Worship Tracks

I was teaching a seminar on building youth worship teams at the Thriving Musician Summit in Sacramento, CA last week and the topic of using worship tracks came up.

Many in the seminar were struggling to find musicians who could play instruments well enough to help out with worship. According to a recent survey by CCLI, this is the biggest challenge facing worship leaders.

Only a couple of people in the seminar were utilizing worship tracks either by themselves or with accompanying vocals or live instruments. This seems like a decent option of you have no players. Are any of you using tracks to carry or enhance your worship services? If so, how is it working?

Comments

[JonJon]

Hello

Yes, we use tracks to "enhance" our worship experience, we have a live drummer, live guitar, live bass, live keys and two part harmonies, we add a lot of "drum loops' from some old drum machines to change it up abit during intros and verses.

as for replacing players, as a worshiper I would prefer a single guy with a guitar or with another girl singing back up, then two people up on stage with a bunch of mysterious music going on behind them.

just my two sense.

:)

[Tyler]

I agree.

[pistevo.com]

not exactly what you're asking, but on one particular sunday i only had one other team member in town. i busted out my mac and ran iDrum (m-audio's drum machine for mac) and tried to remember what i could from piano lessons when i was 6 years old to hack at the keyboard. outstanding response from the congregation.

i see a movement towards, even if you have your full band, using more technology in worship music. i'm not just talking about my frankensteined piezo hello kitty stratocaster acoustic. the biggest thing you're usually missing is a rhythm section. the travel schedules of my san francisco church team are insane so even if you have talented people they're not always around. we're going to start using ableton live in our sets as i'll be picking up an akai mpk49 this weekend. i'd encourage those that might be doing it alone or with two people to see if they can learn looping beats and rhythms. i think it will almost make people see a bigger need if you were running ableton alone and they might start learning or stepping up to the plate.

[Russell Martin]

I have run into this same question asked of me and I think there are definitely some pros and cons. I have used some tracks but only for rehearsal purposes. We got the SPIN Subscription and it was nice because I could rehearse with the band, and send the vocals off to learn a new song to the track. When we came back together we had worked on the same song, number of times through, key etc.
I could see it being used to "fill in" a group but I think it is more genuine and original if you can find or create arrangements that fit the group you have.

[josh bayne]

is that stat from part of a bigger ccli worship survey? i'd love to get my hands on the whole thing if available.

can you point me in that direction?

thanks,

josh

[Michael]

Honestly, I'm not a big fan. I understand that there is sometimes a lack of musicians who are both able and willing to commit to a ministry--however, I would prefer a lone voice and a guitar or piano to singing along with canned music.

[Robin]

We have many members willing to sing but don't even have a full time organist for the traditional service. All our music both contemporary and traditional is canned. Our members don't seem to mind it but I would like to be able to change tempos from time to time. I'm the techie person the runs everything from a computer and sound board in the sound booth. I have run across a device in the Cokesbury catalog that would allow me to not only to change tempo, but keys, too. However using canned music is causing a blending of the contemporary and traditional in all our services. So except for the tempo problems I have had, I enjoy using canned music.

[Alicia]

I use multitracks for our youth worship services. It's nice to allow the students who are not up to par with their playing to be able to play along and the worship set not "fall apart" or lack the professional sound. The energy, no matter who is playing is always there. I use my Macbook with Abelton Live and can change the key and change the tempo and also set markers to repeat a chorus if wanted. Usually I have a live drummer, live bass, and the vocals are live... we rotate the other instrumentalists and have the ability to play with electric guitars, acoustic guitars and have pads and loops playing. For our students who are used to going to high energy concerts and having excellent music they know that they will get the same thing when they come to youth group. We looked into purchasing some from Interactive Worship Live or North Point, but have found that recording our own works best for us to get the arrangement that we desire and just spending time on them instead of money.

[^markonthe3]

I mix them in with live music. We don't have drums just yet and on the more lively songs, a piano and accoustic guitar just doesn't cut it. I make videos with them, too and use that from time to time and it's a nice change.