The Cultivation Foundation Seal
Front of House · Module 8 of 8 · 2 hours

Load-in to load-out

The advance, the setup, the strike — and composure when a channel dies four minutes before doors.

8 lessons · 3 paper · 5 the room

Every lesson is read, then do, then check.

The check carries its answer underneath it. Look only after you have tried — the attempt is what teaches, not the answer.

Lesson 1 of 8Paper · Needs nothing but a pen

The advance

Read
Most of the job happens before you arrive. The advance is the conversation where you find out what the room has, what the band brings, how many inputs you need, where the power is and what time you can get in. A good advance turns a show day into a routine; no advance turns it into an emergency you will be blamed for. The habit that distinguishes professionals is that they ask the awkward questions a week early instead of discovering the answers on the day.
Do
Write the advance questions you would send to a venue for a ten-piece band. Then write the ones you would send the band about the venue. Aim for the questions whose answers would change what you pack.
Check

What does a good advance actually buy you?

Lesson 2 of 8Paper · Needs nothing but a pen

Counting the channels before you load the truck

Read
This is what the advance is for. The questions are not politeness, they are arithmetic. Add up every source the band will put on stage — every drum microphone, every amplifier, every DI, every vocal — and you have the input count. Compare it to the desk you were going to bring. Do not take a sixteen-channel desk to a twenty-eight-input show. Finding that out at load-in means an hour of improvising in front of a band who are now watching you, and a kit that ends up under-miked because there was nowhere to put it. Finding it out a week early means you bring the right desk, or you plan a sub mix, or you tell the band plainly what they will have to share. A professional company is not one that improvises well. It is one that knew what was coming through the door, because it asked.
Do
Advance a show on paper. Write the questions that produce an input count, then total it. Now decide what you would actually load: which desk, whether a sub mix is needed, how many wedges and how many mixes. Do it for a four-piece and again for a nine-piece and notice where the gear changes.
Check

You counted twenty-eight inputs and you own a sixteen-channel desk. Name two legitimate ways to run the show.

Lesson 3 of 8Paper · Needs nothing but a pen

Reading an input list and a stage plot

Read
An input list is every source in order with what it needs: channel number, source, microphone or DI, and whether it needs phantom power. A stage plot is the same information drawn from above, so everyone can see who stands where and which wedge belongs to whom. Together they let a crew who have never met set a stage correctly before the band arrives. Being able to read them is step one; being the person who produces a clear one is how you become the person asked back.
Do
Take a real input list and stage plot and set a stage from them on paper: every microphone, every DI, every wedge, every cable run. Then find the one thing the documents do not tell you, because there always is one.
Check

What is the point of an input list if the engineer already knows the band?

Lesson 4 of 8The room · Needs real equipment · the Depot

Power, and where not to plug in

Read
Audio equipment and lighting equipment on the same circuit is a classic source of buzz, because dimmers put electrical noise onto the line that arrives in your system as a hum you cannot EQ out. Keep audio on its own circuit where you can. Everything should share a common earth — equipment fed from genuinely different supplies can produce both hum and a real shock risk between a microphone and an instrument. If something is beyond you, that is the correct moment to say so rather than to improvise.
Do
At the Depot, find where the audio system is powered from and whether the lighting shares it. Then write down what you would ask a venue about power during the advance.
Check

A constant hum appears when the lights come up. Where do you look first?

Lesson 5 of 8The room · Needs real equipment · the Depot

Cable runs nobody trips on

Read
A cable across a walkway is a liability and a show-stopper: somebody catches it and a channel dies mid-song, or somebody falls. Runs go along walls and under or behind rather than across. Where crossing is unavoidable, it gets taped down fully or matted, not half-taped at the ends. Label both ends of long runs. This is also the most visible thing about your work to everyone who is not a sound engineer, including the person deciding whether to book you again.
Do
At the Depot, plan and run the cable for a stage, then walk the room as an audience member and find every place somebody could catch something. Fix those, then have somebody else try to find one you missed.
Check

Why tape a crossing fully rather than at the ends?

Lesson 6 of 8The room · Needs real equipment · the Depot

Line check

Read
Line check is not soundcheck. It is proving, before anybody plays, that every single channel is arriving — you go down the list, channel by channel, and confirm each one makes a sound. It is dull and it is the most valuable fifteen minutes of the day, because a dead channel found at line check is a thirty-second fix, and the same dead channel found during the first song is a visible failure in front of an audience.
Do
At the Depot, line-check a full stage against a written input list. Mark each channel off as you confirm it. Then have an instructor break one and do it again, and notice how the written list is what saves you.
Check

What is the difference between line check and soundcheck?

Lesson 7 of 8The room · Needs real equipment · the Depot

Strike and pack so the next show starts clean

Read
How you pack decides how the next show begins. Cable coiled over-under and tied, microphones back in their own case, everything labeled, nothing damaged left in with the working equipment. The crew that strikes well is the crew that gets called back, and the person who leaves a dead cable in the box without marking it has cost the next person twenty minutes and some dignity.
Do
Strike a stage completely and then open every case and ask whether the next person could work from it cold. Find one thing that would have slowed them down and fix it.
Check

Why does the strike matter if the show already went well?

Lesson 8 of 8The room · Needs real equipment · the Depot

Four minutes before doors, a channel dies

Read
This will happen. What matters is what you do in the next sixty seconds. You do not announce it, you do not panic, and you do not start swapping parts at random. You walk the chain — which is module 1, which is why module 1 is first — find the link, and fix it or route around it. If it cannot be fixed in time, you tell the band plainly what they have and what they do not, before the show, in one sentence. Composure is a learnable skill and it is most of what people mean when they call somebody professional.
Do
At the Depot, under a real clock, have an instructor break something four minutes before a simulated door time. Work it. Then say out loud what you would tell the band, in one sentence, and have somebody judge whether it was clear and calm.
Check

You cannot fix it in time. What do you do?

For whoever is teaching it

Instructor notes

  1. This module is only two hours and five of its eight lessons need the room. Pair it with the capstone day rather than teaching it cold.
  2. The advance is the least glamorous and most valuable lesson here. Adult students with any work experience understand it immediately — lean on that.
  3. Have them produce an input list and stage plot, not just read one. Use a real tech pack from a working band as the model rather than a textbook example — real ones are messier and teach more.
  4. Power is the one place a student can hurt themselves. Teach the limit explicitly: knowing when to stop and ask is part of the competence, not a gap in it.
  5. Line check gets skipped by beginners because it feels like a delay. Make them do it against a written list every single time until it is automatic.
  6. The four-minutes drill is the closest thing in the course to the real job. Use a real clock and real pressure, and debrief on composure as well as the fix.
  7. End the tier by pointing back at module 1. The drill is only survivable because of the chain, and students should feel the course closing a loop.

Slide running order

What goes on the screen.

  1. An advance email, annotated with why each question is there
  2. An input list and the stage plot it corresponds to, side by side
  3. Audio and lighting on one circuit, hum arriving in the system
  4. A cable crossing: taped fully, taped at the ends, and bare
  5. A line-check list being ticked off channel by channel
  6. A case packed well and a case packed badly
  7. A clock at four minutes, and the chain being walked

If you want more

Extra credit

  1. Write the advance for a show you have actually attended. Compare what you would have needed to know with what you could see on the night.
  2. Build an input list and stage plot for a band you know. Give it to somebody else and see whether they can set the stage from it alone.
  3. Next event you attend, look only at the cable runs and the tape. You will never stop noticing it after this.
The capstone · run a live show →All eight modules