How can I use Playback for spontaneous worship?
By: Zach Pickens
Playback is a powerful and intuitive software that can be used to quickly set up and execute spontaneous worship settings. With the intuitive design and automated functions, Playback makes it easy to set up a spontaneous worship setting and to customize it with useful features such as key and tempo changes, looping, and song section arrangments.
With its automated options, mixing tools, and comprehensive features, Playback provides an easy way for church services and worship events to sound more open and free up your worship leader and musicians for spiritual creativity in a set.
There are two main ways to build a spontaneous set in Playback, planning ahead and on the fly, and there are features specific to each of those methods of building. Let's explore!
Planning Ahead
Infinite Click
The infinite click feature, new in Playback 7.7.0, allows you to continuously loop a click track for as long as you need it at any point in a song. Whether at the beginning, end, or any point in the middle, adding a click section can help when you want to plan spontaneous moments or space in your setlists.
In a spontaneous worship setting, the infinite click feature can be very useful if you need to play a song that does not have a recorded click track.
For example, if you are leading a band in a spontaneous moment and you want to keep everyone in time, you can use the infinite click to provide a consistent tempo for the song. This can be especially helpful if you were originally playing a song that has a complex or irregular time signature, as it can be difficult to keep the tempo consistent without a click track.
For more information on this powerful feature visit this article.
Continue Pad/Stay In Song
Another feature to utilize for spontaneous purposes is the "continue pad" feature and the "stay in song" feature. This is great for more open, reverent moments of worship with lots of space to be filled by your team.
To do this, click the arrow icon in between songs, then click "stay in song." From there, in the "continue pad" section, toggle that to on. It will look something like this:
Once this feature is applied, the song to the left (for this example it would be On The Alter) will end. The click will end, and the next song will not be cued. The pad will continue and the cursor will jump back to the beginning of the song.
This feature is good for a more open, reverent moment in worship. When ready to move to the next song, manually click the song and hit play when ready.
On The Fly
Tap Tempo
The tap tempo feature, new in Playback v7.7.0, allows you to set the tempo of a song by tapping a button in time with the beat. You can tap a tempo to start your click and/or tracks in whatever tempo you’d like in the Playback app.
In a spontaneous worship setting, tap tempo can be very useful if you need to quickly set the tempo of a song that you are playing for the first time.
For example, if the band starts playing a new song and you are not sure what the tempo is, you can use tap tempo to set the tempo in Playback so that it is in sync with the band.
Or if your worship leader is flowing into another song that was not planned in the set that may be at a different tempo or time signature, you can use tap tempo at that moment in real-time to keep the band in sync. This will allow your worship leader to have more freedom to go anywhere they feel in the moment rather than feeling restricted by the original flow of the set.
If you would like to learn more about how to use this feature take a look at This article.
Song Section Count-In/Pre-Roll
The Song Section Count-In and Pre-Roll feature in Playback is a powerful feature that when activated, will count off before each song section.
This ability gives the user the freedom to bounce around from section to section with the guarantee that the band will stay in sync. Also with this feature applied, when you start a song section, the mix will seamlessly fade back in for a smooth transition from spontaneous, to whichever section of the song the worship leader flows back into.
To apply, go to "settings" and look for "Count into each section" and "song section pre-roll." Once you navigate there, toggle both too on. It will look something like this:
Closing
Using Playback for spontaneous worship is a great way to create a unified musical experience for your congregation. Additionally, you can save setlist templates for quick access during your service, making spontaneous worship easier to manage.
Overall, with Playback churches are provided with the tools necessary to achieve a seamless and in-sync worship experience.
As Pastor Tim Pawlplyn puts it, “It allows us as a church to be creative and still maintain control.”
With RehearsalMix and ChartBuilder, all of your customized arrangements in Playback are automatically reflected once they have been saved to the cloud. So your team has the ability to listen, and play along to the spontaneously influenced set you have prepared.
Playback Sync has the capability to connect to all ChartBuilder devices being used on the stage so that all devices are flowing along with Playback. So when you make changes on the fly in spontaneous moments, all of the devices on stage will reflect those changes, keeping the entire team unified for your impactful moment.
For more information, check out some of the helpful links below and go to Multitracks.com/support and someone from our team will connect with you.