If you’ve ever advanced a show by emailing the venue a Word doc with “drums, bass, guitar, vocals” written on it, you’ve been doing it wrong — and the engineer who opened that email is groaning right now. A real input list tells the engineer everything they need to set the stage before you arrive. Done right, you walk in, plug in, and play. Done wrong, you lose 45 minutes of soundcheck to repatching.

The three documents (and what each is for)

These are different things. Don’t merge them.

Input list — a table that lists every audio source on stage in the order it’ll be patched into the console. One row per channel. Engineers stare at this to set up the patch bay, gain stages, and aux sends.
Stage plot — a top-down picture of where each person and piece of gear lives on stage. Where to put the wedges, where the drum kit goes, which side the bass amp is on. The stagehand looks at this during load-in.
Technical rider — a longer document with everything else: power requirements, the band’s own backline, dressing room needs, hospitality. Not in scope for this guide, but the input list + stage plot are usually attached to it.

Anatomy of an input list

Each row of an input list has at least these six columns:

Channel # — 1, 2, 3, etc.
Source — what makes the sound (Kick In, Snare Top, Lead Vox).
Mic / DI — the model the band brings, or “house” if you’re happy with what the venue stocks.
Stand — boom, short, clip, none.
48V (phantom power) — yes or no per channel.
Notes — anything the engineer needs to know that doesn’t fit elsewhere.

A simple example for a 5-piece rock band:

1 · Kick In · Shure Beta 91A · None · No · Inside the kick
2 · Kick Out · Shure Beta 52A · Short · No · Outside batter head
3 · Snare Top · Shure SM57 · Clip · No ·
4 · Snare Bottom · Shure SM57 · Clip · No · Polarity-inverted from top
5 · Hi-hat · House (SDC) · Boom · Yes ·
6 · Rack Tom · House (Sennheiser e604) · Clip · No ·
7 · Floor Tom · House (Sennheiser e604) · Clip · No ·
8 / 9 · OH L / R · House (SDC pair) · Boom · Yes · Spaced pair
10 / 11 · Bass DI / Mic · House (Radial JDI / Sennheiser e906) · None / Short · No · DI pre-amp; mic on cab
12 · Gtr 1 · House (Sennheiser e906) · Short · No · Off-axis, just off the cone
13 · Keys L · DI from keys rig · None · No ·
14 · Keys R · DI from keys rig · None · No ·
15 · Lead Vox · Shure SM58 (band) · Boom · No ·
16 · BGV 1 · House (SM58) · Boom · No ·
17 · BGV 2 · House (SM58) · Boom · No ·
18 / 19 · Click / Tracks · 1/4" from playback rig · None · No · Click is for monitors ONLY — DO NOT send to FOH

Anatomy of a stage plot

Top-down view of the stage. Audience at the bottom. Every element gets a labeled icon:

Each performer’s position.
Drum kit (kick, snare, toms, cymbals — basic outline is fine).
Amp cabinets.
Keys rig.
Monitor wedges (if using) numbered by mix.
IEM bodypack receivers and bodypack positions.
Playback rig location.
Power drops (where the band needs AC).
The drum riser if there is one (with dimensions).

Mark which side is house-left vs house-right (audience’s perspective vs band’s perspective). “Stage right” usually means the performer’s right, which is the audience’s left. Half the patching errors at small venues start here.

What engineers throw out when they read your sheet

Marketing copy. “Our drummer plays a custom DW kit with hand-tuned heads” is not a useful input-list note. Save it for the bio.
Vague mic requests. “We want a really nice mic on the kick” — pick one and say so. Most venues stock Beta 52A, Beta 91A, AKG D112, or SM91.
Stage plots drawn in Word. Use any free tool that produces a labeled, top-down picture (Stage Mixer, Stagewrite, plain-old Apple Notes with a hand-drawn sketch — anything is better than “drums in the back”).
Channels out of patch order. Group drum inputs together. Then bass. Then guitars. Then keys. Then vocals. Then playback. The engineer will renumber it anyway if you don’t — save them the work.
“Whatever the venue has.” If you’re sure you don’t care, say so — but specify “house standard” or “engineer’s choice” rather than leaving columns blank.

The patch sheet (what the touring tech actually needs)

A patch sheet is the touring band’s internal version of the input list. It maps each channel on your console to the physical port on the stage box and the cable run on stage. Without it, setup at every show involves “which cable goes where again?”

For a touring rig, the patch sheet rarely changes — same channels, same mics, same cabling, every show. That’s exactly the document IEM Rig exports as a PDF: every port on every rack component labeled with what it connects to, ready to hand off to a crew that’s never seen the rig before.

Keep them in sync across rehearsal → load-in → soundcheck

Rehearse with the production version. If a new vocal channel gets added at the last rehearsal, the input list gets updated that same night.
Send the rider a week out. Five working days minimum, especially for venues with limited mic stock.
Print extras. Bring two paper copies of the input list to load-in. The monitor engineer and the FOH engineer both want one in front of them. Email is not a substitute when the venue Wi-Fi is bad.
Mark up changes at soundcheck. A pen on the printed sheet. The marked-up version is the authoritative one for the rest of the day.

How IEM Rig fits in

Drop the band’s gear into the planner. The export gives you a printable patch sheet with every port labeled and a signal-flow page showing what connects to what. You can attach it to your input list and email the whole package to the venue.

Stage Plots and Input Lists That Sound Engineers Actually Want