Clicks and Loops

Interest has been expressed in incorporating click tracks and loops with the live music at church. I've got mixed feelings about it. I'm interested to know others' thoughts on this, and whether your church is using click tracks or loops. How has it worked for you?

We've used a click and loops for several years now but we've been without a live bass player for over a year now, so I've been tracking the bass every week and using a click track for every song each week. As long as the playback device has sufficient outputs, volume and processing power for your needs, I say go for it. Depending on the program you are using, you may be stuck with the track and not have the ability to change directions mid song. Ableton Live and Apple Mainstage both allow you to trigger sections at a time and give you flexibility with the arrangement.

I have mixed feelings and we sometimes use both.

Backing track: We started using this early this year. The good: It gives good instructions about what's coming (guitar intro, solo, whatever). The bad: The sound guys turned up the backing part waaaay too much. We vid all of our first services on Sundays. I watched the vid and I heard almost nothing of the live band. My solos.....drowned out 100%. Literally could not hear my guitar whatsoever.

I do like the click track. However, for a very, very bluesey solo I'm doing Sunday (Surrender/Linconln Brewster), I have to turn it off. The solo purposely is not on the time and I could barely play it with the click track on.....so since it's the last song Sunday, I'll hit the mute on my aviom and be fine.

Whoever is running the click track also needs to be very on top of things. We had a piano lead in rehersal and he lost the click. The drummer takes care of the click track and kept tying to sync it. Did not work. I think in general, if someone loses it enough that they're going far off time, you need to be ready to bail and just shut it off.

If you have a sound guy with any knowledge or respect of musicians you shouldnt have that problem Jack. I would def talk to them about that! especially mapping out and learning solos all week and it not even being heard!

We use them all the time. Sometimes we dont have a key player so adding that layer via track is easy and works like it is expected to. Our only con weve experienced is an unprepared sound guy. Like missing his cue to start the track at the times hes supposed to then us musicians are staring at him with deadspace on stage waiting for him to start the track.

We use click in ALL of our services and backing tracks in some. My favorite way to run them is with my phone actually. We make the tracks with click and save them as songs on my iPhone. The click is panned hard left and the track is panned hard right. Then I use a data to RCA cable into a stereo DI box. The sound guy receives it as two signals. Then, I control it from on stage.

If we're not using tracks, I use an app just called "Tempo" which lets me save all of our song tempos as a setlist. Then I just use a 1/8 to 1/4 cable to DI and control from stage. If we get off, I can just reach over and shut it down or re-tap in a new tempo.