Why use multi-tracks during worship? The simple answer here is “flexibility.” With the right hardware, a worship team of just a few people can approach tour sound quality audio thanks to technology that plugs multitrack recording stems into your front-of-house audio console. Don’t have a bassist this weekend? No biggie—use the bass track. Don’t have any electric guitarists? Yes you do—they’re in the multi-tracks.
Multi-tracks also help “lift” marginally talented volunteers by giving them a track to practice alongside, parts to hear and learn, and the comfort of “playing with” the studio musicians during the live performance. This “lift” streamlines weekly rehearsals, vastly improving the time it takes to find “the feel” for songs going into weekend production.
All that being said, the process to integrate multi-tracks into your live sets can be a little overwhelming if you’ve never done it before. Church Production has you covered, and we’re going to start with an offering from multitracks.com, an app called “Playback.”
The Easy App: Playback
Playback, the proprietary app from multitracks.com, easily integrates your MultiTrack purchases into a user-friendly iOS, Mac or PC interface, which keeps true to the app’s tagline, “Powerful enough for the largest churches in the world and simple enough for any volunteer.”
Ableton will look like someone took the controls of an alien spaceship and turned them into an Excel spreadsheet.
From the app’s main screen, you can easily add tracks or pads to your setlist, edit transitions between tracks, and mix specific instruments or vocals within each track. Playback breaks up songs into their various sections (verse, chorus, bridge, etc) and allows you to move them around or duplicate them for custom arrangements, and the whole interface can be controlled via MIDI if you’d like to use a foot pedal or drum pad to fire tracks.
Playback does require some extra gear, particularly an interface that will connect your tablet to your audio console. You can use a small interface that simply feeds left, right, and click/cue into your console, or you can choose a heftier interface that allows you to feed separate instruments from your tracks into your audio console inputs. MultiTracks created a list of supported interfaces so that you can know you’re making a worthwhile purchase.
Pros & Cons
To be honest, I’ve just scratched the surface of everything Playback can do, so if you want an affordable and reasonably simple way to integrate Multitracks into your worship setlists, Playback is a great app for you and your team.
The simple con is that Playback is only so flexible when it comes to arranging songs. Yes, you can edit the order of arrangements, but sometimes that gets weird when the end of one section is quieter than the beginning of the next section, which makes for awkward audio situations.
Of minor note, the iPad app requires a chunky dongle that can both power the iPad and connect it to your interface, which is ugly. It’s manageable, but it’s ugly.
You’ll also want an iPad that can handle all that audio, which comes along with an unfortunate price tag. However, if you’re willing to take your time and keep an eye on Amazon, refurbished iPads are affordable.
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Ableton: The Most Control
If you’re not familiar with Ableton, what you need to know is that it’s a digital audio workstation (DAW) designed specifically for live performance. How is that different from other DAWs? Well, other DAWs like Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and Audition are designed for recording and editing. For example, here at LifeMission Church (Olathe, KS), we use Logic Pro to capture our worship audio from the weekend, but we use Ableton for firing multi-tracks and keys patches. I use Audition to capture, edit, and master the Church Production Podcast.
Ableton—while a fully functioning DAW in its own right (you can record, mix, and master songs with it)—allows you to integrate any audio file into live performances. From Ableton alone, our Sunday music directors (MD) change their keys patches, fire looping ambient pads, run our click track, and cue fully customized arrangements of multi-tracks. To boot, once you’ve programmed what you need into your MIDI controller, you basically never have to touch your mouse.
Con: learning curve; Pro: complete control.
There isn’t time in this article to get into the weeds with Ableton, and admittedly, the learning curve is steep. Thankfully, Multitracks.com and several other worship leaders have created templates with full instructions on how to best utilize Ableton for multi-tracks, keys patches, and click tracks.
But if you haven’t used a DAW before, Ableton will look like someone took the controls of an alien spaceship and turned them into an Excel spreadsheet. It will take you 5-10 hours of learning and messing around to get the hang of Ableton basics.
However, like I said, Ableton is a one-stop shop for just about everything you need on a Sunday—keys patches, multi-tracks, ambient pads, and click/cue, and since Ableton is compatible with any MIDI controller you have available, you’re in complete control of what Ableton can do. You can add reverb to audio samples, edit specific tracks to match volumes on duplicated song sections, and a whole host of other effects of any DAW.
The MIDI controller is especially important for volunteers because it means they don’t have to learn how to use Ableton beyond its most basic functions. You can set up Ableton each week and have everything your team needs to use clearly labeled on a MIDI controller. Obviously, anything you can teach them to help troubleshoot in the moment is good, but overall, the weight can be on you, not them.
Learn more about Loop Community at https://loopcommunity.com/
Alternatives
Loop Community presents a different take on multi-tracks by offering not only the original stems that you get at multitracks.com, but also multi-tracks of popular songs made Loop Community Producers at a lower price point.
PraiseCharts also offers multi-tracks, but these are the same tracks you get at multitracks.com, and you can save money at multitracks.com by purchasing credits for songs in bulk, so it might not be the best bet for obtaining your tracks. There’s also no app for playing the tracks, it’s just the stems. PraiseCharts is really designed for teams than want sheet music and tracks with breakdowns of instruments and vocal parts as opposed to playing tracks during worship.
