I'm over it now, I was a bit upset about it obviously, but each is allowed their views on it.

So generally, I would agree with you that politics and church do not mix. I would also generally agree that most of the methods of the BLM movement are largely destructive and ineffective. Rioting and violent protests are extremely counter-productive.

That said, I also believe that there is a very real problem with systemic racism in America, and I do believe that should be of concern to Christians. I don't know what your pastor said or how it was said, so I can't comment on your specific situation. However, I found these 2 videos from Phil Vischer on the topic of race in America very eye-opening;




 

So Ive never been a huge fan of politics in church.  Either way, last week my pastor crossed a line that still has me wondering if its best to find a new church home.  Given the social upheaval and the tendency of groups to flock towards the populist movement, it shouldnt be a surprise to me but I must say.  I do NOT support BLM and the idea that I have to sit under someone dropping social injustice tidbits during a sermon are a bit much to swallow.

Im still growing in grace but I do not feel at this time such a place is best for me.  But I honestly have no other option.  Id love to go back to the local Vineyad church but they are online only still.  Well maybe if I prayed a bit more about it Id find grace to see a way through

I don't use Multitracks, so I'm not sure what their pricing plans are. I know they offer the rental option, but keep in mind that you'll never own anything if you go that route. With Loopcommunity, once you purchase the track, you own it and can use it as many times as you want.

With Loopcommunity, it depends on what you want. The Prime app is free on both the iPad and Macbook, but then you have to buy the tracks you want.

• Master Tracks - These are the master recordings directly from the artists. These are the most expensive at $30 each. There are also some copyright concerns if you livestream your service with these.
• Premium Tracks - These are tracks created by the team at Loopcommunity. They sound REALLY close to the original. These tracks may be livestreamed as long as you have the proper CCLI streaming license, and they are $20 each.
• Community Tracks - These are from users in the community that have made their own tracks and are offering them for sale. Like premium tracks, there are no copyright issues as long as you have the CCLI streaming. These are a mixed bag. Some of them are awesome and sound even better than the originals (IMO). Others are not so good. These are the cheapest full track option at $15 each.
• Enhancement Tracks - This is relatively new to Loopcommunity and I've not used any of them yet. They are basically meant for a church that has a full band, but is looking for some "glue" to help hold things together and enhance the sound. These are the $11 option.

Then, you also have to decide if you want the app-only version or if you want to download the full WAV stems. I believe you add $5 to each of the above prices if you want to download the stems. You might want to do this if you're using something like Ableton instead of Prime. We typically get the app-only version since I have no intention of sequencing my tracks in another DAW.

Lastly, you can subscribe for some premium features with a monthly cost if you need them. Cloud storage, the ability to share your set with your band (for practice and rehearsal) and the ability to use MIDI cues for lighting scenes, controlling your presentation software, etc. Currently we don't have any of these options.

One thing you can do to try it out is download the free app on an iPad or a Macbook and then get one of the free songs of the month. There are usually 2-3 songs that are completely free each month that you can download and use.

No doubt there is a considerable up-front cost associated with this, but what we've done is slowly add in more and more tracks, taking advantage of the free tracks when we can. We didn't start by using a track with every song. We are just slowly building up our library. God has blessed me immensely this year, so I've been buying a track or two each week since the beginning of the year.

It seems pretty cut and dry, just fiddling with the program seems pretty easy to manipulate for what scenario may be needed.  My question is about the pricing.  Neither loopcommunity or multitracks seemed to do a great job of explaining, all I saw was $11 per song or that's what it seemed.

I did notice a subscription service of sorts, is it something where for the $60/mo (I think for the Rental) I have access to whatever songs the church may need?

Sure thing! Getting started with tracks can be a little intimidating and overwhelming at times, so if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. 

Heading there now.  We have a similar issue in our setup.  Now with the electrics at least we can fill the sound in quite well.  But this may be a resource we can use as you and your church do, I appreciate that!

Yeah, our backing tracks fill in a lot. That's where our electric guitars, bass guitar, auxiliary percussion, and many other instruments come from. As you probably saw, there is only me on keys, an acoustic guitar (sometimes) and our drummer. So that makes for a pretty thin sound, even with all the synth, keys and pads sounds I can make from my keys. So the track really fills out our band. The nice thing about Prime is that as your band grows, you can shut off those instruments. So while we don't have an electric or bass guitar now, in the future when we hopefully expand our band, we can just shut those tracks off and use the rest. Of course, when you play with a track, it's vitally important to stay on beat, so the hardest part for us was learning to play with a click track. But now that we've been doing it for a few months, it's gotten much easier.

If you've never seen it, you can check it out at https://loopcommunity.com. There you can listen to the tracks and even sample turning different tracks on and off for any given song. And if you're really good at making tracks, you can become a producer and sell your own multitrack to others on the site. It really is a great resource for church worship teams.

Sounds good!  The backing tracks you mention, is that where that electric guitar sound came from?  I was trying to find the electric guitar player.  Also I'm sure having the capability to change the tone for your keys to match the set is pretty convenient.  My amp is a Marshall CODE50.  Has a few dozen effects and with a footswitch and volume pedal I can make some pretty awesome ambience when needed.

In my church group, Im the only consistent electric.  What I mean by only consistent is there are two other guitarists, but on any given week they may be Acoustic and Bass.  They havent asked me to do drums or keyboard yet, but Im there to do what is asked so no worries.

Very nice.  I haven't gotten that far.  Within the past year, I started using Mainstage on a Macbook Pro for my keys rig. There's an absolutely awesome program for Mainstage called Sunday Keys that has a ton of pre-defined patches designed for worship. Also, the company makes song-specific patches for many popular worship songs that are pretty amazing.

Then in January, we started using Loopcommunity's prime to run backing tracks during our worship sets. The transformation in our worship has been incredible. My next step will be to learn how to make my own multi-tracks so I don't have to purchase them.

If you're interested, you can see how it all sounds put together. Here's a link to my church's live stream yesterday. I'm on the keys, and my wife and son are on vocals in the front. The worship set starts around 9:10 into the video;

https://www.facebook.com/wordolcc/videos/321783562474537