Enhancing Your Current Worship with Multitracks

PASTOR JEFF O’GUIN, LIFESPRING CHURCH, DAYTON, OH
STEPHEN O’GUIN, PALMWOOD CHURCH, OVIEDO, FL

Many churches today consist of instrumentalists and vocalists to lead their Sunday morning worship. But how do you produce a “full sound” (like the volume an organ can produce) when you only have, say, a guitarist and a keyboardist? Your church may not have the resources or multiple volunteers and the recent epidemic hasn’t made it easier. What is available to help supplement this need? One solution is to use multitracks.

What are multitracks? Multitracks, formerly called backing tracks, are a collection of pre-recorded individual instrumental parts of a song: drums, guitars, bass, keyboard, piano, etc that you play along with. Some multitracks even include harmony or background vocal parts. These sell for approximately $15-$40 per song as either MP3 or WAV files. There could also be a monthly subscription cost. If you know how to use some basic recording software, you can even create them yourself.

Each individual file is called a “stem.“ The stems for a song are imported into free apps like Prime, by loopcommunity.com or Playback by multitracks.com or into a DAW (digital audio workstation). Then, you play the multitracks through your sound system and play along. We suggest utilizing a click track (or metronome) to stay in time with the recording. You can use headphones or in-ear monitors to listen without having the metronome come through your floor monitors. For example, Pastor Jeff’s team uses in-ear monitors so they can listen to the click track. His team consists of singers, guitarists, and a drummer. They may use tracks filled with synthesizers for a larger sound, or even an instrument when someone can’t make it to church. For Stephen’s team, only Stephen listens to the click track and everyone stays in time with him. Stephen has prerecorded drums, bass guitar, electric guitars, and piano to create the “full band” sound with one person. Even larger teams can use tracks to make their sound even more grand. We both have found that our congregations enjoy the additional instruments and fuller worship music.

To learn more, you can check out the sites above who can give a little more introduction. You can also search Youtube where other churches have posted DIY videos. Consider adding multitracks to the repertoire of your worship technology. You probably will be glad you did.