
Before the rider goes out, check it renders on-page — no download needed, just read down the list.
- Contact name and phone number on page one, "last updated" date next to it.
- Input list ordered for patching, one source per row, preferences marked as preferences.
- Monitor mixes counted and named; wireless channels listed with their frequency range.
- Backline split into "we bring" and "venue provides" — every item in exactly one list.
- Total power draw stated, with stage-drop positions if you know them.
- Hospitality on its own page; schedule with set length and changeover time.
- File name carries the band and the date. Export as PDF.
Frequently asked
How long should a tech rider be?
Two to four pages for a club-level act. The input list and stage plot carry most of the information; everything else is short lists. Past four pages, house techs skim — and skimmed riders cause the surprises the rider existed to prevent.
PDF or Word?
PDF, always. A rider is a reference document: it must look identical on the venue's ancient office PC, a phone side-stage and a printout taped to the desk. Editable formats also invite silent edits nobody signed off on.
How often should the rider be updated?
Whenever the stage setup changes — a new band member, a switch to IEM, different backline. And re-date it even when nothing changed: a rider stamped this year tells the venue it can be trusted; one from three years ago tells them to phone you and check everything.
Do small venues even read riders?
The good ones do, and the rest read exactly one section: the input list. Which is the argument for structuring the rider properly — the information a venue needs first should survive even the laziest reader.
RiderSmith · Reference
The rider that writes itself is in build.
RiderSmith assembles riders from work you have already done on this platform — channel lists, frequencies, power plans, set times. It is coming soon; the four tools it imports from are live today, two of them free.
