7 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Loops In Worship
Using loops in worship can be intimidating and somewhat overwhelming if you are just getting started! I hope that this blog helps you in the process of deciding and figuring out if you should pursue incorporating loops into your worship sets!
1. Has your drummer ever counted you off 20 bpm too fast?
One of the most difficult tasks a worship leader or band director has is keeping your band and vocalists at the same tempo. Even with a great drummer or musicians who have great timing, for every 8 musicians on stage there are at least 8 different ideas of what the tempo should be. By introducing a click track into the ears of all of your musicians and vocalists you have a benchmark for what the tempo should be and no matter what, it is always correct. It is virtually impossible for most bands to not speed up during moments of building volume and then drag during quieter moments, but adding this consistent tempo will keep everyone at the correct speed. Every musician has experienced those moments when you are just “locked in” with the other instrumentalists you are playing with, and incorporating a click and loop track into your worship track will make that a standard occurrence.
2. How many banjo and dulcimer players do you have in your band?
With worship music now there is such an incredible range of genres. From folk (Rend Collective) to electronic (Hillsong Young & Free) a worship band has the responsibility of producing a sound often from one song to the next. Typically a worship band does not have a dulcimer, banjo player, and jug player to get that folk feel that some of these new worship bands can capture in the studio. At the same time very few churches have 7 different keyboard players on stage to get every intricate synth or pad part in some of the more electronic based worship songs. Using loops in worship can bring that diversity to a group and band for each individual song no matter you instrumentation on stage. This does not mean you have to hide your current live instruments on stage with the loops, but they can come alongside your band to achieve the sound that you are hearing off of the album.
3. Tired of your bass player no showing?
One of the great assets to using loops in worship is being able to fill holes in your stage because musicians are either unavailable or no showing the day of. At my church we record all of the instruments that will be on the stage so we can use them if we ever need them. We have a track of drums, acoustic, electrics, bass, piano, and even percussion. If we need to use one we just unmute the track and we are ready to go with that instrument. This relieves the headache of trying to figure out how to fill a space in the last hour leading up to a service or having to modify what we do based on available instruments.
4. Do you ever get lost in a song so you feel like you can’t lead confidently?
The one part of using loop tracks that I don’t think I could ever go without now is the use of a cue track in the click. Some might call this a guide track but we use the term cue track for our purposes. The cues are basically a way of telling those on stage where you are in the song. For instance, one measure before every chorus, the cue voice will say “Chorus, 2, 3, 4” in time so you know exactly when to start the chorus and every other section of the song. As a worship leader there are so many things you are having to remember and do during a song that having to remember if there are 2 measures after the end of the chorus before the verse starts or just 1 can be a lot to juggle at a time. Since using the cues, I have not had to use or look at the sheet music while I lead worship. The cues let you focus on actually leading worship and then you can let the cues remind you exactly what to do and when. You can even build in cues that tell the band when to build up the music or when to bring it down for something softer. There is virtually no limit to the possibilities for the cue track, such as feeding the first line of lyrics to the singers or even when a particular instrument has a solo.
5. Need that full sound that you hear at the concerts but just can’t seem to get back home at your church?
One of the most frustrating parts for me when I use to go to worship concerts for bands like Hillsong United or Passion is that they had such a full and broad sound that seemed to envelope the crowd with a wall of sound. This is most often achieved by using pads or base sounds like that in the loops to be the glue that fills in the gaps of more rhythmic instruments such as acoustic guitar or piano that are playing choppy rhythms throughout the song. Pads or strings can create this incredible foundation to fulfill this huge sound that you have been looking for! Even a simple pad that is droning on the tonic chord throughout the song can fill out your sound infinitely.
6. Have you ever fumbled over your capo in complete silence while the congregation stares at you in between songs?
The way we utilize loops at my church is a little different than most people do from my experience and the big difference is in the transitions. The most typical way of using loops is that you have to start each individual loop for each song. Because of this there is a break in the sound usually while whoever is starting the loops presses play. This creates a gap and hole in the flow that you will find if you aren’t using loops as well. I run our loops through Ableton Live and we use one mode of Ableton playback that makes it so I can automate the loops to start whenever I want beforehand. I can adjust the start and stop time down to the millisecond so that if I am doing a set of three songs I just have to press play at the beginning and it rolls through the clicks smoothly so that there is no dead space. In these transitions I will build musical transitions of pads or different things so that the sound will never fully die. This will help keep the congregation full of energy and in the spirit of worship to sing. Based on what you have to do in between songs, you can build in a long transition so you can retune, change your capo, get music together, or whatever you need to do. We like to keep transitions as short as possible to keep that flow consistent for the congregation and musicians.
7. Do you have a smaller budget to work with that you feel keeps you from using loops in worship?
Don’t let the fear of money keep you from using loops in worship. There are super cheap options! The best program to run loops and make them is Ableton Live. The great thing about Ableton is that there are three levels of the program and the cheapest one is only $99 dollars. With that program you can get up in running in no time incorporating loops in worship! Obviously the cheapest way to get the actually loops to use in your program is make them yourself on some sort of DAW such as Ableton, Protools, Reason, or even Garageband. However there are ways to purchase the loops and tracks for cheap and then you can use them as much as you want. I personally make and distribute tracks and can do custom tracks for churches if they have something specific in mind. You can check out those options on my website: tysondodd.com.
Once you have the tracks you can play them back in a couple of different ways. You just need some way to play them, whether that is through Ableton, or even just with a MacBook running iTunes, iPad, or even iPhone. To use a computer like this, you just have to have the loops panned in stereo to where the click and cues are on the left side and then the loops are panned to the right side. This way you can just feed the loops to the house and they never hear the click and cues. Out of the computer or iPhone you just need a stereo cable either going into 2 direct boxes or into a stereo direct box.
The last piece of the puzzle that you will need is just some sort of in ear monitor system either for every musician or at the very least the drummer so he/she can keep time for you. This can either be wireless packs or an in ear system such as Avioms. Floor wedges and clicks do not mix, otherwise the congregation will hear the clicks and cues, which is certainly less than ideal and would be a huge distraction.
Overall, the benefits of utilizing loops in worship are substantial and can bring your worship program to that next level that you’ve been searching for. If you have any questions or need help with how to get started please comment below or shoot me an email at tysondoddmusic@gmail.com. I would love to help!
