Product Glossary

A listening CD is what you would think of as a normal CD. It’s simply a full demonstration recording of the entire work. This is useful for many reasons. Some people prefer to learn the music by listening to a full stereo mix instead of a rehearsal track. Additionally, they can be used as gifts or commemorative purchases for the night of a performance. They are often found sold in bulk 10-packs for our musicals and collections.

A Split Track is an audio track designed to aid and enhance your rehearsals and performance. The instruments are mixed into the left channel, and the vocals into the right. This allows you rehearse with a “full band” without needing the orchestra to show up, or to even perform with the professional sound provided.

Brentwood Benson’s Split Tracks are subdivided into “rehearsal marks,” which are denoted by [this symbol] on your choral book or anthem. These rehearsal marks are generally 1–2 measures before a common starting point during rehearsals, like a chorus or key change. These rehearsal marks are a handy way to get where you need faster while still allowing the same disc to be used for seamless performance.

The DVD version of the Split Track also contains fluid motion graphics and lyrics to further enhance your performance.

An Accompaniment DVD is a helpful performance aid that allows creative display of accompanying visual elements and video to enhance your performance. These videos can be previewed on our YouTube channel.

The Split Track DVD contains two separate audio tracks. If you are performing as a choir alone without a band, you can use the Split Track audio, which is the same dual channel split between band and choir as the Split Track CD. If you have a band or orchestra but would still love to use the video content, you can use the Click Track audio to send to your conductor or instrumentalists’ headphones so that they stay in sync with the video.

The Click Track timing even lines up with our Audio Stems and Orchestrations, so you can combine all these elements to help create your perfect performance scenario.

Please note: Most of our Accompaniment DVDs offer both Split Track and Stereo Track Files, with either .mov or .mp4 files to use with your favorite presentation software.

A Rehearsal Track is an audio CD or digital download specifically designed to help members of the choir learn their parts. Instead of simply offering a stereo mix of all vocals and instruments together, a Rehearsal Track pans the entire mix to the right speaker except for the relevant part, which is placed in the left speaker. For instance, the Tenor Rehearsal Track has the tenors in the left speaker, and all other choir members and instruments on the other side.

This allows the listener to isolate their part and easily learn it on their own. You can use the balance function to pan all the way to the left and hear only the isolated part, and then when you feel comfortable pan all the way to the right and take the part out completely, challenging your mastery of the music.

An orchestration is simply the conductor’s score and one copy of every instrumental part you need to allow your orchestra to play a song or musical. We now offer orchestrations digitally for ease of use — instead of paying shipping for a massive 1,500 page stack which you only needed a few pieces of, we now offer them in a bookmarked digital PDF format so that you can easily print off only those instruments and copies which you need.

Audio Stems are the newest and most flexible tools that you can have in your performance arsenal. Every single instrument in the band and orchestra is presented on its own audio track. When loaded into performance software such as Ableton, ProTools, or Logic, you have full ability to mix in pieces of our professional recordings to your own performance.

For instance, two of your three violinists call out sick? Beef up the section with the violin track. Oboist split her last reed five minutes before the service? Mix in the oboe. Want those extra 15 layers of synthesizer to sound just like UNITED? Sure thing. Even mix in every instrument all at once to give a bigger, sweeter sound to your performance.

Audio Stems also include a click track to ensure that live musicians and the track stay in sync.