Sunday morning is quickly approaching. Your choir has been practicing all month, the harmonies are sounding beautiful, and the congregation is ready to worship. But suddenly, your church’s drummer calls in sick, and the bass player is out of town. You are left with a wonderful choir, a willing piano player, and a lot of empty space in your music.
If you have ever led a music ministry, you know this stressful feeling all too well. As a saxophonist who has spent 25 years leading ensembles and playing in both live church settings and recording studios, I have experienced these exact moments of panic. You want to offer God your absolute best, but sometimes you simply do not have the musicians you need to make a full, joyful noise.
Thankfully, modern technology has given us an incredible tool to solve this problem. It is a tool that professional recording artists use every single day, and it is now available to help your ministry thrive. Today, we are going to talk about “stems.” Let’s explore exactly what audio stems for church choirs are, and how they can bring a fresh, powerful blessing to your worship team.
What Are Audio Stems for Church Choirs?
If you have never heard the word “stems” used in music before, it might sound a little confusing. However, the concept is actually wonderfully simple.
The Recipe of a Song
Think about baking a chocolate cake. When the cake is completely finished and comes out of the oven, all the ingredients are baked together. You cannot take the eggs out, and you cannot remove the sugar. A standard MP3 backing track is just like that finished cake. It is one single audio file where the drums, guitars, piano, and bass are all mixed together permanently.
Stems, on the other hand, are like having all of the individual ingredients sitting in separate bowls on your kitchen counter. When a studio producer makes a song, they record every single instrument on its own separate track. “Stems” are simply those individual audio files. When you purchase stems, you get one file that is just the drums, another file that is just the bass guitar, another that is just the piano, and so on.
The Power of Total Control
Because the instruments are separated, you get to act as the chef. You have total control over what goes into the final mix. If you put all the stems into a basic music program on your computer or tablet, they will play together perfectly. But the true magic happens when you start adjusting those individual pieces to fit your exact needs.
The Benefits of Stems for Small Church Choirs
You might be wondering why a church choir would need separated audio tracks. The benefits of stems for small church choirs are truly life-changing when it comes to preparing for a Sunday service.
Filling in the Missing Pieces
Let us go back to our earlier example. Imagine it is Sunday morning and your drummer and bass player are absent. If you have the stems for your worship song, you do not need to panic. You simply open the stems on your device, turn the volume all the way down on the piano and acoustic guitar tracks, and leave the drum and bass tracks playing out loud.
Now, your live piano player can play their instrument, and the studio-recorded drums and bass will play right along with them! Your choir still gets to sing over a massive, full band, and the congregation will be completely moved by the beautiful music. Stems fill in the exact pieces you are missing on any given week.
Transposing to the Perfect Key
Sometimes, the original key of a worship song is simply too high for a normal choir to sing comfortably. You want your choir to sing out with confidence and spiritual joy, not struggle to hit notes that hurt their throats.
When you get your tracks from Ascension Tracks, we make this incredibly easy. If you need a different key, we can transpose our instrumental tracks for you at absolutely no extra charge. This means your stems will perfectly match the vocal range of your specific choir, allowing them to lead worship with comfort and grace.
Using Multitracks for Church Choir Rehearsals
Stems are not just for Sunday mornings. In fact, using multitracks for church choir rehearsals can completely change the way your team learns new music.
Building Confidence Before Sunday
Teaching a choir a new song can take a lot of time. Often, the choir only gets to practice with a single piano playing the melody. Then, when Sunday arrives and the whole band joins in, the choir gets easily distracted by the new sounds of the drums and electric guitars.
When you use stems during your Wednesday night rehearsals, your choir gets to practice with the exact sounds they will hear on Sunday morning. They learn how to feel the rhythm of the drums and how to blend their voices with the full band. By the time Sunday arrives, they are completely confident and ready to lead the congregation in praise.
Isolating Difficult Sections
Because stems allow you to control individual instruments, you can use them to help your choir learn tricky parts. If the song has a very complicated piano rhythm that the choir needs to follow, you can turn up the volume on just the piano stem so everyone can hear it clearly. Once they learn the part, you can turn the rest of the band back up.
How to Use Stems in Worship Services
Stepping onto the stage on Sunday morning should be a time of peace and spiritual focus. Knowing how to use stems in worship services can remove the stress of performance.
Staying Together with a Click Track
One of the most helpful stems included in a bundle is called a “click track.” This is a quiet, steady metronome sound that only the musicians hear through their earpieces. It does not play out loud to the congregation. The click track ensures that your live musicians and your choir stay perfectly on beat with the studio recording. It acts like an invisible conductor, keeping everyone moving forward together in perfect unity.
Freeing the Director to Worship
When you are not worrying about whether the band is going to speed up, slow down, or play the wrong chord, you are finally free to actually worship. Stems provide a solid, unchanging musical foundation. As a choir director or worship leader, this allows you to focus your heart entirely on the Holy Spirit and the people you are leading.
Partnering with Ascension Tracks for Your Choir’s Needs
At Ascension Tracks, our deepest desire is to see your music ministry flourish. We provide high-quality worship instrumentals for churches that do not have a full band.
We make using stems incredibly affordable. While our standard high-quality MP3 downloads are $8.99, you can request a zipped folder of individual stems for any song in our library for just $15. If we do not currently have the stem file listed for a song, just let us know and we can usually have it ready for you the very same day.
If you have a special song on your heart and you need a custom instrumental accompaniment track built from scratch, our special order price is just $75. And the best part? When I build a custom track for you, I give you all of the stems at no additional charge.
Finally, as Christians, we believe in honoring the creative work of others. We obtain mechanical licenses for the cover songs we sell, ensuring that the original praise and worship songwriters get the royalties they so richly deserve.
Your choir has a beautiful, God-given voice. Let us help you provide the perfect musical foundation so that your congregation can experience the fullness of worship this Sunday.