Clay Collins Music

Using Multitracks in Mainstage

Something that has become very popular in churches is the use of backing tracks or also called “Enhancement” tracks.  Sites like Multitracks.com and LoopCommunity.com provide these multitracks.  Multitracks.com has a wide selection of multitracks and many come from the original studio masters.  A multitrack gives you individual tracks or also called “Stems” for each instrument in the song.  Don’t have a bass player one Sunday, no problem.  Add the bass track to your mix and you are good to go.  Multitracks also have vocal guide cues and a metronome which keeps the band in time and announces the different section of the songs.  Multitracks are only able to be used with churches who use an in ear monitoring system but can also be used if only the drummer has in ear monitors although it is a little more difficult that.  In most cases Multitracks are formatted in the Ableton Live format.  I have used Ableton but have found it to be time consuming and the learning curve a little high for most people.  I have discovered what I believe to be a much better and simpler option, and did I mention, a lot cheaper.  Mainstage 2 for the Mac OS X platform (sorry Windows) is the perfect tool for running Multitracks in a live environment but you do have to do a little leg work initially to migrate the Ableton format to Mainstage.  That is what this Tutorial is all about.  It is an A to Z tutorial taking you through the entire process.  Click Here to start with the tutorials.