We have jumped right into the world of Click Tracks and are now using them in our live worship. We will start to share how we have approached this using software and hardware that we already owned. There have been many problems that we had to overcome and we will also share how we finally made it happen. Its well worth the effort and for some it won’t have to be an expensive solution..
The Problem
In our case we had almost no musicians to support the worship in our church. My wife Frances leads the worship with her keyboard, and I support her by playing the drums. There are other singers that also help when they can. Its a Church of England and our vicar was considering asking musicians from other churches to help out but we suggested that Click Tracks may be a better solution.
The Solution
Its now becoming very common to see, or hear, small churches and large churches using Click Tracks. Even if there is a full band the added sounds, the constant click and verse / chorus instructions makes for a much tighter sound and not as restrictive as you may think. Some if this can be expensive but doesn’t need to be if you already have technical and musical abilities.
How we have approached this is very specific to our needs, experience and the software/hardware that we already had. Below are the various stages of the process we have gone through to get to where we are regularly using the click tracks.
Example Click Track
Before we begin here is an example of a song that Frances wrote that we recorded as a click track. This is what we hear in our ears while Frances leads the singing and I play the drums. The congregation don’t hear the click or audio cues but just the backing.
First Stage
- We had a visit with our Vicar who was very supportive of us and the whole idea.
- Looking at all the software and hardware that we currently owned to see what we could use without having to ask for financial support form the church.
- Before anything though none of this would work without in-ear monitors. Only a select few need to hear the relentless but very important click and vocal instructions for verse and chorus etc. We chose to get a cheaper in-ear wireless system to start off with and opted for these:
These come with a transmitter and three receiving in-ear units. They are a bit delicate and would be easily damaged. I’m guessing that they are just a generic no brand system that will have the name of any company who sell them. They distort a little especially with the lower frequencies but are ok for now until we can afford to go for something a little better. You will need to replace or clean the ear buds if handing to different singers/musicians. It is possible for the user to plug their own earphones or headphones into the receiver.
You will also need to be sure that the channel frequency isn’t the same as any other radio mic on the system. We learned this the hard way on our first live test when the speakers mic was switched on our in ears monitors cut out while we were singing and all we could hear was the speaker singing. Thankfully we weren’t using the click tracks yet.
The receivers require 2 AA battery’s and I recommend that you keep a good supply of them at hand.
As for receiving the monitor signal I just used the link through from the stage monitor floor box. A separate link could be sent for this purpose from the main house mixer. This is desirable anyway for when you come to adding the click tracks into the equation.
We used this setup first for a few weeks to get comfortable with how to use the in ears and how it sounds. Even doing this is so worth the effort. For me, and also Frances, we often take out one earpiece a little, or completely so that we can also get a feel for how the overall sound is within the room, otherwise you feel too detached from reality. Doing this though does mean that the sound coming from the floating ear-peace can spill into the singing mic so, if possible, remove the ear piece from the end of the cable if not used. This is possible on the ones above as they are designed that way.
Second Stage
Next was what to create the click tracks on and how we would play them along with all the cables and connects that are required. It is amused that you will have a sound desk and at least one spare input channel. In our case we had spare input channels at the desk but no spare cable in the stage box to send our backing tracks down. To get around this we managed to pickup a second hand multi-core that did the job.
Below is an image of the basic system setup that we chose to employ:
Music Source
What you use to play the backing music is your choice. The simplest option is to use a normal stereo file with the left channel playing the click, audio cues and backing combined with the right just having the backing only. However this option means that only a mono signal can be used for the front of house.
My preferred choice is for everyone to hear the music in stereo and to achieve this we decided to use our Cubase software. We only used Cubase as this is what we have but I’m sure there are many other multi-track software programs that would work just as well if not even better.
I installed Cubase onto an older Vaio laptop which worked well except for glitching. Glitching basically causes the music to pause momentarily which is a complete no no where timing is critical. Basically the software should never glitch even once.
To stop glitching you need to stop your laptop/computer from doing anything that is doesn’t really need to do. Stop all animations, disconnect from the internet or Wi-Fi. Remove all virus checking functions etc. There are many websites that give you this step by step. Just search for “optimizing a DAW (Digital Work Station)”.
I did all of this with my Vaio and its worked almost perfectly or should I say it glitched once on every second song or two which is totally unacceptable. I eventually gave up and found another second hand laptop (Lenovo – Ideapad) £200 – which has worked perfectly with no glitches ever playing live. Well worth the money for peace of mind.
Sound Card
Next you will need a USB soundcard with a minimum of two channels in and out. With me choosing stereo signals throughout I opted to use our 4 channel sound card. giving a stereo mix for the in-ears and a stereo mix to send to front of house. Our sound card is a Steinberg UR44. Once again, there are many that will do the job equally as well.
On Stage Mixing
Once you have all these signals then the backing track can be sent directly to the main front of house mixing desk and let the sound guys take control of that but you will need to create a balance between the fold-back returns from the desk and your click track channels to feed to the in-ears. For this you only need a simple mixing desk like this one which I picked up for £43 new on eBay.
Our setup with this mixer is as follows:
- Click Tracks from laptop/soundcard into line inputs on Ch1 & Ch2.
- Fold-back from main desk into Ch3.
- Headphones for the drummer into phones output.
- Left and Right Main out goes to the in-ears Transmitter.
All of this is located next to the drum kit but it doesn’t have to be.
How to create and then Route the Sound Output from Cubase
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- If you already have a song that you want to create as a click track then bring this import this song into Cubase on the first track. I normally use this to lay down all the instrument tracks and then mute or disable that track but keep it in the project for future reference.
- Next determine the tempo of your song. Often this can be done using the built-in metronome. Once you have this you can create a new track and add a pre-made click metronome sound and audio cues that are free to download: Click Here.
- Select the metronome and audio cues that work best for you and place them on the time line where required. Click here for an example.
- Now lay down all the other instrument tracks that you require.
- Having done this you will need to setup the output routing within Cubase so that all the tracks are routed to channels 1 & 2. I bring all the faders down for the click tracks and audio cues as this is what is sent to front of house.
- For the click track channels I route each track via the sends and choose the pre-fade option routing them all to channels 3 & 4. Because I have chosen the pre-fade option we can still hear the click tracks and audio cues as the pre-fade bypasses the channels fader which is set to ‘0’.
Triggering the Songs Live.
Using a mouse, or just the keyboard, to start and stop the tracks live is a risky thing to do so I purchased a gadget (Contour Design ShuttleXpress ) that made this much easier to do. All I have setup is one button (Painted Green with nail varnish) for start and one button which is painted red that not only stops the song but takes the song back to the start and cues it up ready to play.
I hope this information may help some of you out there considering to go down the route of using Click-tracks live in their music or worship.
Try Our Online Mixer.
1. Click on the image/link. 2. Press Record. 3. Press Play, Press Stop and save the resulting ‘wav‘ file to your computer. Enjoy 🙂
View the project video of this track below:
Our Click Track Examples:
Here are samples of the click tracks (Clicks fade out half way through) that we have made of popular worship songs to compliment the worship in our church. If you would like us to make click tracks for your church of songs that you, or your church, have written then please get in touch. We can make simple split track (normal 2 track with mono left click track and mono right front of house mix) or full multi-track files to be used in Ableton Live or similar.
If you want to see how we have gone about creating and using click tracks then follow this link.
| Happy Day
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| Pray
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| Build My Life
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| Build Your Kingdom
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| Great is Your Faithfulness
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| Frances Song ( I don't know what the future holds)
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| Amazing Grace - My Chains
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| One Thing Remains
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| Spirit & Truth
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| This I believe - Creed
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| This is Amazing Grace
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| What a Beautiful Name
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| Way Maker
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| No Longer Slaves
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| City On A Hill
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| Mighty to Save
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Christmas CarolsO Come all Ye Faithful |
| Away in a Manger
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| Hark the Herald Angels Sing
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| Once in Royal Davids City
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| Silent Night
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