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Setting up Easy Backing tracks – Rehearse better & Perform Tighter on a budget and simply!
Introduction
In my band, we have started using backing tracks! However, not for what you might think! In my band, we have 11 members, so making sure everyone is at rehearsal can be a pain – especially drums, bass, guitar, and keys! So, what we’ve started to do is run these parts through tracks, along with vocal stems. This way, you always have the “minimum” you need for rehearsal.
I took it upon myself to put together a simple and effective playback rig, using easy backing tracks that I created that help fill in if anything is missing during rehearsals.
However, as you’d expect, I quickly gave myself some requirements! I know, proper shocker, isn’t it? So, why don’t we dive into those before we go over what I came up with and how it sounds and performs – using Logic Pro as the backbone of the setup!
The Requirements
The first requirement was that it had to be easy! I didn’t want to have to worry about the rig getting too complicated or being hard work to set up and use on rehearsal night (and rehearsal night is an important factor).
Another requirement was that it had to be light, small, and easy to set up! I didn’t really want to bring a whole other box or case, have to set up loads more gear, or just carry more stuff. I wanted it to fit into what I already carry (Guitar Case, Pedalboard, and Shockproof case!).
Lastly, it had to be expandable! If we wanted to do more with backing tracks, we could! For example, run light shows through MIDI, or even trigger guitar patch changes and brass sheet music changes via MIDI. So it had to be easy to expand and grow if we decided to take things further.
As we said at the start, this is only for rehearsal! We don’t have any plans to run tracks live for any reason, as the full band will always be at the gig. So this was only something we needed to get us through rehearsal and make it so that if we were missing some people, we could still rehearse – and most importantly, have a productive rehearsal.
Thanks to simple and easy backing tracks and Logic Pro, we’ve made this process smooth, affordable, and scalable.
The Solution and the Rig!
So, what solutions did I come up with? Well, thankfully, I think I managed to solve all the requirements I mentioned above! So let’s go through them and find out what we did!
I said it had to be light and easy to set up, and thankfully, after figuring it all out, how much extra gear did I have to take to rehearsals? Just an extra cable! That’s it! To make all this work, all I had to bring was an extra USB-C audio splitter cable (this will become obvious shortly).
I already took an iPad to rehearsal for mixing the in-ears and for my notes and charts, so I wanted the setup to be built around that.
All the other points mentioned above come down to the software! I installed an app called “Multitracker”, which handles all the heavy lifting and audio output. It’s wonderful, easy to use, and free (to a point). All I had to do was create the tracks (we’ll cover this shortly), upload them to the iPad, import them into the app, and away we go! This setup, combined with easy backing tracks and simple tools like Logic Pro, turned out to be the perfect lightweight and expandable rehearsal rig.
Building easy Backing Tracks
I thought it would be worth going through how I created the backing tracks. You’ll need a few apps – I’ll recommend the ones that I use, but others are available.
It’s worth noting that I’m not getting paid to mention any of these apps. I purchased them all myself after researching around to find the best tools for creating easy backing tracks that still sound professional.
Getting the Parts
The first thing you need is a copy of the track you want to create a backing track from. Now, if you don’t need the vocals, then you can use a MIDI track. However, if you want the vocals (like we do in my band), then you’ll need a copy of the original track.
I put this track through the app “Moises” on the iPhone. I’ve done a few songs using this and haven’t had to pay yet – but when the time comes, I’m happy to pay, as it works very well! Using this app, you can take a track and split it into various stems. (I tend to only be interested in bass and vocals.) You can then export these tracks separately and you’ll be ready for the next step!
If you’re using a MIDI file, then look around and find the best MIDI file you can get! If you’re planning to use this setup for live gigs, I highly recommend investing in paid files. These typically give the best and most consistent results.
Once you have your file, open it in your editor of choice. For me, we’ll be doing this in Logic Pro, which is ideal for building easy backing tracks with flexibility and professional quality.
It also comes with a high risk of damaging the wood and/or instrument!"
Assembling the Backing Tracks
You want to import all the tracks into Logic Pro and line them all up! For myself, I tend to do drums, bass, and vocals, as those are the parts we really don’t want missing from a rehearsal. So, I load each of these onto separate tracks and line them up. When you hit play, it should sound similar to the original song.
Once you have all the tracks imported, you’ll want to create another software instrument track. Load in a MIDI instrument capable of making a hard tick noise. For me, in Logic Pro, I use “Klopfgeist”, then select the preset “Hard Tick”. You can set the click however you want – whether it’s a standard click, an accent on beat 1, or a custom pattern. Because you’re creating your own click track, you can customise it freely! If there’s a section in the song that goes double time, you can double-time the click as needed.
Last thing to think about!
Lastly, if the song has a lot of changes or complicated parts, you might want to throw in some audio cues. I downloaded a free pack from “WorshipTutorials” (link at the bottom of the page). This is an outstanding pack and contains everything you’ll need! Drop a few of these in to help the band stay oriented during tricky sections. This method helps you build incredibly useful and easy backing tracks that are fully customisable, all within Logic Pro.
Tempo and lining up tracks
Once you have exported your stems from the Moises app, you may find that the BPM fluctuates. This is normal for songs recorded in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, as they weren’t recorded to a click! However, you can easily solve this with a little time and counting.
Take the track you want to adjust and turn on “Flex Time” in Logic Pro. You can then edit the track, line it up, and snap it to the grid – giving you a stable BPM throughout. Most modern songs will have been recorded with a click, so you won’t need to do this as everything should already be lined up.
A quick word of warning: don’t go too strict with this! Sometimes musicians drag or rush on purpose, and you’ll want to preserve that feel. I usually go through the track and find clear hits that are meant to fall on the grid, then snap those into place. This tends to bring the rest of the song in line without sounding robotic.
Once you have all your tracks lined up, your click track, and your vocal cues ready to go, it’s time to do the final step – which makes it super simple to run everything from an iPad with just one cable!
Exporting & Sending
As far as exporting the tracks, you want them all to have the same start length. So, I set a repeat section in Logic Pro and then bounce that section. This ensures that when you import them later, they will all line up correctly.
For me and my needs, I just export as an MP3. This keeps the file size down and doesn’t seem to degrade the audio too much! Mess around with the export settings until you get something you like. If you were using this setup live, it might be worth exporting as a .WAV file. However, I honestly don’t think there will be a huge difference for most applications – especially for easy backing tracks used in rehearsal.
Once you have all your exports ready to go, you’ll want to get them onto your device (for me, and for the rest of this article, that’s an iPad). The easiest way for me is to just Airdrop them over!
Once I’ve Airdropped all the tracks, I make sure to select them on the iPad and move them to a Backing Tracks folder in the “On My iPad” section. This way, you won’t have to worry about being offline or needing to download the tracks. Just keep in mind that this will take up storage space on your device.
Building easy Backing Tracks
This is where the magic happens! Setting it up in the app is where you split the signal out.
Firstly, you need to buy yourself a splitter cable! You want a cable that can take an audio source (mine is USB-C) and split it into a mono left and right output. This is where all the magic happens.
Open up the “Multitracker” app and click on “Settings” at the bottom, then click on “File Manager.” Here, you can import all your individual tracks for all your songs. Once you’ve imported them, click back over to “Song Configuration” and start building out the app.
Start by clicking “Clear Selection” on the left-hand side, and then click on all the tracks for the song you want to build. Once all the tracks are in the configuration window, click on “Out” and set where you want the sound to come from.
The important part!
Now, this part is important: you want the click track to be panned to one side, and everything else panned to the opposite side. Personally, I have the click on the left and the backing track on the right.
You can then set the levels for each track. (If you’re only running the two outputs, this is how you adjust levels for the backing track mix.) Then, save your song and you’re ready to build out a playlist in the “Playlist View.”
The playlist view also allows you to edit levels while the track is playing – a super nice feature! This setup makes using easy backing tracks from your iPad simple and powerful, especially when paired with a solid DAW like Logic Pro.
Video Tutorial
If you want to see a visual guide for doing this, you can check out the tutorial below. It’s a quick walkthrough on how to set up your easy backing tracks, set a click track, add cues, and how to export everything. We then switch over to the app and show you how to configure it step-by-step. So take a look at the video below – hopefully it adds some extra help on top!
If you liked the video and want to see more, then please let us know! Drop us a comment on the video about what you’d like to see next, and we can put together more articles and tutorials on it.
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Conclusion
Hopefully, that gives you a little insight into how I create my easy backing tracks for my band rehearsals. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is only used for rehearsal – we don’t use these live! It’s purely to replace missing members who couldn’t make it to a practice session.
Using the “Multitracker” app, you can import several backing tracks, and if you have an interface connected with multiple outputs, you can send different tracks to different outputs! For example, you could send your bass to one input on your desk and drums to another. This allows you to split things up even further and fine-tune your mix.
However, this approach does require more gear. If you were planning to use backing tracks live, I would recommend this multi-output method as it gives you much more control. But for rehearsals, the way we described above – using cheap backing tracks, a simple cable, and Logic Pro – is going to be more than enough!
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