Worship Tracks: 5 Most Common Ableton Pitfalls Ableton is an incredibly powerful tool, especially in worship music. Churches of all sizes around the world are using it during live services for a variety of purposes. It enables keyboardists to run synth patches, pianos, and other instruments. But Ableton is also used by worship leaders to run tracks every weekend. Ableton Live can seem very intimidating at first, but it’s much easier than it looks. Once you start using tracks in worship, you won’t turn back.
Ableton Tracks For Worship Instrumental Music
- Lead Worship with Ableton is the #1 way to learn how to utilize the power of Ableton Live for worship ministry. Proven system that has worked for worship leaders across the globe. Walks you through every part of the process step-by-step.gear, software, basic session setup, weekly set list assembly, ProPresenter automation, and Lighting automation.
- Backing tracks for worship. Award-winning backing tracks for churches that want to sing contemporary worship music but don’t have lots of musicians or technical ability. The lowest cost and simplest-to-use backing tracks on the market.
So you want to get started with worship backing tracks or MultiTracks, also called ‘virtual bands’.
There is no shortage of advice and recommendations out there. A lot of it is from software vendors or worship backing track providers, or is just written about a single worship accompaniment tracks software or solution. While this can be helpful, most of these articles really don’t start where they should, which is with your ministry and your situation.
So here’s what you should be starting with: What are you hoping to get out of MultiTracks?
I’ll leave the debates about whether you should do MultiTracks to others. Instead, let’s focus on what these worship tracks can do for you.
The first thing to keep in mind is this: MultiTracks (or any steps you take in worship) should be used to help your ministry find its best expression for your church body. They should help you find your sound and grow your abilities, and they should help you serve. This is not to say that your sound can’t benefit from using someone else’s sound. It may well do so. But, if you’re using worship music accompaniment tracks to take on a sound that is not yours, and doesn’t relate to your body, it will not take you where you want to go.
So, with the right goals in mind, what can these worship tracks systems do for you? Many times, worship musicians think about only the performance aspect of MultiTracks. But there are several ways this technology can be used in addition to live performance:
Worship backing tracks can enhance your sound
They can add instruments you may not have, or may not have for a specific service. They can provide skilled worship music accompaniment tracks such as pads, rhythm lines, or strings or synths. They can also reinforce what you do have by adding strength or solidity—kind of like how a strong choir member can help the weaker ones sing better. They can do this either with pre-recorded music (worship song tracks of artists’ studio originals) or with your own recorded music—helping you to create your own sound in a repeatable manner.
Worship song tracks can help you automate things to reduce human error or tedious work
Some MultiTrack systems can automate lyric or chord presentation. Some can automate lighting commands. Some can automate playing pads between songs. Using the structure of a worship backing tracks system can help you establish and share set lists, and help musicians arrive ready to go, with everything well-planned in advance. With some systems, this can include chord charts and planned arrangements as well. Some worship accompaniment tracks systems have built-in ‘band mix’ features, creating a simplified version of a full mixer board out of a standard stereo jack for churches with limited resources.
Worship tracks can help your team get better
Learning to play to a click is helpful for most musicians in worship settings, and will help to keep the band together. MultiTracks and custom mixes can be used for rehearsal and practice by team members. Acdsee photo studio ultimate 2020 download. Some worship song tracks systems can duplicate the performance environment at home, helping musicians be familiar with the set and ready to play.
There are also some negative things MultiTracks can do. They are computer automation, and they can fail to work. A computer may crash. The automation may cause confusion, similar to an airplane cockpit when things go wrong. The band may get off the click. The sound may not work for your church body. Like anything else in your service, having a plan for these situations is a good thing.
More useful tips when starting out
You also should consider hardware—both for performance, and for individual rehearsal. How will you control the tracks? Will the system also be handling lyrics? Chords? How will this setup work? How will the audio work in your sound system?
With all the possibilities for MultiTracks, you should definitely view using them as a journey. What you do with worship accompaniment tracks may grow as you learn to use them. If you think your usage will grow, then your investments—in software, in tracks, in hardware, and time—should be made with growth in mind. If you are not sure, your best bet is to invest little at first, and also to start simple.
You can start, for instance, with just using pads in a simple player app or program. You can start with a system designed to add only minimal accompaniment at low cost, such as the iSingWorship app. Some apps such as Worship Backing Band, LoopCommunity Prime, and MultiTracks Playback give you a consistent framework and content experience, but at a higher track cost. Some use content you own (and can therefore use as you grow into other systems), and some trade this flexibility of track ownership for lower cost.
If your goals are to use MultiTracks to the max, you can start by exploring a full featured system like Worshipsong Band, FlyWorship, or even Ableton Live. You will definitely spend more time learning, but you can end up achieving more goals in the end with these systems. They key is growth. Before you invest, try to envision where you might want to be in a year or two, and plan your investments accordingly.
If you are read this expecting a cookbook approach to how to employ MultiTracks, please don’t leave disappointed. If you open up the cookbook without an idea of the meal you want, you will end up eating something you didn’t intend. Take the time to set your goals, decide what trade-offs you want to make on the way to achieve them, then embark. There is plenty of detailed information available. You can get it directly from worship tracks system providers you are interested in, or, if you want to survey the choices, check out these resources dedicated to covering these topics in depth:
About the Author
This is a guest post by Mark Snyder—a songwriter, worship leader, and software developer active in resourcing churches with new technologies for musicians and bands. Click here to read more of his writing.
Recently my wife and I started off on a new adventure. We are planting a church. This is my 3rd church plant and this was the first time I didn’t have musicians for the new church. Before I could always lead worship myself if I had to. However as I have gotten older, my skills as a musician have diminished and my voice is not what it used to be. I wouldn’t call it “good enough” anymore. So I started looking for options. One of the technologies that I had become aware of was worship multitracks. However, most of those options were more expensive than our church plant could afford.
That led me to have to start digging to find some low-cost alternatives to Ableton Live Performance and the Prime App used by Loop Community.
Ableton Live performance is an expensive piece of software and does a lot of things well but its learning curve is steep. It was going to take me a lot of time to learn how to use it and the worship multitracks that work with it are expensive. They range around 20 bucks a song. This wouldn’t work for us. That would have been 800 bucks for the songs plus the cost of the software.
The Prime App used by Loop Community is free but it only works on Apple Products. That meant that I needed to buy an iPad and then still buy the expensive worship multitracks. The tracks range from 10 dollars to 30 dollars. Still too far out of our budget.
Free Multitrack Software
Some of the worship multitrack companies offer free apps but only work on their multitracks. That ends up tying you into buying their tracks. I needed a solution that was 100% free, or at least under a hundred bucks or so. Finally, I found a solution.
The app is called WorshipSong Band. It works on both PC and Mac. It not only plays tracks but will display the lyrics to your projector or flat-screen as well. It also allows you to import tracks from other providers. I have used it and it works quite well. The only hiccup I experienced was when I tried to start the next song before it had fully loaded. That will cause the program to freeze but once realizing that and being a little patient, (2 seconds worth), the software worked like a charm.
The second thing I needed was free praise and worship tracks. They have 68 free multitracks at WorshipSong. Now most of them are not today’s top 40 Christian worship hits, but they have a great selection of songs with solid lyrics that are easy to learn and full of worship to God.
Free Ableton Tracks
Our first gathering service was on a Sunday night last October. We had 12 people, great worship, and just my wife leading worship. It went well.
Click Track Ableton Live
So if you are a church plant, small church, or just want to practice leading worship, this is the solution for you. This will get you started until you grow large enough to afford some of the other praise and worship multitracks out there.
This article originally appeared here, and is used by permission.