How to Keep Venue Notes Organised as a Working Band
Every venue has quirks. The PA is excellent but the monitors are poor. There's no loading bay. You only have to learn these things once — if you write them down.
Venues all feel different. The stage is small, the sightlines are awkward, the PA is excellent but the monitors are poor, or there's no loading bay and you carry everything through the bar. These details matter — and you only have to experience them once to know them, but only if you write them down.
What Makes a Good Venue Note
At minimum: the venue name and address, the contact person and their number, the PA situation, load-in details (time, access point, parking), and stage size.
Beyond the basics: acoustic characteristics of the room, typical crowd and what tends to work there, sound engineer quality if there's a house engineer, green room situation, and any quirks that aren't obvious until you've done the show.
How Venue Notes Save Time Over Time
Your first time at a venue involves discovering things the hard way. Your second time at the same venue should be smooth, fast, and low on surprises — but only if you wrote down what you learned the first time.
Over a gigging career, a venue library becomes genuinely useful. You know which rooms need more bass from the PA, which stages need a smaller setup, which venues have a great house engineer.
Tagging Venue Notes in Dashplan
Dashplan Notes can be tagged by venue, so everything about a particular room is in one place. Add notes after each show, and by your third or fourth visit you have a comprehensive picture of what to expect and what to bring.
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