The Worship Backing Band MultiTrack “stems” explained

Hi everyone, as we approach the launch of the new Worship Backing Band Multitrack Player we thought this week we would give you a run down of the format of the stems (individual instruments) themselves. For ease of use we’ve standardized the audio into 14 stems so as you download a new song you know where you are:

Stem order

1. 2 bar click Intro
2. Lead vocals
3. BVs
4. Ac gtr
5. Elec gtr 1
6. Elec gtr 2
7. Keys 1
8. Keys 2
9. Bass
10. Drums
11. Extras
12. Click track
13. Natural click (shaker loop)
14. Vocal cue

If you want a bit more detail I’ve discussed each stem below, but its also worth pointing out that each stem has a separate volume fader for the left and right hand sides of its sound. We’ve given you this for one very important reason. If you use a standard splitter cable out of your computer’s headphone socket it allows you to put the left and right hand sides into two channels in your church’s mixing desk. Then you can feed one channel to the congregation, known as a ‘Front of House’ mix and use the other side as a foldback mix to your band. If you’re brand new to this, the band basically need to hear different instrument levels to the congregation, with some stems boosted and others cut out all together in order to follow the music leader and the song.

2 Bar Click Intro
This 2 bar intro click is standard on every song and helps everyone come in on cue. If you don’t want the congregation to hear the click then just put it in your foldback mix and mute the other side (see below for explanation)

Lead Vocals
Even if you have a lead vocalist, this is useful on many levels. Set them low to ‘fatten up’ your own vocal or to set them high give you extra confidence and sing along. Remember not all competitor’s backing tracks have lead vocals and its pretty difficult to follow a backing track if there’s absolutely no vocal cue at all.

BV’s – Backing Vocals
These are great as a training tool too. Solo them (this mutes everything else) to hear the harmonies and then add your own harmonies for wide lush BV’s

Acoustic Guitars
Most songs have acoustic guitar, where we didn’t include one we just didn’t think it needed one.

Electric Guitars 1
There are two distinct guitar parts in each song. One could be textural and the other a lead line, or two rhythm parts playing in the same place. Again try soloing the parts in practice to learn some great guitar lines for you to play live or set it low in the mix and find your own voicings to compliment what’s already there

Electric Guitars 2
As above

Keyboards 1
Keys 1 and 2 could be any combo of piano, synth, pads, Hammond organ etc. We just chose the most appropriate combinations for the song.

Keyboards 2
As above

Bass
What can we say? Session standard bass guitar parts. Switch them on or off or learn the parts yourself to play along live

Drums
The whole drum kit, in one stem

Extras
Vary from song to song but are other elements designed to give width and texture to the recordings that are not easily grouped into the standard stem format. So programming, percussion, loops brass, extra guitars, strings pads etc

Click Track
Again set this just in your foldback mix (if you don’t want the congregation to hear it) and it will help keep the whole band in time, not just the drummer!

Natural click
Use the shaker loop to keep in time if you want a more ‘natural’ click sound (or aren’t using separate congregation and foldback mixes)

Vocal cue
This spoken word vocal cue just reminds you of difficult to remember lyrics or song structure points, e.g “intro starts with guitar riff….2 3 4” or “repeat chorus…blessed be the name of” or “all instruments pause for soft chorus …2 3 4”

If you’ve missed our previous posts about the player, you can read about it here and look at the interface here. Each of these posts include lots of questions and answers to aspects of the player.