Concert Production Glossary

The Deal & the Money

Offer

The promoter’s formal bid to book an artist: the date, the venue, the guarantee, the deal structure, and the expense budget behind it. Every number at the settlement table traces back to what was written in the offer.

Guarantee

The fixed fee an artist is paid for performing, regardless of how many tickets sell. The promoter carries the risk of the difference.

Split Point (and overage)

The threshold, defined in the deal, after which the artist begins sharing in ticket revenue on top of the guarantee. Money earned past it is the overage.

Buyout

A cash payment made instead of fulfilling a rider obligation, most commonly handing the tour cash for meals instead of providing catering.

Fly Date

A one-off show a band is flown in for: a corporation, radio station, or festival books them when they are not on tour. Without their buses and trailers they cannot carry full gear or merch, so backline and equipment are sourced locally.

Settlement

The end-of-night meeting where the promoter’s rep and the artist’s rep reconcile the deal: tickets sold, documented expenses against the budget, and the final amount owed. A clean settlement is won weeks earlier, during the advance.

The Paperwork

The Advance

The weeks-long process of confirming every detail of a show before the trucks roll: technical needs, labor, schedule, hospitality, and money. Done right, show day is execution. Done late, it is triage.

Technical Rider

The contract attachment specifying what an artist needs to perform: audio, lighting, video, staging, power, and crew. It is a negotiable document, not an ultimatum; knowing which items are truly non-negotiable is the skill.

Hospitality Rider

The contract attachment covering the human side of the day: dressing rooms, catering, drinks, towels, runners, and day-of comforts. Small on paper, and one of the fastest ways to damage a relationship when it is botched.

Day Sheet

The one-page schedule posted backstage that tells everyone where to be and when: load-in, soundcheck, doors, set times, curfew, and load-out.

The Day

Call Time

The time you are due to work, not the time you roll in. Show up at call ready to go, because missing it means the day started without you.

Load-In

The scheduled call when the production comes off the trucks and into the building, the first domino of show day.

Soundcheck

The artist’s working session to verify and tune the full signal chain in the actual room, before the audience is let in.

Doors

The moment the audience is let into the venue. The stage must be show-ready, and the backstage clock changes from setup time to show time.

Changeover

The reset between acts, when one artist’s gear comes off the stage and the next one’s goes on, usually fifteen to thirty tightly rehearsed minutes.

Load-Out (the strike)

The teardown after the show, when the production goes back in the trucks, often against a hard venue or labor curfew.

Curfew

The hard time by which the show, the noise, or the labor call must end, set by the venue, the city, or the union deal. Blowing it costs real money by the minute.

Guest List (comps)

The list of people admitted without buying tickets. Managed well, nobody mentions it. Managed badly, it becomes a settlement-table argument.

The People

Promoter (buyer / talent buyer)

The person or company that buys the show: books the artist, rents the venue, sells the tickets, and carries the financial risk. Also called the buyer or talent buyer. These days the promoter is usually a company, with multiple buyers doing the booking inside it.

Promoter Rep

The promoter’s on-site representative on show day, the direct connection to the artist’s team, typically handling hospitality, labor, and settlement.

Production Manager

The person who pre-orchestrates every moving piece of a production: budgets, vendors, crew, technical specs, timelines, and contingency plans.

Stage Manager

The person running the deck: every piece moving to the right place at the right time, keeping the day on schedule even when it does not go as planned.

Tour Manager

The artist’s traveling head of operations, responsible for the schedule, the money, the logistics, and the tour’s interests in every building it enters.

FOH (front of house)

Both a place and a person: the mix position out in the audience, and the engineer who mixes what the crowd hears from there.

Runner

A local crew member with a vehicle who handles the production’s errands all day: airport pickups, missing rider items, and last-minute emergencies. A good runner saves show days.

The Audio

Monitor World

The side-stage mix position, and its engineer, feeding each performer a personal mix through wedges or in-ear monitors.

Wedge

The angled floor monitor speaker at a performer’s feet, named for its shape, carrying that performer’s personal mix from Monitor World.

IEM (in-ear monitors)

The earpieces a performer wears instead of a wedge, fed their personal mix wirelessly. A quieter stage and the same mix every night, anywhere in the room.

Feedback

The squeal that happens when sound from a speaker gets back into a microphone: one frequency comes out of the speaker a little louder, re-enters the mic, comes out louder still, and the loop swells until somebody pulls the fader or rings it out.

Backline

The performance gear on stage: amps, drums, keyboards, instruments, as opposed to the PA and production equipment. Usually the band’s own, but on a fly date it is rented locally to spec.

The Room & the Gear

Green Room

The backstage room where artists and their guests wait, separate from the working dressing rooms.

Dressing Room

The artist’s private room for getting ready before the show. The green room is for waiting and guests; the dressing room is the artist’s own space, and who gets which room is settled in the advance.

The House

The venue itself: its staff, its crew, its rules. The house lights are the room’s own lights; when they go down, the show starts.

Laminate (all-access pass)

The credential worn on a lanyard that says where you are allowed to be. An All Access laminate opens every door in the building. Day passes do not.

The Lighting

Dimmer Beach

The lighting department’s home base, usually stage right: dimmer racks, power distro, and the control gear that feeds the rig. It sits opposite Monitor World, which usually lives stage left, so the two departments aren’t fighting over the same real estate.

Electrics (LX)

The lighting crew and everything they hang, power, and control. On paperwork and over the radio it gets shortened to LX.

Followspot

The manually operated spotlight, run from the back or side of the room, that tracks a performer around the stage by hand. The person on it is the spot op.

Moving Light (mover)

An automated fixture that pans, tilts, and changes color and pattern on command, doing the work that once took a dozen fixed lights and a crew of hands.

Truss

The aluminum framework flown overhead that lights, video, and rigging hang from. The whole rig lives on it, which is why the rigging plot gets checked twice.

Gobo

A cut metal or glass template dropped into a light to project a pattern, texture, or logo onto the stage or the backdrop.

Gel (color)

The heat-resistant colored filter placed in front of a light to tint the beam. Old hands still just call it color.

Haze

The fine atmospheric fog pumped into the air so light beams read as solid shafts. No haze, no visible beams, and the whole rig looks half as impressive.

The Rigging & Soft Goods

Points

The marked spots on the deck where rigging drops from the roof, one for each hoist. The rigger chalks them at the start of the day: “I need two points here for the PA.”

Chain Motor (chain hoist)

The electric hoist that raises and lowers the PA, lighting truss, and rigging on its chain. Also called a chain hoist, or just a motor.

Pickle

The handheld control that plugs directly into a chain motor, used to run the chain in and out before and after flying gear. Named for its shape and the way it fits in your hand.

Fly Rail

The operating position for a counterweight fly system, where an operator flies drapes, scenery, and battens in and out by hand.

Batten

The horizontal pipe a fly system raises and lowers, that lights, scenery, or soft goods hang from.

Dead Hang

Rigging fixed at a set height with no motor on it, hung “dead.” It flies once and stays put for the run.

Bridle

Two rigging legs run from a single load up to two separate points, spreading the weight and steering a pickup where one point alone can’t reach.

Soft Goods

The stage drapes: legs, borders, backdrops, and the main. Fabric that masks and dresses the stage, as opposed to framed scenery.

Legs

The tall, narrow drapes hung at the sides of the stage that mask the wings. Yes, the ones in “break a leg.”

Backdrop

The big curtain flown on an upstage batten behind the band, usually carrying the artist’s logo or tour art. It travels with the act, flies in at changeover, and tells the room whose show this is.

The Initiation

None of these are real. They are items you send a new stagehand in search of when you see them on their phone instead of paying attention and asking what they can do to help.

Metric Crescent Wrench

A crescent wrench already opens to any size, metric or standard, so this one can’t exist. Sending a green hand to go borrow one from the lighting department is the oldest gag on the call.

Moving Light Fluid

Moving lights run on power and data, and no fluid is involved. It’s a great initiation when you send a new hand to go borrow a jar from the stage manager.

Cable Stretcher

Summoned whenever a cable comes up a little shy of reaching its destination. Send a hand to go ask the lighting guy to borrow his; it lives in the same drawer as his moving light fluid.