This video discusses how stems and click tracks impact church music. Are they helping or hurting? Watch to find out more…
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Fortunately , we only use a click now and if we are not on it well enough, the keys player kills it and we continue a natural. Once we start a song, we are usually very good at keeping it real and not off to the races. Lots of credit on that goes to the keys player who is a full time musician/music teacher/vocalist/vocal teacher so she's locked in and if we follow her, (I know, I know we should be following the drums and the band is but I'm the drummer and believe me, I follow her!) we sound very good and the songs will actually flow on the tempo and not be locked to it.
We do not use studio music. We have an organ and piano and choir every other Sunday. We do use EZ-Worship 6. I did not know EZWorship produced actual music. We do use the I-Worship CD's sometimes, but we are heavy on the hymns. I do agree that every church desires to have a full concert for every service. I see in the modern church, that it goes far beyond just the music. I see the church of Laodicea in many churches, and this would include produced music.
Blessings Terence! This is definitely a "hot potato" issue… shouldn't be, but… mostly, you are shining light on the physical, mechanical expression… here is an even HOTTER potato you never brought up; anointing to walk on the psalmist call… just sayin'. Does anyone know if they are standing in anointing??
The Psalmist's spirit of worshipping with skill on the harp and lyre has moved to skill clicking a mouse on a the PC. God's not blind. The power to amplify and project is a false miracle.
So instead of the production industry following the trends coming from culture, culture is following the trends of coming from the over-production industry. =(
click tracks is destroying "music" period. Music's magic is in the uncontrolled organic interplay between instruments. This is gone with "backing tracks"….Just sing karaoke and do air guitar.
But we can’t find musicians lol
Its all about God
It is destroying that true connection of worship and letting the spirit of God, move through church service. Everything is pre-recorded, strict. Timing and you got to go from one song to the next. Everything is so scripted that the presence of God can’t be felt because everything is in a rush.
This is why I don't really mingle with the bigger churches. I preferred doing service in the smaller churches because they're much simpler and more engaging. The most we have aside from a standard sound system is a talkback mic from the keyboardist where he cues us in which part comes next. It's far easier to really get into the praise and worship.
almost like church isnt a darn concert
Where is the room for the Spirit? This is church. This is NOT a concert. When does the congregation really enter in? Can the the music go where God wants to go THEN? Can moments be built on? Can the mood of the room and the music feed off of each other? If it's that produced, why not just play a YouTube video? This all seems silly. I'm all for excellence in ministry, but this canned, locked in perfection takes all of the life out of it. It grieves me.
Live concerts need a vulnerability to be shown. They hear perfection every time they pop on a track. Famous concerts that are memorable had crazy malfunctions that made the bands and the audience feel connected in their emotional reaction.
From my experience, the only thing that should be backed are things not playable at that moment, such as choir, violins, or even backing vocals. Remember, the concert isn't about the music, it's about the humanity.
Using these tools as a producer will really help to be a musician and have a good music theory,but most who are not producers will be left behind and music is something we do together and make sounds that are special
Back in the day, church hymns was to prepare the congregation to be filled with the spirit of God and to prepare themselves to Praise and Worship JESUS. Which is what we were created for.
Now, it has turned into a performance with dimmed sanctuarys and a lit up stage. Glorifying the musicians rather than Jesus.
I didn't even know this existed! Our church music leader plays the viola, has a pianist and one violinist. Then he invites different church members to play with them each week. Usually a couple of singers, an acoustic guitarist and a bass player are the additions. He sends out the songs on a Thursday or Friday and we practice together 1 hour before the first service and we play for 3 services. The music is real, the musicians are real, and church members are very engaged in singing the hymns and psalms. This is for around 100 to 150 church members per service.
Thank you for sounding the alarm! EVERYTHING YOU SAID is like SPOT ON. Like there is not ONE THING you said that wasn't accurate. You kinda touched on this, but most disconcerting is what it does to WORSHIP both for the musicians and the church.
I am a church musician at a church with a music department that has bought into tracks hook, line and sinker. Our legacy is worship – our choir actually won the "Best Choir in America" award at a Verizon Wireless competition several years ago. We won the competition with a choir full of people that were worshipping God without anyone counting down to verses or choruses in their ears – it was pure, very imperfect (though the musicians had a click) worship. We definitely weren't the best sounding group, but we had freedom of worship that resulted in the whole arena standing and worshipping.
It's really, REALLY hard to worship as a musician with all this stuff going on in your ears, and (as someone else said) musicians don't even listen to each other half the time. Like I have heard people say, "I have everyone else turned down except me and the click track." That is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what a musician should do. You can say alllll day long that click tracks are filling the gap, but the truth is that the tracks make people crazy lazy and are a substitute for good musicianship in 99% of the cases. I actually have started turning off the click when I play so I can worship better, but when I turned down the backup vocals (that got on my nerves since they weren't our singers, as you said) what I heard was embarrassing, especially considering our legacy. I'll say it again: people are getting CRAZY LAZY
We literally DIDN'T HAVE WORSHIP SERVICE during a midweek service a couple months ago because the Avioms went down and no one could hear the tracks or themselves. When you are so dependent on technology and production that you can't even have a worship service without something plugged into your ears, I think you need to take a step back.
God still moves in our church, but a lot of it is "in spite of" what is happening with PRODUCTION. I won't go deep because I do love my church, but a click to help you keep the beat is WAAAAAAY different than what is going on right now. I had someone come up to me a couple weeks ago and say, "I could tell you were playing the bass tonight!". I was like, "did I sound that bad???", but he was like, "No, you sounded real good, I could just hear it good and tell that you were really playing it". The musician in me was appalled at the thought that people could think I was like not even really playing the bass and that all the music (not just half of it) was fake. We started fake music hardcore when COVID hit and they started just using tracks and a few singers, but when we all came back the tracks were there to stay.
If we were just dependent on production we'd be toast, but thank the Lord we are a spirit-filled church with a pastor who won't settle for dead church. But I can unequivocally say that click tracks are destroying church music and making it really, really hard to break through to pure worship.
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I don't like the click tracks at all. I've been a worship and praise team leader for years… Don't like the click tracks. There is an inauthenticity about them The same as someone telling you they're going to cook dinner for you and when you get to their home, they're pulling out of the freezer one of those microwave TV dinners instead of actually cooking the food. Does the food necessarily taste bad, no, Is it real food? MAYBE, But, whatever it is, it's Definitely not at all home cooking.
What my biggest concern in Church worship is lack of fellowship in practicing together. Not everyone has a residence to practice in or multitracks to run with. The human connection is getting lost and drifting apart. Concerned….
We make our own stems. We don't have a bass guitar player so that's basically all we added in with a simply loop and maybe some pad. We also have our keys record in case the keys player is on vacation for a week or 2. we never use vocal stems outside of virtual sound checks and rehearsals. I never want to use stems for instruments or vocal that we have because in my experience it kills moral when people feel they can just be replaced in a service. Would you say we're doing it right / tastefully?
As an organist, I'm glad this really hasn't infiltrated the more traditional church musical world.
Let's bring back that authentic percussion like bongos , congas cow bells , chimes , clappers and tambourines and timbales with the cymbals
It's all about balance
There are both positives and negatives and most of them are in motivation.
What if the tracks and automations actually allowed musicians to focus on what's important and "performing" instead of an excuse to do the minimum.
I do 100s of live touring setups for playback and automation every month. The use of playback systems vary greatly. I like stems to be used for only the things that aren't "normal" for a band like noise sweeps or extra perc bits. The best things I see is that more bands are using their playback systems for automations like changing guitar patches and keys patches or setting lyrics and lights. These type of things allow the band to just focus on being engaged and playing rather than going to a pedalboard or laptop every few second to tweak something.
I think the way you use and view tracks is the top reason, for or against tracks.
Many churches forget that these tech type things could be a way to get more congregants involved as assuposed to just throwing at a drummer and forcing them to take care of it.
I personally love using tracks in worship. There are good ways of using it and there are ways where it'snot benecial at all.
This is a big decision needing to be made by the worship pastor or leaders in that church because they know the people and the area.
I had a big comment for this but imma let yall have yall time….
AW Tozer stated “You win them to what you win them with.” Is the modern church an “entertainment/performance” institution? When the music styles and technology changes then those people will drop out. The church in countries like Iran, China, and India are growing by leaps and bounds without this American brand of Christian entertainment.
This isn’t a concert, this is worship. Prerecordings don’t allow for the Holy Spirit to flow.
One of these days people will realize that worship songs are mostly mantras, at best.
A traditional hymn enables individuals to praise God as a community. In addition, the faith is caught (not taught).
My band will never understand this
I can agree and disagree with a lot of what you said. I do think that backing tracks or stems CAN make musicians lazy and potentially cause issue for the band and ministry, however I see a lot of positive that comes from stems and backing tracks.
Any tool can be used or deemed as good or bad when there are bad intentions, so to say that it shouldn’t be use just because there are musicians that have the wrong intentions when using it isn’t the best stance. I currently serve at a ministry where it is just me and drummer and we use stems for most of our songs to make it sound full. But we definitely are not lazy in our approach and we know the music quite well.
Another thing I’ll say is this, as it pertains to the perfection thing, I think all we do is ultimately to glorify God. I’m not saying the goal is to sound perfect but the Bible says for things to be done in decency and in order. I believe we as musicians should do everything in the spirit of excellence and with that same spirit we should strive to sound on one accord and sound clean.
1ST IOF ALL EFF CHURCH AND EFF CHURCH MUSIC………….ONLY FOOLS BELIEVE IN ANYTHING IN THEM BOOKS……….YALL ALL THEIVES AND ROBBERS……………ROBBING FROM THE FOOLISH……..IN THE NAME OF FAITH???? FAITH IN WHAT???????/ FOH
This is straight materialism and UNGODLY READ THE BIBLE
the entire industry is doomed
Jesus is more powerful than Ableton. I’ll bet Jesus loves studio producers, too. And making accessible tools helps everyone.