How to make a stage plot your engineer will actually use

The engineer at a wedding venue opens the side door at four o'clock, looks at a pile of cases and asks the question every band has heard: so what have you got? Somebody starts to explain. The drummer is still parking. The keys player says "two keyboards, stereo" while carrying the first of them past. Twenty minutes go on a conversation that one sheet of paper would have had already.

That sheet is the stage plot. This guide is how to make one that an engineer will actually read, what belongs on it, what does not, and when to send it. If you would rather skip to building one, the free stage plot designer does the drawing, the input list and the monitor mixes for you.

What is a stage plot for?

A stage plot is a drawing of the stage seen from above, showing where each player stands and what they need. Its job is to let somebody who has never seen your band set the stage the way you expect before you arrive: run the multicore to the right places, put the vocal mics on stands where the singers will be, leave room for the drum riser, and drop power where the keyboards and the pedalboards are.

For a function band it matters more than most. You play a different room nearly every weekend, the engineer is often the venue's or the PA company's rather than yours, and the load-in happens in whatever gap the event leaves. A plot that arrived the week before means the engineer has already thought about your stage by the time the cases come through the door.

What a good stage plot looks like

Look at a few from working bands and the same shape comes up every time. Copy it.

One page. Engineers print these, pin them up and scribble on them. A plot that runs to three pages gets read as far as page one.

The audience at the bottom. The stage is drawn from above with the front of the stage at the bottom of the page and the word AUDIENCE underneath it. It is the convention almost everybody uses, and an engineer reading yours should not have to rotate it in their head.

Every player labelled. A box or an icon for each person, with their name and what they play: "Megan, lead vocals", "Dan, guitar and backing vocals". Names matter more than you might think, because the engineer will be shouting them across a hall during the line check.

The kit, not the brand names. Show each vocal mic, each amp, each DI, each keyboard and the drum kit. Say whether an amp is miked or goes through a DI. Do not insist on a particular model of microphone: most engineers have their own preferences and their own stock, and "SM58 or similar" is the polite way to say what you want.

Monitors and power. Mark who has a wedge (a floor monitor) and who is on in-ears, and put a mark wherever a plug is needed. Power is the thing most often forgotten and the thing that costs the most time when it is.

One colour per player. Colour each person, not each kind of equipment. An engineer following a line across the stage wants to know whose it is, and when a player's circle, gear and cables share one colour the eye can follow a guitar through the pedalboard to the amp without reading a label. Keep the desk's own sends black, so they never look like a source.

Draw things at their real size. A five-piece kit takes about 2.4 m by 1.8 m and a guitar amp is about 0.7 m wide. An engineer reads a plot drawn to scale against the stage width without asking, and can see at a glance whether it all fits. If the band brings its own PA, add the tops and subs so the venue knows what you bring.

Readable in black and white. It will be photocopied. Colour can help, but nothing should depend on it.

The band's name and a contact. Somebody the engineer can ring when the plot and reality disagree.

What goes in the input list?

The input list is the half of the sheet the engineer uses to patch the desk. It numbers every channel, in an order most engineers recognise:

• Drums first. Kick, snare, hi-hat, toms, then the two overheads. A typical function kit is about seven channels.
• Bass, miked or on a DI.
• Guitars, the same.
• Keys, usually as a left and right pair for each keyboard.
• Acoustic instruments on a DI.
• Backing tracks or a laptop, again a stereo pair.
• Vocals last, one channel per singer.

Each line has the same columns: the channel number, the source ("Bass amp (Priya)"), the mic or DI that suits it, who plays it, and whether it needs 48V phantom power. Condenser mics, DI boxes and keyboards usually do; a dynamic vocal mic does not. Keep the numbering the same from gig to gig. An engineer who has had your band before will thank you for it, and a dep who has played with you once will know where to find their own channel.

If you are not sure how many channels you are, count them. Many venues and small PA systems have a limit, and it is far better to find out in an email than at the desk.

Monitor mixes: wedges and in-ears

Under the input list goes a short list of monitor mixes: one line per player who needs to hear themselves, numbered from the front of the stage, saying whether it is a wedge or in-ears. That tells the engineer how many mixes to build and how many wedges to bring.

It is worth adding a few words about what each person wants in their mix, in the notes: "Megan: lots of keys, a little vocal", "drums: bass and click". If you bring your own in-ear system, say so, and say whether you need a feed from the desk or run your own mix on stage.

How much detail is too much?

Enough to set the stage, not so much that nobody reads it. Leave off the make of every cymbal, the brand of each cable and anything that only matters to the person who owns it. Do put down anything that changes what the engineer has to bring or do: a second keyboard, a DI instead of a miked amp, a singer who also plays acoustic guitar for two songs, a drummer who needs a riser.

A stage note at the top helps too: the smallest stage you can play on, how many sockets you need and where, whether you need a riser or a stand for the laptop.

When the band brings its own mixer

If your band runs a small digital mixer such as an X18, or a splitter snake, tell the engineer. What they get changes completely. If the mixer passes your signals straight through, the venue patches every channel as normal. If it mixes on stage and sends only a left and right pair, the engineer gets two channels to work with and the input list they need is short. A splitter changes it again: the same microphones feed both the house desk and your own rig, so the engineer sees the full list while you keep your mix.

Say which it is, in a line, before the day. The free stage plot maker lets you give every item an output, and draws a flow chart plus the venue's list and your rig's list from what you set.

When should you send it?

Send the plot when the gig is advanced, alongside the day sheet details: call time, load-in, parking and set times. For most function work that means a week or two before the date. Send it to whoever is actually running sound, which might be the venue, the agency's production company or a PA hire firm, and ask them to confirm they have it.

Send it again whenever the line-up changes. A dep who plays bass through an amp when your regular bassist uses a DI is a change the engineer wants to know about. Keeping one standard plot for the band, and adjusting it for the gigs where somebody different is playing, is much easier than redrawing it every time.

Making one without a drawing program

You do not need design software to make a decent stage plot. Most of what is on one can be worked out from two questions: who plays what, and where do they stand? Answer those and the drawing, the input list and the monitor list follow.

That is how the free stage plot maker works. Drag what each player brings from the library onto the stage: the performer, a vocal mic, an amp or a DI, keyboards, an acoustic, the drums, a wedge or in-ears, a riser, a power drop. Every item you place appears in a table under the plot, where you name it and say how it goes to the desk (which mic, a DI, an XLR out, or to an amp, and whether it needs 48V). The plot draws itself, the input list numbers itself in the order above, and the monitor mixes come out numbered from the front. The drawing is easiest on a tablet or a computer; on a phone you can still move an item and edit the table, so the plot can be fixed in the car park if somebody's kit has changed.

With a free account the plot downloads as a one-page PDF and becomes your band's standard plot, kept with the band rather than in one person's email. The features page has the rest of what the band side of the app does, from gigs to the pay split. If you run the band, a band management app is where the plot, the gigs and the deps sit together.

A short checklist

Before you send it, check that the plot:

• fits on one page and reads in black and white
• has the audience at the bottom and every player named
• shows each mic, amp, DI, keyboard and the drums
• marks the monitors and the power
• has an input list with channel numbers, mics or DIs and 48V where needed
• lists the monitor mixes, numbered from the front
• carries the band's name and somebody to call

Get those right and the engineer at four o'clock will already know what you have got.