It’s occurred to me that, in order to understand what I do as a worship leader, I need to explain a few things. I also want this blog to be an outlet for the little things I’ve learned about leading worship, offering them to you for your own potential use. Over the past 8-10 months, I’ve been exploring an aspect of the modern worship scene that fits both of these qualifications, and so, I offer this practical discussion.
Our topic: worship loops.
Now, while some of these names can be interchangeable (with some names holding important distinctions over others), I lump this topic under the “worship loop” umbrella. A loop can be something as simple as a small lead part that is, quite literally, looped over and over again. Almost always, however, loops are accompanied by a click track (a metronome-controlled click sound that helps keep musicians on tempo), and they cover the length of a song. They are often designed to have different parts for the different portions of a song (verse, bridge, chorus, etc.).
The general purpose of a worship loop is twofold: it helps to keep musicians on tempo, and it serves to enhance the overall sound of the worship band or team. They help bands clean up their cohesiveness, not only allowing everyone to play at the same tempo, but also to start and stop at the same time. Worship loops can even have vocal cues and count-offs programmed into the click track to “announce” certain parts of the song to the band (a “warning” of an approaching chorus, for example).
There are two popular sub-groups in this worship loop category: backing tracks and multi-tracks. Backing tracks are what have been described thus far in this post, and they are normally pre-determined MP3 files. They have a set length, a set order or song arrangement, and can be played off of something a simple as a CD or iPod. Multi-tracks, on the other hand, can take many forms and usually requires more technology to fully utilize them. As the name implies, there are multiple audio tracks in multi-tracks, which allows for greater control over the mix of the song. Is there too much piano, or not enough strings? Multi-tracks allow the sound engineer to fine tune the overall sound of the worship loop (whereas simple backing tracks do not offer this flexibility). Further, multi-tracks can be a little more conducive to changes on-the-fly, but more on that in a moment.
There are free offerings of worship loops online, and as I said, one can play simple backing tracks off of a CD player, if necessary. If one desires at least a little bit of control, however, a few things will need to be purchased. You will obviously need a computer (I strongly prefer Apple, but much of this can be done on PCs as well). You will also need a digital audio workstation (or DAW). This is a piece of software, ranging from something as simple as Garageband, or something as complex as Pro Tools. In my experience, however, Ableton Live and Propellerhead Reason are the two most frequent options used by loop makers. You’ll also need a USB audio interface, MIDI controller/keyboard, and (at least) a basic understanding of MIDI and music theory.
Once you have all of that, you will be on your way. Just record what you need into a song file, and use it with your band in your next service.
Now, before ending this post (for now), I want to address something that I have very little experience with, but something that is important to understand about worship loops: flexibility. It stands to reason that, if your band is playing with a track designed around a specific arrangement of a song, then you cannot deviate from that arrangement without disastrous results.
Or, can you?
Well, according to many, Ableton Live offers song mapping in their files. If you are running your multi-tracked loops out of Live, and you have it connected to a MIDI controller, you can trigger certain sections of a song at will. Need to repeat a chorus? Tap a key or pad, and the chorus repeats. From what others have said, it sounds like this can turn a 4-minute song into a 9-minute section of organic worship. This is something that appeals to me, as a worship leader, because I don’t like being contained within a certain arrangement. If the Spirit tells me to rest on a certain section of a song, I want to have the ability to do that.
I don’t have much experience with Ableton Live, however, so I cannot speak to how well this works. I hope to answer these questions soon, however, and in a later post, I will address the live setup that is needed in order for the use of worship loops to be successful. More to come, but feel free to comment below to further this discussion.