The Technical Rider in Plain Words - What the Organiser Must Provide

A technical rider looks intimidating: input lists, auxes, wedges, DI boxes. In practice it is simply the instruction manual that makes the concert sound good - and the document that saves both sides a lot of stress on the day. Here is what its key points really mean.

Sound system and engineer

“PRO-class equipment” means this: a system that can carry the concert across the given space, operated by an engineer who knows their gear. A rider usually states minimum parameters (for example a mixer with a specific number of channels) - that is not a whim, but a number that follows directly from how many instruments and microphones are on stage.

Monitors, or why the band hears something different from the audience

Musicians on stage need to hear each other - that is what monitors are for: floor wedges or in-ear systems. Propabanda brings its own monitor mixer with a splitter: we plug the instrument signals into our mixer, and the front-of-house engineer receives them in parallel, ready to mix for the audience. For the organiser this is a big simplification.

Load-in and soundcheck are not “they’ll just show up and play”

In our case: at least 60 minutes for set-up and at least 30 minutes of soundcheck - before the audience is let in. That time has to be written into the stage schedule; skipping it is the most common cause of delays at outdoor events.

Where to get the rider

Propabanda’s current technical rider (with the full input list and stage plan, currently in Polish) can be downloaded from the media kit - just pass it on to the sound crew. Technical questions are best asked right when you book the date through the contact form.