Sunday Playbooks
Tracks, click & pads
Backing tracks are big in worship — loops, extra instrumentation, pads, and a click and guide vocal for the band. It's finished audio, so the job is level and routing, not processing. One rule here is unbreakable.
⚠ The unbreakable rule
Click and guide vocal go to the band's in-ears ONLY. Never the mains.
If the band plays to a click, that click and any guide vocal must reach the musicians and no one else.
- Route those channels to the monitor / in-ear buses.
- Un-assign them from the main mix (Main tab) — this is the part people forget. How →
- Verify it every single week. Solo the mains in your head: is a click in there? A click bleeding into the room is the most recognizable worship-sound mistake there is.
Two seconds of checking beats the whole congregation hearing a metronome.
Setting up the tracks rig
- Connect the playback source (usually a laptop running Ableton or a MultiTracks-style player).
- It comes in at line level and is already mixed and mastered — set for a clean level, minimal gain, no processing. No EQ, no compression; it's finished. Why finished audio is left alone →
- Confirm which channels are click/guide (ears only) and which are musical (mains too).
Musical tracks — loops, stems, strings
- These do go to the mains, alongside the live band.
- Set them to support, not swamp. The live players are the thing; tracks fill around them.
- If the mix feels crowded, the tracks are often the first thing to pull down.
Pads
Pads are the sustained, ambient patches that sit under everything and smooth the gaps between songs.
- Keep them low, wide, and mostly untouched — they're meant to be felt more than heard.
- A little low-mid cleanup so they don't cloud the vocals is usually all they need.
- Muddy mix? Pads are a common culprit — pull them down before you start EQ-ing everything else. It sounds bad →
Levels, the short version
| Element | Where | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Click | In-ears only | As the band wants |
| Guide vocal | In-ears only | As the band wants |
| Loops / stems | Mains + ears | Supporting the live band |
| Pads | Mains + ears | Low and wide, under everything |