WHY YOU NEED A TECH RIDER:
(from a sound point of view)

Firstly, tech’ riders are so important to the smooth running of your gig – it can’t be emphasised enough. However, an incorrect rider is as much use as no rider at all. So when supplying one you (the artist) need to make sure that the correct information is getting to the venue. 

So let’s say you’re an up and coming band. You don’t travel with your own engineer(s), so each venue you play at employs a freelancer or in-house engineer to get your show up and running. They’ll need to have a tech’ rider in advance of that show that stipulates what inputs and outputs are required on the desk. 

A good engineer will have done a little planning prior to arriving at the gig – working out what goes where in terms of stage boxes and patching between those and the split before it goes off to the FOH as well as the Monitor desk.

If you want things to sound great (which I’m sure you do) you need to let the sound guy mix the show rather than running around.

The 7 P’s, as I tell my kids: Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. If you’ve given the engineer a correct rider days/weeks in advance of the show he’ll have had all this done before you even turn up to load in your backline.