Sam came by tonight and we cut the last two scratch tracks for Falling Toward Orion. I may recut a couple later, but this is good enough to hand out. So it's time to duplicate CDs...
A scratch track is an original track that is there for timing purposes and to let everyone else hear the song. If things go according to plan, we'll lay down the drums in sync with the scratch track. Then we'll lay down the bass guitar, followed by rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and vocals.
I'm having these "Scratch Master Bill" images running through my head and I suspect that's not quite it. :-)
I'm guessing it's a throwaway. Something to listen to and decide how you want to change things.
So it's really just a template, in some sense.