From Complicated to Simple

Let me tell you, we’ve come a long way in worship tech. Back in my day, I had to build all our worship band track sessions in Ableton Live, and I had to walk to band rehearsal at church 14 miles each way in the snow! You Zoomers don’t realize how easy you have it with today’s software for running tracks, automation, and all the other cool things you can do with this ecosystem.

Why Our Drummer Runs Everything

At Rock Harbor, we’ve found that our drummer is the perfect person to keep tempo and trigger tracks. It just makes sense, right? So we’ve set up our drum position with a beautiful iPad running a specialized playback app.

For this setup, we’re using a newer iPad Air—it’s about $500 and significantly better than the old iPad we were using before. (I literally just sent our worship leader the link and said, “Get this one!”)

The Hardware That Makes It Work

Here’s what makes our system tick:

• iPad Stand: We use a cool Anchor iPad stand that’s fully adjustable to the drummer’s preference
• Connectivity: A USB connection plugs into a little Anchor dock, with USB-C for power (keeping the iPad charged) and another USB connection going to our audio interface
• Audio Interface: We use the TrackRig by Blackstone, which provides eight balanced outputs for tracks

We’re currently routing our audio like this:

• Click on channel one
• Guide on channel two
• Everything else as stereo on channels three and four

We actually have the channel count available on our mixing console if we want to break out our tracks into more stereo channels. I just need four more preamps available on our stage box in our back rack room (hopefully arriving in a few weeks).

My Recommendation for Beginners

If you’re just getting started with tracks, try to have a setup where you can run at least four outputs from the playback app on an iPad into your interface. I got a little four-channel sub snake with some slack for flexibility, going into our other sub snake that connects to the stage box.

The “Clean Setup” Secret Sauce

What makes this setup so clean isn’t just the gear—it’s how everything is organized:

1. I mounted everything under an inexpensive laptop cart I found on Amazon
2. Used industrial-strength Velcro to secure the TrackRig to the tabletop
3. Did the same with the power supplies
4. Mounted a Traned power strip underneath (it has screw holes, so you can use half-inch self-tapping screws)
5. Drilled a one-inch hole with a spade bit and added a grommet so cables can pass through the tabletop instead of cluttering the sides

The headphone amp for our drummer’s in-ear monitor mix is conveniently mounted under the table too. This way, I only have one power cable coming down the side (zip-tied for neatness).

Get This Setup For Your Church

I’ve included all the details of this track rig setup in my Church Front Toolkit. Click the link below to access the toolkit for free! We have tons of great bundles of production gear for churches, and I’ll make sure to have a specific one for this track setup because I think it’s going to be a reliable, clean solution for many churches out there.

Thanks so much for reading! Like, subscribe, and I’ll see you next time.