We've recently made available the MultiTracks of three of our songs (All The Glory, Come In, The Body Song). We have done this because people have asked for them, and because we had the master recordings available so it seemed like an easy way to resource people.

[Technical note: you download ZIP files of wav audio files, which are large in size (200-300 MB), so make sure you are on a good internet connection when downloading.]

We charge for these, at a very competitive rate we think. Buying tracks from us gives you permission to use them in any worship setting you might need - church, school, online, holiday clubs, outdoor events etc. We hope that they'll be a blessing to churches who want to use this kind of thing. 

What are MultiTracks?

MultiTracks (sometimes called loops) are the individual stems of a recorded song - typically the guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, vocals, backing vocals etc on seperate tracks (or "stems").

Using a standalone app (like Prime or Playback) or a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW - like Logic or Ableton), you can choose which of these stems you want to include in your mix, and also the relative volume.

The benefits of this include:

  • being able to include the instruments you have in your band, and then let the track handle the rest.
  • being able to rehearse to the original arrangement of a song.
  • a click track and cue track can be mixed directly into the musicians' earphones (but not the congregation), giving the timing and cues of next sections.
  • the overall impact can be of a professional sounding song, with the energy of the live singers and instruments mixed in.

What are the drawbacks?

I'm not going to lie - we were hesitant about putting these up. I think that tracks can be really useful, but they have a few drawbacks, including:

  • they are inflexible, you have to play the set arrangement.
  • they involve a fair amount of technology and rehearsing with to get right.
  • they can discourage local amateur music making and place an over-emphasis on professionalism/slickness.

Our recommendation would be that if you are planning to use tracks, choose certain songs and situations where they will fit and be of benefit. All three songs we've released here are high-energy, which works well with a track. At the same time, have some songs in your worship time which are played with live musicians, or even sung a cappella, in order that truly live music-making remains a key feature of your church.

Do feed back to us any of your own thoughts on this, and if there are other songs you want tracks for, get in touch.