How to get started with tracks
Do you want to start using tracks in your worship services? Getting started can be intimidating. There are so many different softwares, track types and audio routing options to choose from. It may seem too confusing or too expensive for your church. But it doesn’t have to be! Using tracks in your worship services can help keep your band together, fill in for missing musicians and take the sound of your band to the next level.
Tracks, or multitracks, are like backing tracks, but all of the instruments are separated on individual instrument files. This gives you added flexibility on what instruments you use, as well as the ability to customize your track exactly how you want it. On LoopCommunity.com, we have the largest catalog of worship tracks and have created software and hardware to help you run them at your church. We are passionate about helping worship leaders use tracks and making the process as simple as possible.
Here are some tips on how to get started with tracks!
Prime App
The first step is knowing how to play your tracks. There are a lot of different applications that are great for running tracks, but many of them are expensive or hard to use – especially for beginners! Loop Community created the Prime App specifically for worship leaders. Prime is a free app for iPhone, iPad or Mac. We made it easy to run tracks at your church.
In Prime, you can create setlists, change the key & tempo of your tracks, customize arrangements and more! When you purchase tracks on LoopCommunity.com, your tracks are automatically available in the app. Using Prime can save you time and give you everything you need to play back your tracks. Each track also has a click track and cues to guide your band through the song and keep everyone together.
Click here for a short video that shows how to use Prime.
Purchasing Tracks
Now that you know how you’re going to run your tracks, you need to get the actual tracks. First, create a free account on LoopCommunity.com and search for a song you want. Once you find the song, there may be multiple track options available. We offer multiple track types and track formats, so that you can purchase exactly what you need.
Track Types
On LoopCommunity.com, we sell four different track types: Master, Premium, Community and Enhancement. You can locate these on our site by looking at the tag in the top right corner of any album art. Here’s a quick breakdown!
Master Tracks are the original tracks from the artist. They are exactly what you hear on your favorite worship album.
Premium Tracks are created by our professional studio team. They are an affordable track option that is created to sound like the original. 
Community Tracks are created by worship leaders from around the world that have become Loop Producers. They are an affordable track option and often have a unique style from the producer that created them.
Enhancement Tracks are created by our professional studio team and designed to enhance the sound of your band without overlapping with any live instruments.
You can listen to any track and pick out which option is best for your band. Then you just need to select the format that you would like the track. If you are using the Prime App you can purchase the In-App Only version to get the full track with all of the individual instruments in Prime. If you use a DAW like Ableton Live to run your tracks, you can purchase the In-App and File Download version to get downloadable wav files of the full track. If you are looking for a simple backing track that you can play from any media player, check out our Split Track option.
Using Tracks in Worship
Now that you have your tracks in the Prime App, or whatever software you are using, it’s important to know how you are going to get the track audio from your device to your soundboard.
The easiest way to do this is to use a stereo breakout cable into two DI boxes and then send two XLR cables to your soundboard. This will split the Click and Cues tracks from the instrument tracks. Then you can send your Click and Cues to your in-ear monitors and your tracks to the front of house. If you’re new to running tracks, this is a simple way to route your audio. If you don’t have in-ear monitors, check out this way to run your tracks!
If you want to get a little more advanced with audio routing, you can use an audio interface. This allows you to send your instrument tracks on multiple channels to give your sound team more control over the tracks. Interfaces are another way that using tracks can become confusing, so we created Track Rig. Track Rig is an eight channel audio output device that is plug & play and doesn’t require any additional setup or hardware. Simply choose which of the eight channels you want your tracks to be routed to in Prime, and then plug the XLR cables from Track Rig directly into a stage snake or your soundboard.
Tracks Made Easy Workshop
There are so many ways that using tracks can help your worship team. If you want to learn more, sign up for our Tracks Made Easy Workshop! In this course we will cover everything you need to know to get started with tracks at your church. Reserve your spot today!
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