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Does your church regularly have string players on stage? It’s worth asking whether your mix reflects what’s actually being played.
There was a time when being exposed using pre-recorded tracks in a live performance was a career-ending event. For those of us old enough to remember, the Milli Vanilli “skip heard around the world” or Ashlee Simpson’s infamous SNL debacle were both total crash-and-burn moments. I was touring in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Even then some artists were using backing tracks. To a few tech savvy audience members down near the front of the stage who could hear click tracks coming from wedges and side fills, this was scandalous. The perception at that time was that if any portion of the performance was pre-recorded then all of it was fraud. But for the most part it went unnoticed by audiences. The saving grace for those acts was that there was no widely accessible internet to spread accusations and out-them for using tracks. No chance of some video going viral. Use of tracks back then was pretty simplistic, just filler, maybe a hint of gang vocals, keyboard beds, and repetitive drum loops. Either from necessity or integrity, touring acts then were playing about 90% of what was heard in those arenas and festivals. Nothing compared to what is standard in even the most basic live shows now. You’re as likely to hear tracks in small bars and coffee shops as you are on large arena tours nowadays.
More tracks don’t make a better mix. The goal isn’t to use everything—it’s to use what actually supports the moment.
Even though backing tracks are now common in almost every musical performance, most churches still want to present at least a plausible level of authenticity.
The first time I encountered backing tracks in church, the setup was primitive by today’s standards. An iPod; the left output was click, and the right output was the music. One mono track with everything already blended together, and I use “blended” loosely. No stems. No flexibility. You could turn it up or down, maybe shape it a little with EQ and compression, and that was about it.
If everything is in the mix, nothing stands out—and the elements that matter most can easily get buried under everything else
We’ve come a long way since then. Now it’s common to download 40 or even 60 individual tracks for a single song, typically bussed down into 8, 12, or 16 channels feeding the FOH and broadcast mixes. An entire industry has emerged to support the hardware, software, and licensing behind this process. Companies like MultiTracks.com and LoopCommunity.com provide excellent resources along with professionally recorded content that is easy to implement. Thanks to improving technology and healthy competition, the use of tracks is now accessible to churches of almost any size and budget.
That is great. But like so many things in our worship tech culture, the ubiquitous nature of this technology can easily be over-done. In many scenarios the overuse of tracks creates more problems than it solves.
I’m not here to debate whether using them is ethical or not. I don’t see a world where this genie gets put back in the bottle. I have my thoughts and my biases on how much is enough or too much, and I’ll touch on that, but for now I believe that each individual church should make their own decision about how much or how little they want to use the “tracks” tool. What I hope to do here is discuss the challenges we face when implementing tracks and how to best manage that content so whatever portion of tracks you use you can make wise decisions.
Routing Consistency (and Level Matching)
One of the simplest ways to create chaos with tracks is inconsistent routing. If guitars appear on channel nine this week but show up on channel twelve next week, or even on the next song, audio engineers are forced to play whack-a-mole with instruments. Imagine if, on the third song of the worship set, your bass guitar and piano suddenly swapped channels. It sounds crazy, right? But that’s exactly what happens when track routing isn’t standardized.
Just as routing should be predictable, so should track levels. Tracks are often downloaded from multiple sources, produced by different studios, and recorded at very different levels. One song, or even individual tracks within the same song, may arrive significantly hotter than the next. Preparing tracks ahead of rehearsal allows someone to correct those differences before Sunday. Once routing is consistent and levels are reasonably matched, the engineer mixing the service can focus on the music instead of chasing random instrumentation or sudden level spikes.
If the band stops playing and nothing changes, something’s wrong
Whether you use a large number of track inputs or just a few, take the time to standardize your routing. That step alone will give your audio engineers reliable consistency.
Example of a 14-output track routing layout
1–2 Stereo keyboards / pads / synths
3–4 Stereo piano
5–6 Stereo strings / orchestra
7 Mono electric guitar 1
8 Mono electric guitar 2
9–10 Stereo acoustic instruments (acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, etc.)
11–12 Stereo percussion (shakers, claps, loops, auxiliary percussion)
13 Mono guide track (verbal guide)
14 Mono click track
How you decide to route (or bus) the many available tracks into whatever number of input channels your system allows is usually limited only by your hardware. Fourteen channels may seem like a lot, but it’s not uncommon to see even more dedicated to tracks in some worship environments.
In most scenarios there will be multiple instruments in the track package that simply don’t play well together when they’re combined improperly. For example, notice above that electric guitars are assigned to two mono channels, while acoustic instruments live in their own stereo pair. That’s intentional. The sonic characteristics of electric and acoustic guitars are vastly different. The only thing they really share is the name. Putting them on the same channel would force too many EQ and level compromises.
The same concept applies to piano versus keyboard or synth parts. Those instruments often occupy very different parts of the frequency spectrum, and having independent control avoids unnecessary compromises in the mix.
Looking again at the guitar channels, notice there are two separate electric guitar inputs. I typically treat one as a “lead” channel, which may contain more than one guitar part from the source tracks, and the other as rhythm electric guitar. If both parts were combined onto a single channel, any time I needed to bring up a lead line I would also be turning up the rhythm guitar along with it.
Keeping those elements separated gives the engineer far more control once the service begins. Which brings us to the critical element in getting the best results.
Curating the Tracks (Separating the Filler from the Realer)
I worked with a church once that was trying to improve their track playback system. The musicians were excellent, but the moment the tracks started the problem was obvious. Five or six electric guitar tracks were feeding into the stereo guitar inputs while two live guitar players were already on stage. Several keyboard layers were routed into another stereo pair while a live keyboard player was performing many of the same parts.
Nothing about the setup was technically wrong. The routing itself was correct. But it illustrated an important point: proper routing alone cannot solve all your problems. It’s only the starting point.
The well-meaning worship leader had simply used the default routing groups provided by the track software. Guitars were routed to the guitar bus, keyboards to the keyboard bus, strings to the string bus, and percussion to the percussion bus. What she didn’t realize was that multiple electric guitars, acoustic guitars, lead parts, rhythm parts, and additional layers were all feeding into the same guitar channels. Several piano and keyboard tracks were also stacked together in the keyboard pair.
The result was a wall of sound before the actual band members even played a note. With an inexperienced team, it’s easy to assume that if the tracks came from the original artist they must all be important. In reality, the result was a cacophonous mess.
Track providers almost always include everything from the original recording session. Every guitar overdub. Every keyboard layer. Every atmospheric pad. That’s generous, but it also means the church receives far more material than it likely needs.
A friend of mine jokingly calls the process of sorting through those tracks “separating the filler from the realer.” I prefer to call it curating the tracks. Simply put, not every element included in the download needs to be part of the live service. The tracks you purchase or license are essentially raw multitrack session elements. It’s not unusual to see eight or ten guitar parts that were never intended to be heard at the same level, or even at the same time.
No one is going to curate those tracks for you.
It has to be done, so don’t leave it up to just anybody. If possible, that responsibility should live at the staff level with someone who understands song structure, musical arrangement, and how the tracks will interact with the musicians on stage. It also helps to have someone who understands how those tracks will translate through the PA and broadcast systems, and who has a realistic sense of both the musicians’ and the audio team’s capabilities.
The curation process should involve removing duplicate parts that are already being played on stage, eliminating distracting ear candy, and simplifying or removing headroom-robbing keyboard and synth layers.
Worship teams that take the time to review and simplify their tracks before rehearsal usually end up with a much cleaner result. Removing unnecessary layers allows the engineer and the musicians to work together instead of competing with a pile of pre-recorded content.
The Millennium Falcon
Track providers are going to give you far more building blocks than you actually need. Think of it like a box of Legos meant to build the Millennium Falcon. You can build a lean version that clearly looks like the Millennium Falcon. Or you can use every single Lego in the box and end up with something bloated that barely resembles the original design.
Just because something exists in the recording doesn’t mean it will make your mix better. More is almost never better. When mixing audio to encourage congregational engagement, space is what moves people, not density. Overuse of tracks eats up that space quickly. Before long the mix may be louder, but the sound is actually smaller.
Curating your tracks, majoring on the majors, not only clarifies the mix but it also helps clarify the mission of the worship band.
It’s All About the Team, Not the Tracks
On more than one occasion I’ve heard talented, committed volunteer musicians wonder aloud, “With all those tracks, why are we even here?” In certain scenarios, it’s a legitimate question. There’s something discouraging about being in a rehearsal when the band stops playing but the tracks keep rolling and you can still hear almost every instrument.
If the tracks are curated carefully and limited to what’s actually needed, the musicians on stage can trust that what they’re playing is actually contributing to the worship experience. That tends to make people take their parts more seriously, and that’s a good thing.
For several years I worked with a church that did an excellent job of honoring their people, and I’ve adopted a bit of that attitude myself. You may have heard me quote one of my favorite FOH engineers: “If I need to talk to a musician about their tone or a part they’re playing, the conversation is always better if I know their kids’ names.” Those relationships go both ways. A “we’re in this together” culture makes you think twice before turning down a friend in the mix while turning up a pre-recorded track. I know there are worship environments where that trade-off is acceptable. Honestly, that would be a hard place for me to work. If that is unprofessional, well, I’m guilty.
Are there lines a worship ministry won’t cross when it comes to tracks? When it comes to lead vocals or frontline singers, using tracks is a bridge too far for me. And I think that’s the case for a lot of churches.
If the decision is within my power, I will always honor the musicians and singers on stage over the tracks.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not advocating for using tracks or not using them. I’m advocating for using them wisely, regardless of how simple or sophisticated your system may be. In either environment these simple steps help ensure your tracks enhance worship instead of working against it:
Manage routing and levels.
Curate the tracks.
Honor your people.
And as always, don’t forget to listen.
