The Birth of a Backing Track

Several people have asked me about my use of the computer with the Praise Band at St. Mark's, and I've put together a brief rundown of how I make my backing tracks.

First of all, efficiency is key because (at least lately) I have been recording several backing tracks each week. Luckily, this process has become pretty routine for me. I begin by recording either a lead track with the melody or a piano track if it also carries the melody (sometimes I don't want the piano doubling the melody). Anyway in this case, the piano line has the melody in it and so I used it along with a click track to help me keep the beat.

By the way, "How Majestic Is Your Name" is a classic Michael W. Smith piece from the 80s. Before recording this, I watched him perform it from 1982 w/ Amy Grant (on YouTube). At St. Mark's we don't do anything so dramatic (or fast!--if you watch the video, skip past the introduction to 1:30 to see what I mean.). Even so, I always love to take inspiration from from what I can, and I find him to be a fantastic musician and songwriter.

Anyway, after the basic melody is down I can start to layer other things on top of what I've recorded. I set Logic up to use a drum kit with my keyboard (I don't own a drum set... yet ;-) Here's the layout of my most-used drums (for reference, the lowest C shown here is C1).

So, with my piano track playing aloud, I will practice and create a drum part for the piece. I prefer to 'perform' it as I record it, rather than program it like a drum machine. This way, the grooves and the fills sound natural. I tried to make a video of myself playing the drums, but I couldn't hold the camera while I played the drum part because it takes two hands. Anyway, you can imagine how it might look to play the drums in this way. Here's the recording of the next step:

I don't like to over-orchestrate the backing tracks, so I don't do a lot more after this point. I firmly believe that the live musicians should be doing most of the work. However, the bass player in the band is often away so I have been recording a bass track for when he's gone. Originally I was plugging in my bass and making the track using the actual instrument, but lately--in the name of expediency--I have been using the keyboard with one of Logic's many high-quality bass samples. This way, I don't get quite the realistic sound of flesh on string, but it does allow me to make the recordings a lot faster since there is no additional set up and synching required.

At this point I can simply use the various mixers and editors in Logic to tweak anything that needs tweaking and then I extract each instrument as its own track. These tracks are then imported separately into Mainstage so I can use them individually or in combination depending upon the instrumentation that I need. I'll explain that process in my next post, "Making Music in Mainstage".