Need to understand music concert Tech Rider

[anandabrata]

Hi All,

I am new to live music performance organizing. I was going through a few Tech Riders from bands having difficulty to understand a few terms. I am putting down the terms below and look forward for your help.

1. Rack 1 - SH604 - Gate3/ Gate 2
2. For each input item on the list it says Group 1/2 e.g.
Snare Top - SM57 - Compressor1 - Group 1/2. What does the group stand for?

It will be helpful incase you can provide links for the equipment..viz SM57 is a Shure Mic.


Regards,
Anand

[jude]

the group 1/2 USUALLY means that they want that channel routed to group 1 & 2, miced with a SM57, with compressor 1 inserted on that channel.

most FOH engineers will spell it out in a table so its easy to read. if in doubt, call them and ask (they will include a phone number if they are worth their salt)

Jude

[Howie J]

Going to take a guess that the SH604 is a Sennheiser e604. Must be for some type of guitar cab of some sort??

Howie J

[odeon]

Going to take a guess that the SH604 is a Sennheiser e604. Must be for some type of guitar cab of some sort??

sennheiser 604 is the grey clip mic for toms etc.

maybe you meant sennheiser 609, that black/golden microphone often used for guitar amps?

best

holger

[Howie J]

Originally Posted by odeon

sennheiser 604 is the grey clip mic for toms etc.

maybe you meant sennheiser 609, that black/golden microphone often used for guitar amps?

best

holger

Yep, That's it....DUH! Brain lapse...

Howie J

[molownia]

Originally Posted by anandabrata

Hi All,


1. Rack 1 - SH604 - Gate3/ Gate 2

this looks like Sennheiser e604 on a rack tom through a gate...

[mixedupsteve]

It looks like G1-2 is the drum buss.
Do you have a show your prepping for or is this learning for something later? I suggest that you find a local provider and offer to intern to get some exposure to the business.

[anandabrata]

Thanks for your inputs.

Jude appreciate the explanation. I did some reading up and collected inputs to learn the undermentioned explanation:

Rack1 - Rack Tom drums
SH604 - Euphonix noise gate

Mixing desks have grouping for the inputs to be controlled together. Rest Jude's explanation is perfect.

Regards

[Boschen]

Riders! Fagh; a plague upon them.
I've seen hundreds.

! rant !

Unless you have an unusually on-top-of-it road manager, the band will arrive with completely different needs than what is stated in the initial rider, especially when you're late in their tour.

This is why in club world it's almost never productive to set up the stage ahead of time except in basic distribution groups, because then the band arrives and the road manager or BE says; 'We're using IEMs now' or 'That's not our acoustic rider' or 'They added a horn section' or 'The back-up singers are / aren't with us', or any of a million others.

Look at the date on the rider. If the difference between that date and the show date is more than then length of the tour, call the road manager before the band arrives. Remember they may have fired the road manager (not that uncommon).

With riders for touring bands, opaque language is typical, and there is no standard nomenclature or structure for conveying technical layout beyond a few basic conventions, i.e. the tables mentioned by another poster, or clear, logical stage plots from the audience perspective. Usually whoever does the rider will find ways to obfuscate these anyway.

Traveling theatre productions do it much better, and follow time honored names and traditions that are weird and insular and at least consistent.

I got so tired of riders I made a joke one for a friend whose job in part is to read through them. It was the size of a small phone book, starting with a few pages of boilerplate to which I added a few ridiculous clauses, like granting the band power of attorney over the club, and a million dollar bar tab and seven course dinners. The rest of the rider was padded out with 8.5 x 11" recycled paper, junk mail, etc., to make it more stolid and impressive.


>end of rider rant, sry

[Roland]

Riders often come in two form's, firstly, what the band require and secondly what the band dream of! The difficulty is distinguishing between the two.

A few Scenarios:

1. Recently a friend of mine had a rider sent to him for a quite well known folk outfit. The band comprise of four players one who played guitars Ulian pipes and mandolin, another played mandolin, a guitarist and a double bass player + four vocals. They were carrying their own vocal mic's and were speccing things like a D&B FOH rig and fussy demands on the desk etc. My friend wanted to use his stand PA (nondescript make on poles!), I had to tell him this wasn't going to be by any stretch of the imagination, acceptable. They ended up with a Shermann rig and a LS9, perfectly appropriate for the gig and the venue, didn't stop the engineer whinning about having to use an LS9, but, that was ideal for the band and event.

2. I was booked to supply sound for an two day jazz festival event and the rig was also to be used for a world music band in the evenings. The band send me a detailed list of mic inputs (twelve in total) and a suggestion for a Nexo PA (not powerful enough for the size of this venue). I was supplying a line array sytem that had more poke and they didn't argue about that and the FOH was a Digidesign Venue and although their engineer wasn't familiar with it I was there to babysit him through it. When they turned up for the show, there was a bit of attitude from one of their players and their engineer was very slow. They wanted 22 inputs not 12, all sorts of other demands not included in their rider. I'm a reasonable guy and fortunately for them, we were well equipped enough for their other eventualities. Turn up to a festival in most places in the uk with a rider like that and you will be shown your twelve inputs you requested and told to "knock yourself out" with them.

3. A rider that details exactly what the band need, on which input. How many mic's, monitor's, mic stands, DI boxes, what the band supply themselves, and a list of acceptable PA rigs, usually specifying that these or a reasonable equivalent is acceptable. Flexibility over desks should be also expected. This is usually the best type as it is accurate and let's everyone know what is required.

If they want to be really specific, they should either be carrying it, or going to a hire house that covers those requirements.

When using regional suppliers more flexibility is required and should also be expected, however, this is not an excuse for regionals that supply gear that doesn't work properly or is poorly maintained, if this is the case, expect to get flamed for it.

Regards


Roland

[bishopthomas]

Originally Posted by Roland

If they want to be really specific, they should either be carrying it, or going to a hire house that covers those requirements.

Couldn't agree with this more. When I was touring the club circuit there was a huge difference in gear quality from one venue to the next. I wasn't going to spec a PM5D when there was a GL2400 in house. I carried a mic package and we eventually bought stands, then later a monitor console for the IEM's. I would carry spare cables and of course an adapter kit. These things meant that the band was happy and I could make anything else work (including a MixWiz and O1V on two separate occasions for a 24 channel input list). I'm not one to throw a tantrum and threaten to cancel the show because I didn't get my way. Why should I feel so important that I HAVE to have a certain piece of gear? Isn't the show about the audience anyway? They'll never know that I had to Y the toms to save channels.

[jude]

Originally Posted by anandabrata

Thanks for your inputs.

Jude appreciate the explanation. I did some reading up and collected inputs to learn the undermentioned explanation:

Rack1 - Rack Tom drums
SH604 - Euphonix noise gate

Mixing desks have grouping for the inputs to be controlled together. Rest Jude's explanation is perfect.

Regards

Glad i could be of help

[jasonraboin]

I spend an awful lot of time dealing with advancing and riders, always from the band side of things. There are several things that lead to the frustration talked about above.

Often gigs are booked over a year out. I have a tour starting in 3 weeks and I still haven't got the band to commit to an input list. Are the accordions coming on this tour? Is the Mandolin DI or mic or both? In the meantime, the contracts have gone out, been negotiated, budgeted, and signed. How can I hope to stay ahead of that? Sometimes I don't even know how many people will be in the band until after the contracts are signed. For this upcoming tour, the contracts went out asking for 6 mixes. After some "personnel changes", I only need two. I guarantee that no matter how proactive I am about getting the right paperwork out there, I will show up at a few gigs where 6 mixes are provided.

I have started to make the contract rider as non-spcific as possible, and adding that specifics are to follow. I have a 4 page, plain english advance document that goes out about a month before the tour that has every little detail you could ask for.

The "wish list" mentality is something I find frustrating as well. I try very hard not to ask for things I don't need. I do understand, however, and artist asking for what they would ideally like to see at a show. You also have to remember that a band that is huge in Europe may not be well known in the USA. This doesn't mean that the lead singer won't be looking for the same fidelity and volume in the monitors over here!

The adversarial process of the advance is what I find the most frustrating. I really want to drive home that most of the time, it is all about a budget. I get a sheet attached to the contract that has an agreed upon amount that the promoter is willing to spend on any given line item. The agent and management have agreed to this amount. If the catering budget is $150, you aren't getting after show food for the crew bus unless you pay for it. It shouldn't be an argument. By the time it gets to us it's kinda too late for an argument.

It does, on occasion, happen that a promoter assumed that their in house production would be sufficient for our needs, only to find out during the advance that there is no way we are using plastic powered wedges. At this point, I simply go back to the agent or manager and tell them. They come back to me with a solution a couple of days later.

I hope this helps.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

I dealt with Band tech riders for 25 years.

Most bands and solo artists were easy to work with and provided a GREAT show for their fans.

Towards the end of my concert sound career the tech riders became somewhat bizarre and people started asking for things that the college I worked for was unable to provide them with.

We had a very good basic concert sound system but nothing very fancy or overdone. It was serviceable, it worked well and we could get it very loud without distortion (which is what most bands wanted).

One tech rider for a well known group wanted 8 Lexicon 480Ls with 8 LARCs. If we were doing the concert in New York I would probably have had problems lining up this number of 480Ls + LARCs but in a cornfield in Ohio it was out of the question.

Another band wanted 135 dBSPL in the back row of the auditorium GUARANTEED and we had to have someone from their band with a sound level meter verify the level with pink noise before they would do the concert.

Another band wanted 6 side fills and an 12 channel monitor mix. (4 people in the band)

Another band wanted us to have 6 Klark Teknik DN360's stereo 1/3 octave equalizers for use by their sound engineer. They all had to be patchable and they wanted another DN360 for the main feed. Again in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio it just is not going to happen.

The food part of the riders were as goofy as the audio part. One band wanted 6 bottles of Jack Daniels, 6 bottles of Courvoisier® Cognac and 6 surf and turf dinners for the four members of the band and their "guest".

I would go over the audio part of the rider with a fine tooth comb, take out what we could not provide or rent, write in what we had and send it back to the management company who most times agreed to the revised contract and sent a copy back to us with their written approval.

When the bands arrived they got upset because we could not provide them with what they asked for and basically told us that no one had asked them and they were not going to play without what they had asked for. This lead to a lot of conflicts with the band's audio people and the band members. At one point for one of the concerts their "audio engineer" picked up the end of our Soundcraft 600 about a foot off the table and let go of it saying "I would not hit a dead dog in the a$$ with this console" and said the band would not perform unless he got his Midas console and all the play toys he wanted. My boss said fine and that also means the band will not get paid. After some long phone conversations with their management company the band played and they got their check. On leaving they trashed the dressing rooms and the parking lot.

We got out of date tech riders, tech riders that were all boiler plate and bore no resemblance to what the group really wanted and in one case the tech rider we got was for a much larger group and when the 4 musicians showed up they were astonished to see 32 microphones and an eight way monitor mix. Oops!

Tech riders are suppose to be a way for the band's sound engineer to tell the hall/presenter what they "need" and is not for their sound engineer to satisfy his flights of fantasy and see how much rare and expensive equipment he can have control of.

One of the tech riders went so far as to order up 4 Fender Twin Reverb amps with serial numbers within a given range and all had to be in "mint" condition with the "original fabric covering" on them, the speaker had to be the original and the tubes had to be from a certain manufacture and had to have been manufactured in a given window of time. Obviously this meant that you had to rent them from a certain back-line company and I am sure their was some type of "finders fee" associated with the acquisition paid to the band. When I called the back-line company (number provided on the band's tech rider) I was told that the rental for one night was $275.00 per each amplifier and the only way they could be sent was via FedEx at a cost of about $70.00 each one way and they had to be returned by the next Tuesday so it meant overnighting them since the concert was on Saturday night. We had to pay the freight both ways. My boss refused to be held up by the back-line company and we substituted what we could get. The band was NOT pleased and went out and threatened to end the show before it had started if they did not get what they wanted. They then stormed off stage. My boss told them either perform or leave with no payment for the show. They played the show.

I am glad I am out of the concert sound business but it did provide some comic relief at times.

[mixedupsteve]

STEVE MARTIN'S TOUR RIDER LEAKED! - SteveMartin.com

[jude]

Originally Posted by mixedupsteve

STEVE MARTIN'S TOUR RIDER LEAKED! - SteveMartin.com

Thats a great read! thanks for the laugh

[pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Roland

and the FOH was a Digidesign Venue and although their engineer wasn't familiar with it I was there to babysit him through it. When they turned up for the show, there was a bit of attitude from one of their players and their engineer was very slow.

So you stated two things:
1/You Providied a Avid Venue
2/Their engineer was slow.

How could you tell he was slow?

Let me tell what is slow.

The Venue is a slow bad sounding joke, with the worst UI ever seen on planet earth. Well infact, it might be beaten by the Midas PRO 6 which is slower than doing it by punch cards, however the PRO 6 at least sounds amazing after you spent a week getting ready for a line check, which is more than can be said about the Venue.

Another band wanted us to have 6 Klark Teknik DN360's stereo 1/3 octave equalizers for use by their sound engineer. They all had to be patchable and they wanted another DN360 for the main feed. Again in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio it just is not going to happen.

So that turns out to be maybe 1 for Mains, 1 for frontfills, 1 for artist stereo IEM and 3 for the 6 monitor mixes for the rest of the band.

I can't think of anything more standard than that in the entire live business except for maybe SM57's. Would you guess the number of 360's aviable in Ohio at any one moment? 5000? more?

Nothing is more provoking to me than providers second guessing my riders and at the same time not answering e-mails or phone calls, or simply not at the end of the day delivering what is promised.

The most tiresome aspect of touring is to get the equipment working with you in your comfort-zone so you can deliver the working enviroment, the mix and the fidelity that the management, agent, artist and the (whole)audience expect.

Getting the "amazing new non-standard digital console system" #12 for the tour, combined with a sys-tech that doesn't know half as much about it as he should, no external graphic EQ's for mains or mons, an over-Smaarted over-thinked bad sounding PA with invariably way too much subs, of course misguidedly Haas aligned to the stage(wtf), and the processor only accsessible by a code which only one guy, currently vacating in Kazhakstan knows, where a H1000, MH3, even a PM4000 or a A&H with a PA processed by Factory presets and set-up according to the "quick-set-up-guide" on page 3 in the manual would have sounded much better in a lot shorter time, creating a lot less stress for the artist, local crew and me for less money would had been sufficent is the main problem of the touring business today.

There I said it.

And btw. B58's and 1xPCM91(or better) is the most fancy in my riders, and they are up to date. At least +/- 1 or 2 DI-boxes or standard microphone. And it says so.

It also says, NO avid venue. Ever. And that comes from a guy which has been mixing records in pro-tools since the mix-system came out.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by pragmatic

So that turns out to be maybe 1 for Mains, 1 for frontfills, 1 for artist stereo IEM and 3 for the 6 monitor mixes for the rest of the band.

I can't think of anything more standard than that in the entire live business except for maybe SM57's. Would you guess the number of 360's aviable in Ohio at any one moment? 5000? more?

Nothing is more provoking to me than providers second guessing my riders and at the same time not answering e-mails or phone calls, or simply not at the end of the day delivering what is promised.

The most tiresome aspect of touring is to get the equipment working with you in your comfort-zone so you can deliver the working environment, the mix and the fidelity that the management, agent, artist and the (whole)audience expect.

These were in addition to our normal EQ setup and at that time, after calling around to about a dozen sound and rental companies, no one had any they could lend or rent.

If you want something specific either carry it yourself or learn to live with what people can provide. The college I worked for was in the middle of a cornfield but brought acts in from both coast and Europe to perform. We did our best with what we had to offer. We finally ended up with six Furman EQs which did EXACTLY what the person wanted (some 1/3 octave eq's) and we could rent easily from a local supplier.

To get so upset about some piece of equipment, that you have to say your band cannot perform because it is not there, is mostly an EGO trip by the sound engineer pure and simple.

If having exactly the same equipment night after night is SO important either carry that equipment with you or have a sound company tour with you.

[mixedupsteve]

I don't do sound at the big concert level but in the lower-mid level venue/festival market I find the more experienced and well known the band is the more reasonable they are. Sometimes they don't accept stuff but they just offer to bring it in themselves.

[boojum]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

I dealt with Band tech riders for 25 years.

<snip>

Thanks for another great post. I am amazed that no one needed guitar amps which went to 11. The groups with the insane ego-driven demands usually perform like insane, ego-driven musicians. Too often the ego far exceeds the talent.

[pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

These were in addition to our normal EQ setup....

----
To get so upset about some piece of equipment, that you have to say your band cannot perform because it is not there, is mostly an EGO trip by the sound engineer pure and simple.

Well as long as the EQ's where working, all mon EQ's where of the same type.(So you don't need to tune all wedges individually), and it isn't Behringer I would have accepted it at that kind of venue, no matter what level band.

However, saying that ANY gear is at performance standard for ANY band is just to much of a simplification.

Most often, things in the rider is mostly there to avoid certain kinds of gear that you know don't work, so it is tailored to avoid them.



There are a few essentials that does add up to making a huge difference to the pure abillity of the artist to convey their artistic intent/having an emotional impact on the audience.

These are: A PA that actually are without any weird room or speaker issues that create bumps in the sub, low-mid or high-mid area that'll overpower in any part of the room any part of the arrangement, lyrics, voices or any other instrument, provided they are at a good balance.

A Front of House position that lets the mixing engineer balance the instruments and make judgements on the tonal balance that will actually translate to the entire audience to the extent of not creating bumps in the sub, low-mid or high-mid area that will overpower any part of the arrangement, instruments or lyrics/voice.

A system UI which will make the Engineer able to act quickly enough on what he hears to be able to stay on top of the balances and tonal balance issues at the same time.

Some of the current digital systems doesn't quite do this. And you can hear it! Engineers punching lots of buttons while not staying on top of the balances can be widely enjoyed at even the largest arenas and festival. However each instrument now has it's own d-verb and tape emulation plug-in courtesy of Avid Venue, just as it was when people started using pro-tools for mixing.

oh the euphonic joy!

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by pragmatic

Well as long as the EQ's where working, all mon EQ's where of the same type.(So you don't need to tune all wedges individually), and it isn't Behringer I would have accepted it at that kind of venue, no matter what level band.

However, saying that ANY gear is at performance standard for ANY band is just to much of a simplification.

Most often, things in the rider is mostly there to avoid certain kinds of gear that you know don't work, so it is tailored to avoid them.



There are a few essentials that does add up to making a huge difference to the pure abillity of the artist to convey their artistic intent/having an emotional impact on the audience.

These are: A PA that actually are without any weird room or speaker issues that create bumps in the sub, low-mid or high-mid area that'll overpower in any part of the room any part of the arrangement, lyrics, voices or any other instrument, provided they are at a good balance.

A Front of House position that lets the mixing engineer balance the instruments and make judgements on the tonal balance that will actually translate to the entire audience to the extent of not creating bumps in the sub, low-mid or high-mid area that will overpower any part of the arrangement, instruments or lyrics/voice.

A system UI which will make the Engineer able to act quickly enough on what he hears to be able to stay on top of the balances and tonal balance issues at the same time.

Some of the current digital systems doesn't quite do this. And you can hear it! Engineers punching lots of buttons while not staying on top of the balances can be widely enjoyed at even the largest arenas and festival. However each instrument now has it's own d-verb and tape emulation plug-in courtesy of Avid Venue, just as it was when people started using pro-tools for mixing.

oh the euphonic joy!

Your summations about what is really essential are right on the money. I have watched too many sound people want the most complex digital audio boards available and then not be proficient in running them and, as you say, take a long time with multiple menus to get to where they need to be to correct some problem that whould have taken a couple of seconds on an analog board.

We always tried to do everything possible to help the "guest" sound engineer do his or her job. Sometimes it was a pleasure to work with them sometimes not. Most times they were great people and easy to work with, sometimes they acted like prima donnas and were a problem from the time they hit the venue's loading dock and found out that their carefully crafted list of the newest and greatest play toys was not forthcoming. I have seen grown men throw hissy fits, scream at everyone and anyone, toss tools and equipment on the floor because we could do something like not finding a "vintage" Neumann M-249 for the bass drum. (which by the way would not be my first choice) or the monitor wedges were scuffed and not pristine as requested/required on the tech rider. (As long as they are the model and maker requested and are in good serviceable condition who cares if they are scuffed ???) The audience certainly will not care and the band has what they wanted and it sounds good.

I was on the road for a number of years working for a local sound company and we did a lot of shows where we provided the sound and the lights. We did an exceptional job every time and we got lots of Kudos for our efforts. The only real problem we had were "guest" engineers who did not know what they were doing but were the lead singers latest "squeeze" and therefore were the sound engineer by default so they could ride the bus. We had one person who knew as much about audio as I know about brain surgery. He could not figure out how to get the reverb sends and returns set up on the board. He had all the trims at full and complained that the board was "noisy". He had the 2 channel master all the way up and the individual gain faders at about 10 on a scale of 0 to 100. It was feed back city and he started screaming at my crew saying we were trying to sabotage him and the concert. He had his singer girl friend announce from the stage that we were being "unprofessional" and that is why the sound was so bad.

I finally had enough of this bozo and had one of my crew, who normally was the FOH mixer, take over the console and in about 5 minutes the whole sound picture changed from terrible to GREAT! The rest of the show went off without a hitch and when it was all over the "guest" sound engineer sulked off without even saying thanks. I guess he would find solace in his girlfriend's arms later that night and be ready to mess things up again the next day.

Again I am GLAD I am not in the Concert Sound field anymore.