Recently, churches have begun to use worship tracks to back their band. Worship backing tracks are used to make your worship experience sound fuller.
A problem that arises with worship backing tracks is that they can be difficult to understand and learn. Worship backing tracks can be a great addition to your worship services, but they must be executed well to sound good.
Furthermore, smaller churches don’t always have the budget to afford worship tracks, and it might feel like they need a full-time worker to help manage the tracks. In this article, I will help you to understand worship tracks and give you some recommendations on how to do them well.
Why Worship Backing Tracks are Helpful for Small Churches
Worship backing tracks can elevate your worship experience. Many churches have great musicians. They have the resources to put on a good live worship experience, but worship tracks add an extra to your worship services.
A huge issue facing churches is a lack of musicians, but using worship backing tracks can help solve that problem. You might have a whole worship team or maybe you just have a few musicians, using worship backing tracks can help your fill and add to any holes that you have.
New songs have become more and more instrumentally complex. New electronic instruments and sounds make it difficult to reproduce the sound of the original studio recording, but worship tracks can help a small band supplement those instruments and sounds that you might not have.
Sometimes band members have to drop out last minute, but worship backing tracks can serve as a band-aid for that missing band member. If a band member has an emergency, your worship leaders will have the safety net of the worship backing track to help them keep the service sounding good.
Although those situations are not good, they are sometimes an unavoidable reality. Because sometimes band members drop out or our band is too small, the worship backing tracks can help your team continue to run smoothly.
How to Get Backing Tracks
Getting backing tracks is pretty simple. You just need to find a track website that has the song that you want to play and purchase it. From there, you can download all of the files that are associated with that track.
What Comes With a Backing Track Download
The things that the download gives you might differ depending on the software that you use. The download should include the tracks and some extra items to help you out.
Each backing track download should come with “stems”, which are individualized tracks for each instrument. You will get “stems” for acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and the rest of the band.
Some software comes with stems for lead vocals, but you should just leave those out. The vocals sound better live.
You should also get a click track that has vocal cues. The click track is used to keep tempo, so you can put it in the band’s in-ear system to help them keep track of where they are in the song.
Where to Get Backing Tracks
There are a few different options for backing tracks. Each option might be similar with slight differences that set each one apart.
MultiTrack
MultiTracks is the biggest worship backing track software. MultiTracks is used by hundreds of churches across the world, and it is a great option for church backing tracks.
It is the premier choice because it has great service and tons of options. It has its audio player and you can even get chord charts from the songs. You can grab song lyrics and a chord chart from the website to help your entire worship band prepare and execute a great worship set.
There is one major drawback for MultiTracks when it comes to small churches. MultiTracks might be out of the price range of most small churches. Each song can cost up to $39, which might not seem too bad, but whenever you are planning a worship service with 3 songs, it can get pricey. Furthermore, their Playback software is an additional monthly cost.
MultiTracks even has a subscription service that allows your church a certain number of tracks for each month. This can be useful, as it is the best way to streamline the track’s buying process.
MultiTracks is an incredible track provider that offers tons of features, but it is expensive and might not be the best thing for smaller churches.
Loop Community
Another option for worship backing tracks is Loop Community. Loop Community is a company that has tons of songs and might be a great fit for your church.
The pricing of Loop Community is less than MultiTracks. Songs on Loop Community can cost anywhere from $20 to $25, so it is a midrange option for churches that don’t want to spend their entire budget on worship tracks.
Loop Community has a few different tiers of backing tracks. They have community, premium, enhancement, and master. The community is backing tracks made by members of the community, and premium are more official versions. Masters are the closest to the original recording, as they are published by the company that made the song.
Loop Community also has software to run its multitrack with ease. Just like MultiTracks.com, Loop Community is a great choice for ease of use.
Loop Community might be the best option for medium to small-sized churches that are looking for quality on a budget.
Worship Backing Band
The final option that we are covering in this article is Worship Backing Band. Worship Backing Band is a worship track provider that offers high quality tracks for less expensive.
The strong suit of Worship Backing Band is their commitment to low cost. Loop Community and MultiTracks are the highest quality track providers, but Worship Backing Band is much more competitive in their pricing.
They also have software to help you run their tracks. You don’t have to worry about buying a music mixing application, but you can simply put their tracks into their software and run it with ease.
Although it is not as luxurious as its competitors, Worship Backing Band might be the perfect solution for small churches who want worship tracks.
How To Run Backing Tracks
Needed Materials
There are a few things that you need to effectively run worship backing tracks. The backing track, a sound system, a computer, and software to play the backing track are all things that you will need to effectively run multi-tracks.
Devices
The first thing you need to use backing tracks at your church is a device to play the tracks on. Mobile devices and computers can both play tracks. On your phone, the multitrack music app is an easy way to play your tracks. If you have a computer there are other software that you can get to play tracks.
Music Sofware
Ableton is a software that allows you to manage and mix the tracks well. It is a great place because it allows you to take any MIDI file and manipulate it. If you don’t want a certain instrument in the song, you can mute tracks, and they will be taken out of the mix.
In Ableton, you can even adjust the key of the song. Sometimes songs are in difficult keys to sing, so you can adjust them and put them in more friendly keys for your vocalists.
You can even bring an audio file stem up and down in the mix. If you want to have more acoustic or electric guitars, you can easily adjust it in Ableton.
Ableton is essential to running tracks, but it is a great product for adjusting songs in real time. At the tap of a button, you can mute, solo, and manipulate tracks. It is a very powerful tool.
The Backing Track
As covered before, you can get backing tracks from many different providers depending on your budget.
Cables
The next thing that you need to play tracks at your church are cables. Depending on your sound system, you will probably need an aux cable with two outputs, a DMI box, and an XLR cable. You plug the aux into the computer and DMI box, and the XLR cable into the DMI box and the sound board.
A Sound System
The final things you will need are a sound board and speakers. These pieces are essential to being able to play sound and control it.
Closing Thoughts
Backing tracks can really take your church services to the next level because they can help your music director or worship leader fill the set with sound that your worship team might not have access to.
They do really help to create a great musical worship experience for your congregation. It is all about removing distractions to help your congregation praise God.
