Using a click track in worship | INTRO
Introducing my first blog series | The one about click tracks
This is my first blog post for… a long time! I’m hoping it will be the first of many in this next season. Let’s start off with one of the more controversial parts of church music ministry then - click tracks! Very simply, a click track is a metronome that plays through a musician’s in-ear headphones during a performance to keep them in time. That’s it. Really! Some churches run click tracks for the whole band, some run them only for the drummer. Some churches run them only during rehearsal, some run them with backing tracks, some don’t run them at all. Wherever you are as a church musician, chances are you fall somewhere along that spectrum.
I know…you’re either thinking, YES! Or you’re thinking, oh no, here goes another one of those big church folk trying to be really prescriptive and driven by ‘excellence’, when in fact it’s all about turning church into a concert. Or maybe you’re somewhere in between. Wherever you are, I hope you’ll still enjoy this series as I take us through a level-headed exploration of click tracks (list will be updated with links to each post):
Click Tracks: Why Not? We’ll look at some of the reasons against running a click track in your worship service. We’ll start by looking at the Scriptural context behind music in the New Testament as well.
Click Tracks: Why? Having explored why we might not want to use a click track, we’ll look at why this might be a good way to go for churches regardless of size (20 people or 20,000!)
Click Tracks: How? If you are going to use a click track, we’ll look at some of the ways to run them sustainably. I’ll particularly focus on low-cost, low-energy options because many of us don’t play in megachurches or churches with large music budgets.
Click Tracks: When and Where? If you are going to use a click track and you’ve got a setup, we’ll look at how you can sustainably introduce it to your team, when to use it, when not to use it (important!) and everything in between.
I hope those of you who read this come away feeling empowered to start thinking about whether a click track could improve your worship music team.