Equip
Using Tracks in Catholic Worship
Using tracks, a click track or even just a pad can help enhance your worship services. Hear from Will with Liturgy Resources about why we should be embracing modern technology in the Catholic Church.
Getting Started
Getting started with running tracks can be intimidating. It may seem too confusing or too expensive for your parish. But it doesn’t have to be! LoopCommunity.com makes it simple. Using tracks in your services can help keep your band together and enhance your music ministry. It may not feel as though there is a place for tracks in your liturgy or sanctuary, but using simple tools that you can customize for exactly what you need, can really enhance your sound.
LoopCommunity.com has the largest catalog of worship tracks and has created software and hardware to help you run them at your parish. We are passionate about helping churches use tracks and making the process as easy as possible.
Prime App
The first step is knowing how to play your tracks or pads. 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 churches. Prime is a free app for iPhone, iPad or Mac.
In Prime, you can run a click track, add pad sounds, create setlists, change the key & tempo of your tracks 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. Loop Community has multiple track types and track formats, so that you can purchase exactly what you need.
Track Types
On LoopCommunity.com, we sell five different track types: Lite, 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 you. 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 are looking for a simple backing track that you can play from any media player, check out our Split Track option.
Using Tracks at your Parish
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!
Embracing tracks and modern technology is a great way to enhance the sound of your music ministry, so you can provide a beautiful experience of worship. Remember to prayerfully discern with your pastor and Liturgical Director on the suitable uses of these tools for Mass or other times where worship is offered. Get started today on LoopCommunity.com. Be sure to check out LiturgyResources.com for other resources and articles about integrating modern worship technology into your Catholic community.
For more on this topic as well as all things Catholic Liturgy, check out the Liturgy Resources Podcast episode about using tracks and technology at your parish – stream on Apple or Spotify!
