The Worship Keys Podcast
If you play piano, organ, synths, pads, or any keys instrument for worship ministry or the music industry, you are in the right place! Nashville-based worship keys player, Carson Bruce, interviews a variety of different musicians every week.
Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro, this is the podcast for you to learn and feel inspired to enhance both your technical playing skills and to also gain spiritual encouragement while being in a local church congregation.
New episodes release every Wednesday! Reach out directly to Carson on Instagram or email: carson@theworshipkeys.com.
The Worship Keys Podcast
Is Worship Music Harder to Play than Pop? with Marcus Wiles
Welcome to the Worship Keys YouTube channel! In today's special episode, host Carson Bruce sits down with the incredible Marcus Wiles, an expert keys player and music director. Marcus shares his extensive experience from playing for renowned artists like Jordan Feliz and Kelsea Ballerini to producing and arranging in Nashville. They discuss essential music theory, gear setup, and the balance between professional touring and church ministry. Marcus also provides insights into ear training and offers tips for aspiring musicians. Stay tuned till the end to hear Marcus showcase his amazing piano skills!
Marcus Wiles
Thanks for listening! Subscribe here to the podcast, as well as on YouTube and other social media platforms. If you have any questions or suggestions for who you want as a featured guest in the future or a topic you want to hear, email carson@theworshipkeys.com. New episodes release every Wednesday!
Welcome to the Worship Keys YouTube channel. My name is Carson Bruce, so glad you're here. We talk all things music theory, gear, industry and ministry for your worship keys playing. If this episode is beneficial for you or you have any questions as you continue to watch, feel free to comment below and I'd love to hear any feedback that you have along the way. So let's get into today's episode. Today I have the enormous pleasure of talking with Marcus Wildes. We've been hanging out, but man, welcome to the podcast. Dude. Thanks for having me. It's huge honor to be here. No, the honor is all ours. To be able to just get some insight of your world. But share with us a little bit about what you do here in Nashville now. Originally from Arkansas. And, which is awesome. Easier to, to when you're filling out forms, finding Arkansas than finding Tennessee on logistics. Except, ar sometimes for some people it's Arizona. Oh yeah. And some people will say AK for Arkansas, even though that's Alaska. Wow. But for anyone listening, AR is Arkansas. Okay. AZ is Arizona and AK is Alaska, and AI is artificial intelligence. Yeah. That one too. I'm glad we've established this. Yeah. For me, being from Alabama is always the very first one, so it's just easy. Marcus is an incredible keys player, but played for a lot of amazing artists that you guys may know. Jordan Felice, Kelsey Ballerini Colton Dixon. Let's see who else? Tasha Layton. Tasha Layton she's awesome. Danny Goki. Oh, Danny Goki. I love his voice, man. Yeah. Yeah, he's top notch. Insane. Yeah. Especially when he does stuff with Natalie Grant. Yep. That's like my favorite, one of my favorite duos that Christmas tour. They do. Oh. Every year I try to catch it at least once a year. Yeah. Good man. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. And I have the pleasure of getting to work with, a lot of local artists as well, up and coming people that Yeah. That's honestly where I have some of the most fun, 'cause well shout them out too, man. We wanna know them as well. I'll shout out one, I'll shout out my friend. Olivia Grasso. Okay. She's awesome. Og. Yeah. She's got a record out. It's dope. Now you produce, you arrange, you write. You do session work, you're not just on the road. So tell us more about what you do from on week to week basis, month to month basis. What's it look like for you as a professional musician? Man? Variety is the spice of life, right? Yeah. I would say throughout the year, I probably do three to four tours a year. Mostly with Jordan Felice. Awesome. I have the honor of being his music director. That's great. Been doing that for a few years now. And then he's very entertaining and I love his hair, by the way. Yeah, great hair great hats. Yeah. Yeah, just great style. All over the amount of style tips I've gotten from him over the years. Now is this like coming from does someone dress him or does, is that totally him? Oh, that's all him. Is that all him? That's all him. Him, yeah. You have to know. No, like some artists use stylists and stuff and Yeah. That's great. But he's just, he's always on Grailed and other stuff and looking for deals and love it. Sometimes we'll be hanging out and he's dude, look at this. You should get this. Or sometimes he'll just get it, right now. We're gearing up to go on a spring tour with Jordan. Awesome. Riley Clemons is opening up for us. Oh yeah. Riley's great too, and I'll be playing with her and I'm really excited about that. I'm getting ready with building new arrangements, getting playback stuff put together. Awesome. Things like that. So that's what I've been doing the last couple weeks. So there's arranging, tour prep, stuff like that. A lot of church work might be playing, music directing at a church or just playing at a church somewhere. Yeah. Doing some session work. I try to write as much as I can. Write and produce. It's just a more of a long term goal for me. During the warmer months I'm out playing golf or hanging out with my wife. Awesome. I hang out with my wife year round, not just months, but yeah. When have time, I hang out with my wife. Oh no. Honestly, that's my favorite thing to do. That's awesome. And she'll play golf with me too, so that's a win-win. That's good. But yeah, so that's kind of it. Take us back from when you were younger, when you grew up in church what kind of church background did you come from? How'd you learn the piano and where'd you learn to love Jesus first and foremost and then music and piano. Yeah. I I'm very fortunate to have grown up in church. I went to a, I grew up in the Church of God, which is like a charismatic Pentecostal kind of background. So I grew up churchy. Churchy, yes. Yeah, I'm a pastor's kid too, so there was just, oh man. There was just no getting away from it. But yeah, it's so hard to nail down when music started for me, because there are plenty of pictures of me, like as an actual baby, hitting, physically hitting a guitar. 'cause that's what you do when you're baby. You hit things right, yeah. Hitting a guitar or hitting a piano or whatever. I can go back to, I think I was in third grade and my dad, who I said was a pastor, he would do these radio spots on local radio where he would invite people to church. Yeah. Yeah. My dad has a great radio voice. So the way I remember it is he had all these like jazz CDs. And when he would pick me up from school, he would be like playing through, trying to find 10 or 22nd like sections of it to Yeah. Talk over Oh, okay. To invite people to church. I remember like helping him. Pick stuff out. Yeah. And there was one record specifically, it was Oscar Peterson Trio. Oh yeah. Who Oscar's the goat, in my opinion. He's the goat. Yeah. Yeah. Oscar Peterson Trio Live. CBC studios. I think it's 1960. And I remember listening to that record and just thinking I don't know what this is, but I wanna do this. And I don't even think at that point I was thinking, I'm gonna play piano. I just think whatever this is, I wanna be part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So I got the bug for music and specifically jazz. And so that next year I had an opportunity to join like the band program at my school. Yeah. And so I picked saxophone. 'cause if you're interested in jazz, but I grew up. Just in large part thanks to my dad, like very musical. 'cause he not only was pastoring our church, but he's also, he was also like the music pastor played piano at the church. He's also a bluegrass musician. He played banjo and guitar and I love bluegrass. I grew up, we just go to bluegrass festivals and stuff like that. And so of course I picked up the, the instrument that has such a rich history in bluegrass, which is the piano of all things. There's almost no piano. Yeah. There's no just strange. It's just all you wanna get. Yeah. But yeah, I love it. And so I You start playing any rack time though? Yeah, a little bit. Bit, A little bit. Trying, to what extent a kid can do it with tiny hands. You need big hands. Play hard time. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta stretch. You gotta stretch. Yeah. Big time. And Oscar Peterson obviously does that Stride piano. Yes. Yes. That was just very alluring to me. But growing up, all the way through middle school, high school, it was a lot of jazz and gospel music. And then I ended up going to music school out in east Tennessee. Yeah. And I got a piano degree or music business degree where I also studied piano and hung out there for a few years. Do playing in church, playing a lot of local gigs, local artists, weddings, stuff like that. And then eventually I just felt it was time to come to Nashville and I've been here ever since. And you went to school at Lee University, right? I went, yeah. I went to Lee University. Go Flames. I'll be able to hear that. I love it. Love it. Go flames. I was contracting at a church over there for a while and it was awesome. Some amazing people there, but I really found myself somewhat burnt out. And I've been playing in church my whole life and so whenever you've been doing something for that long. Regardless of how you feel about it inside, like you know what to do, what notes to play, what chords to play, right? You know all the tricks, so to speak. And I would be doing my thing and I would be seeing these people out in the congregation from the stage every Sunday, getting their blessing, receiving things that they needed to receive from the Holy Spirit. And I just felt dead inside from a long time. And I remember sitting in the green room between services at this church. This was early 2019 and right before Covid hit Yeah, just in time. And just feeling this, the Holy Spirit speak to me in a way that I hadn't felt in years at that point. And where he just said. I felt like he said, you are, you've, you're failing because you're making, you're trying to make this your gig, and this is never meant to be that. And I think that I think that is a slippery slope in that culture, especially with contracting at churches. Which, I'm not I think people should be paid, not everyone needs to get paid. That's a whole other topic. I'm not here to talk about that. But, it's part of, it was part of my income and I just found that me, and I think a lot of other people too, can get some stuff mixed up on that slippery slope. And I was definitely, I had some stuff mixed up and so I, that's why I got all burnt out. And so I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, you need to go get a gig, or you need to go do something else. And I just felt okay, I don't know what that means, but we'd been looking at moving and so I was like, Hey, we're gonna go to Nashville and we're gonna do it. But what was really amazing is within a month, I think it was maybe around two weeks of me moving to Nashville I had been approached about playing for Jordan. And the timing of it, I honestly, it's just one of those things that when I talk about it, like I'm in no way bragging because it's just, it was so miraculous. I just can't take any credit for it. Like the way everything orchestrated itself and shifted into place, the timing of that it was really, it really was. Providential, nothing short of miraculous. And so I've been doing that since then. Went on tour with him just as a keys player and doing playback in 2020, beginning of 2020 just in time for Covid. And then literally in my hometown, or my hometown of Little Rock grew up just outside of Little Rock. The whole state shut down and that was the beginning of the pandemic for me. And we didn't get to finish that tour until 18 months later, man. Crazy. And it's just kinda this whole crazy journey. But God's been so faithful and I guess about two years ago, three, three years ago, 2022. That's three years ago. That's crazy. Three years ago I started m ding for Jordan. Been doing that since then. And doing a lot of other things besides, and it's just been great. God has been so faithful. I hope that's awesome. I hope that's, not too long. No, I love that. Yeah. No, I love that. I think we need to hear all those things. You mentioned that you play now back at church with the most joy you've ever played. Yeah. Talk about that and talk about why that is, that you have so much joy. Yeah. And then all the differences of the pro world versus the church world. We would be here for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. But I'll try to distill it a little bit. Yeah, so like I said, I felt that. Urging from the Holy Spirit to shift some things. And so I came here and I did find a gig. And it's a gig. It's, I'm doing Christian music, there's still a ministry aspect to it. I came here and started touring and then doing other stuff as well. And for a long time I didn't play at church. I would go to church. But I didn't play at church for maybe almost two years. Wow. Yeah. And. It was just like a very, I, I'll say I was somewhat jaded, but it was just a very healing time for me just to step away. And then I had an opportunity, friend of mine at the time was a music pastor at a church here in Nashville. And he needed a sub, he needed someone to come in and play for him one Sunday. And I wasn't doing anything. I was home. This was Covid times, so there wasn't a lot of road work as it, as some of you may remember. So I, I went there and played and it was just like, it was such a wonderful experience just to, not just worship corporately'cause I've been going to church, but like to actually do the thing that I feel like I was built to do. For that purpose. Yeah. And only for that purpose. Yeah. And so it really started the season of healing for me. And now I am back to. Contracting at churches sometimes. And I get to step in oftentimes to an MD role. And use not just my experience as a touring musician and as a session player, as a producer, but also as a sort of recovered church. I don't know. I don't know what the term would be. I don't, yeah. Um, I've been through it though. Yeah. I feel like I've walked through some of those pitfalls, absolutely. And so it's like I get to bring that into it as well. In terms of music directing with running rehearsals and stuff like that, I think it really comes down to something I hear I hear talked about a lot in the church and in the professional world as well. But this is the Worship Keys podcast. Yeah, man. I hear talk, a lot of talk about excellence. And that's amazing. And I think it's important to define that. I think it's relative. Yeah. Yeah. It's subjective. Everyone has their own definition of it, and you have to find the goalpost. Very true. Very true. To know if you're being successful or not. Absolutely. And so for me if I'm in a professional environment the goal to, to be excellent, it's understanding a clear vision from the artist what they want. And finding the right combination of people and navigating all of the business decisions and the logistical decisions and everything. Yeah. But putting all the pieces in play to execute that vision for their brand or their message or whatever it is. And so if you're in rehearsal and something's not working out. There's an added pressure there, because you're not just representing yourself, you're representing someone who's paying you. And and there's also there's no other way to say it. There's a lot of curb appeal about, especially being on a touring gig, it's amazing, but just like anything, like nothing is as amazing as it seems. Nothing's as bad as it seems, right? But undoubtedly it has a lot of curb appeal and so it's something that there's oftentimes a lot of people that would want to jump in and try to do. So it's like knowing that if you're not the guy, they'll find the guy, so there's that pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it requires a certain amount of maturity to. Handle those things in a positive way. And but also to understand as a leader, as a music director in that environment, that you have to understand that where everyone's feeling and what their hopes and dreams are. So it really is just knowing your team and everything. And so in that way when you come into church, it's similar in some ways, but the intensity is different. Because it's, there's not this, at least there shouldn't be. I feel like in church, you, there shouldn't be this era of if you can't do it, I'll find someone else who can. It needs to be. Hopefully, your worship team is full of people that are faithful Yes. To the church and they want to serve the church. And and the vision is a powerful corporate worship experience Yes. On Sunday or when whatever service you're getting ready for, absolutely. And so obviously everyone works together to make it as good as it can be, but you're also often not working in an environment where everyone is a professional musician. You've got a multitude, especially here in Nashville. Like you've got a multitude of experience levels. It's oh, the bass player might used to be on the road with Soandso and the drummer is here between runs. He's currently on the road and one of the worship leaders is a independent artist, but everyone else just has a nine to five job and they're here to serve their church. Yeah. Yeah. It's very unique experience. If you think about it. To try and like figure out where everyone's at. And get everyone to work together, yeah. And so that's really what it is. When I walk into a church environment, I try to just gauge the potential and just extract as much excellence as is possible without having to exchange the culture of the team or anyone's attitude or whatever. Yeah. And 'cause at the end of the day it's just about what's the priority, I would even say it's the same thing in touring. If you're having to, if the transaction to get the job done is someone's mental health or their emotional wellbeing, then it's not a good fit. But the result in a professional environment is you have to find someone else. Yeah. In church, I don't think you kick someone to the curb just because it's not working out. Yeah. You have to understand that the vision changes. We all have to work together and like Absolutely. I think that the thing that's most pleasing to the Lord is a corporate worship experience. And so it's if you have someone in the church body that's serving and they can do the job, then it's let's work together and figure out what this needs to be. Maybe something needs to be simplified. Yeah. Or whatever, it took me some time to learn that, to learn, because like, it's a different approach, and, you I get up on stage in front of a red keyboard and I've got a talk back mic. Sometimes I'm like, oh, it's easy to forget where you're at, but I think I tried my best to do it the same in both environments, just to lead with love and to know the people that are part of the team. And to just respect them among, above everything else. And to respect their journey too. I love that. Not just spiritually but musically too. It's like I have this background in jazz and gospel, but like maybe the bass player, he grew up or she grew up, doing country music or whatever and so my default gut instinct, musical decision might not be there. Yeah. It doesn't make it wrong. It just means that we have to work together. I love that. So it's just all about communication at the end of the day. I love that. And just defining. Defining success. That's good, man. I think that's, I think that's really important. I love your heart behind that man. Really. Do I wanna dive into your keys setup, man. Yeah. I know you probably love to talk about this. Go. I know you's go. You ever have the opportunity to, I honestly, but have never had the opportunity to. We do. Tell us all about this key setup's. We're about to nerd out. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it. We you're in the right audience to do a lot of these players that are watching this. Of course. Now we don't have your keyboard. If you're listening on the podcast, we don't have the keyboard in front of us. If you're watching on YouTube, obviously you know that we only have a piano behind us, which I do wanna hear you play. I do wanna hear at the end of the episode, I think maybe we'll do the outro where you can noodle around on some piano. 'cause you're an amazing Oh man pianist. And it would be doing a disservice if we didn't hear you at least play one of your favorite songs on the piano. But I'm really good at playing Jordan police songs. Okay. Yeah, I bet man. I bet. Tell us about your rig, because as soon as I saw the visual of it, which I do wanna. Put on the screen here on YouTube of just from your Instagram of what it looks like, but describe to everyone what all keyboards you use. What your favorite sounds are. How many things are you sending out to the soundman? All this stuff, man. Just go for it, man. The first thing I should probably say is I get bored easy. Okay. So if you ask me again in six months, it'll probably d probably be different. What now? Is that a pun intended? You get bored, keyboard. That was, no pun intended. I have to buy one new keyboard every six months. No. I don't think I kinda like a guitarist in their puddle. I don't think my wife would appreciate that very much. Yeah. I think I'm done with keyboard purchases for a while. I guess I'll start with the boards themselves. I've been on the Nord bandwagon for a long time now. I bought a stage two back in 20. 14, maybe. Oh, wow. You really have been for a while. Yeah. I sold I said I started on saxophone. I sold one of my saxophones. I sold one of my guitars and just about everything else to my name back in the day to buy That basically. Sold your soul to get your Nor I was a broke college student and I still bought it on credit. Oh man. Sweetwater credit card. Let's go. Let's go. My current setup is I have a Nord stage 4 88 as my main board. I've got this kind of like triangle setup. It's pretty much all the like the main keyboard sounds, roads, piano, whatever, and all my pads as well. Okay. And then up here on the left, which some kind, sometimes I flip flop 'em, but usually up here on the left is any number of analog senses that I'm feeling. Love it. I have a couple pieces that I like to swap out most often, which I, my favorite sense of all time that I own is the prophet six. Oh yeah. We love that. I love that, but I also love it a lot, so I don't really want it to get road worn too bad. Started looking, started seeing some bent knobs. All of a sudden I was like, I'm gonna keep this thing at home. Yeah. So I also have a cord prologue. Okay, awesome. Which, I don't, I, I haven't seen a lot of those out in the wild, but I think they're dope. Yeah, it's a fairly affordable analog synth. It's compact. It's the eight voice, one is 49 keys, and it's it's one of those that the mod wheel is like above the keys, not to the side. Ah. So it's it's just really compact. It looks like it's almost a square, but it's not, it's but it's just pretty compact. It's got like a ton of oscillators and it's just it's just got a big sound. Yeah. And I love that. And so I've got that off to the, off to one side. And that is mostly just the big analog stuff. The stuff that has to be analog. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're cutting leads or I'm not really doing any bass stuff on the gig for Jordan, but if I, sometimes if I'm playing for an artist that maybe it's like just me and a drummer that'll come in handy for bass. Or if it's a pad that is like more kind of upfront, not really like a back background pad. In worship we always talk about layering pads and piano. If it's not that kind of pad, then I might play it over there. Okay. And then on the right side, I have another Nord, it's a stage three compact Sweet. Which I mainly using that for organ. Okay. Because it's got the physical draw. Barss got the draw barss. Yeah. Yeah. Which the stage four has the draw bars too. But honestly, just being able to reach over to another board that's like dedicated is really helpful. Absolutely. And then sometimes I'll also use it for any synth suns that are more of a modern approach that's, like your super saw type stuff or like your di very digital sounding stuff. Yeah. Or sometimes if there's stuff that like, is very specific to the record or to the, to an arrangement that I've worked on. Yeah. I'll sample it and put it in there and most of those samples are in the compact. Awesome. And that just helps me like. I know you've had guests on here before and you guys have talked a lot about the benefits of having a laptop based rig and the flexibility it brings you. And I agree with all of that, but I feel like the way you can sample stuff into some keyboards if you can take the time to prep, which if you're going on tour, you should a hundred percent do. It's kinda the best of both worlds. Because you can love that. It can still sound exactly how you want it to sound. And I just feel like the margin for error or the capacity for things to go wrong is a lot less. Yes. Yes. Especially 'cause you're, we're not just talking about a hundred people in the room, small church anymore. You're talking about thousands in a Yeah. In a larger context, context that people have paid money to come see. Yeah. And they wanna have that. And it's also it's not just for the sake of the guests that have paid money to come see it, but it's also like I said like I mentioned with the rehearsals, like you're contributing to someone else's vision. Yeah. And, and you're also representing yourself as well. Yeah. In addition, yeah. In addition to representing, Christ and all of, and all the things that we talk about. Yes, sir. You're also, it's also a business and there's money on the line. And that's the thing, like everything that comes along with that is really like what we talk about when you talk about a professional musician being different than just, than a church musician. And just navigating that. But and so for me, one way that manifests in terms of just the gear that I choose is I'm not just going to go based off of features or based off of convenience. I'm gonna go based off of what is the most solid, what is the most flexible. That's good. Which like take main stage your Ableton and I'm a big Ableton guy by the way. Awesome, awesome. But and I've done tons of times where I'm all in the box. I've done that a lot too. But, while that might be more flexible than maybe some older keyboards, you can get exactly. Pianos anymore. I feel like Nord is one of the few brands that's you have some of that immediacy and flexibility if you know how to work the board. So I think that like whatever you're using, if it's all hardware, if it's main stage, if it's Ableton, if it's a Kronos or a what's the Yamaha one? Yamaha motif for Montage. Montage. Montage. Yeah. Or Phantom or whatever. Rolling. Like just take the time, do yourself and everyone that you're sharing the stage with a favor and just learn it. For me, I'm actually, I'm not all hardware on tour. I'm all hardware. If during soundcheck one of my keyboards craps out I'll. Find a media controller, I'll go to Guitar Center and buy something if I have to. You're right. And set it up. I have a Ableton session that is like completely, it's like a complete recreation of my keys rig in Ableton. I love that. As a backup. As a backup. As a backup. And so it's a lot of maintenance because as I change things I have to like either recreate it or sample it or whatever. But I'm slightly OCD and it just gives me that confidence, that's great. I had a mentor tell me one time to always give yourself a home court advantage, yeah. And for me, that's the keyboards that I know. I know. I feel like I pretty much know every feature of all those boards that are with me on stage. That's good. And so it's whereas if I was in main stage or something, it's is this working? Is this, I. Glitching out because I have a bad USB cable. Is it glitching out because I've got an old focus, red, Scarlet, that kind of jangles, whenever I put it up to my ear, is it crapping out because I'm connected to wifi. Oh man. It's or any number of things and they're all simple things, but it's, and so I, I'm not to dissuade anyone from doing it 'cause I do it but I just feel like whenever my career is on the line yeah. Because again, if when you're on tour, it's another layer of that intensity, absolutely. When my reputation is on the line. And moreover, the artist that I'm. Working for when their reputation is on the line. Especially if you're like a music director or doing playback or anything like that. You gotta have ducks in a row for sure. I would rather just take a streamline feature set and know it 100%. Yes. And wherever the nor is the Lord is. Yep. So it's the king of peace and the Lord of chords. Yes. Yes. Okay. So you're just basically saying you have two Nords and a synth. Yeah. Whether that be the corg or the prophet six, sometimes I'll get to backline, like a mogue or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, it's usually, but speaking of the Mogue, we had Travis stacks on the podcast. So if this is your first episode, you need to go check out the episode with Travis Dykes too, because we talk about what did he, yeah. Isn't he amazing? I've known him for a while now, but I last got to play with him this past summer in South Dakota at a festival. Really? We were both subbing in for Danny Goki. Okay. Okay. And it was the, it was such a nice surprise. I don't know if y'all would recall when all that stuff happened with like, all the airlines, all the computers crashed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that, that I was flying out that day. Oh man. So I got caught up in all that. Oh. And so I ended up missing soundcheck to this festival and everything, and I show up like an hour before the show. Oh, wow. Don't have any ears mixed. I don't even know what gear is on the stage. And again, home court advantage, I knew they were supposed to have a nod for me, and they did. And so I was able to just boop, b boop, but that's not the point. I'm sitting in that. I'm sitting in the dressing room and Travis walks in and I was like, let's go, dude. I hadn't seen him in so long, but he's awesome. I love that dude. Man. Wait. So wait. Tell the story again. You missed your flight 'cause of some complications. Technological, I ended up sleeping on the floor MSP airport in Minneapolis. Crazy. And we made the show, miss Soundcheck show up and there's a a rickety old Nord stage two with a broken mod wheel. Did y'all have a lot of rehearsals before this or did you just No. I want people to hear that. I think I got the set list like three, two or three days before. And it's a 90 minute set. How did you te tell people how you're able to prepare for this? Give some people some advice here. Okay. Some people are struggling just to do a three song set list on a Sunday. I know. Preparing, I know. Seven days. I will say this about wor I wanna say this really quickly about worship music though. Tell, tell you man, say it is sometimes worship music is harder to learn than some of the most arranged pop stuff he said. He said what he said, guys, it's because it's so repetitive and then these producers or these arranges are like, Hey, we're gonna add this extra bar uhhuh right here for no reason. And you have to remember that. Worship music can get so homogenous, which is what makes it so easy to flow. Which is the point, right? Yeah. I find that if you're playing for an artist that has arrangements, there's like hits and stuff. For me, even though it might be technically more difficult, I actually find that easier to learn because I can just be singing it. I can listen to it in my car and I can sing along with it. Absolutely. Like how well it's written to be catchy. Exactly. Like pop, it's hard to sing 6 4 1 5 at 85 BPM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For and four or five songs and know like the minute differences between them. At least as a keys player, I feel like maybe guitarists or drummers feel differently because they have more parts. Yeah. Keys players. There's definitely some right hand parts, but it's, a lot of, it's a lot of just pads and so it's it's not that it's difficult, it's just that it's, they all occupy the same space in my brain. Yeah. It's hard to separate what's what. Yeah. And but anyways, back to it with learning for a music for a show like that. Like you just, I like to say that the, some of the most powerful processing units, computers on the entire face of the planet is this thing right here between your ears. Come on, man. And I think that people don't trust their brains enough. Absolutely. I think that what a lot of people lack in music is confidence. Not I don't mean being cocky, I just mean believing in yourself. You know what I mean? Yes. And so I know especially like I'm, I know I'm gonna have to practice, I'm gonna have to like, get open up my computer, turn my keyboard on, and play the music and play along with it and figure out, oh, what's that? I'm gonna have figure that out, but I also know that, by the way, are you given full chord charts for this stuff or do you just, you listen to it, right? Just listen you to listening to and play. Sometimes I'll make my own chord chart if it's sometimes that's helpful. Sometimes it's not as helpful. We just, everyone's different. Some of you are complaining 'cause you don't get all the resources. And Marcus over here just listening down and playing. Look, we're musicians. We're musicians, man. I'm want to be a musician. Like I'm not a typewriter. I'm not. And also like even with worship music I think it's important to bring that creativity and your own approach to things. I don't believe that it was anyone's intention, getting back to the worship thing for a second, playing in church multitracks.com, loop community, things like that are amazing resources, for sure. I don't know if product's the right word, but they allow churches to do music that people can really connect with. And it's impactful. Yeah. So I would never wanna take anything away from that, but I think some churches, actually, I think a lot of churches. It's easy for a lot of churches to just become a cover band. Yeah. Everyone's using the same multitracks these days. And I think the challenge for a creative team at a church is to is to deliver these songs in a way that is unique. Yeah. And spontaneous for sure. And so at least as a musician, as an instrumentalist specifically, like that's how I feel. Absolutely. And maybe not everyone will agree with me. And that's speaking of spontaneous, we did an episode just on spontaneous worship, how to approach spontaneity within worship. So if you missed that, go back and view that episode. Let's go. Hour long discussion from Jonathan with 10 K Fam outta Colorado. But you get session. I'm gonna to listen that session and it was really good. 'cause some people have misconceptions about spontaneity in worship and why we should even have it. What is it? How can we prepare for it? How can we. Give ourselves the tools that we need so that when things happen in the service, how can we as musicians support that? Yeah. That kind of thing. Y'all need to take that episode out and see. I grew, I grew up like that. Like when I was growing up playing in church, like there were no multi-tracks. There was no clique. There was no nothing. It was like we were all listening. And even if we played the same arrangement four weeks in a row, which I'm sure we did that at some point. Yeah. But it would still be a little different every time. And I just think that's how it's supposed to be. I like it, man. But anyways, yeah. Yeah. Getting back to preparing for a gig I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend the time practicing. I'm gonna spend some time creating patches if I'm able to. But I also know that if I just listen to it in my car on the way to the grocery store or at the gym, like that's. That's doing something, absolutely. And I also find here's a pro tip here. Let me distill this into if you can do this, then you're, then, okay. If you're getting ready for a gig and you have a long set list and you can tell me the key of every song, the intro and the outro, then I'm not saying that you're fully prepared for the gig, but that's like the most important thing. I feel like if you can get to that point where you can take the set list in a random order and you can say, oh, this song, this is the intro and this is the outro and this is the key, then you've probably listened to it enough to where you're doing something right. That's good. 'cause I don't really think there's a lot of value in rehearsing something to where you play it exactly the same way every single time. I think it's more important to understand the context of what you're supposed to be doing and what everyone else is supposed to be doing, and where you fit into that. That's good. Because at the end of the day, we are musicians. We're, we make music. And I don't think music is just regurgitating things. Yes. It's creation, it's, it's synthesis, yeah. A hundred percent man. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Love that so much, man. Thank you for sharing that. So good. Okay, let's talk about your sound design. It's for one thing, so your setup, you use two stands. They're the, it's the ultimate stands with the double decker. Yeah. Looks like with like a v the triangle. So you put. Your keyboard. I've never seen any other keys player do this. There probably is someone out there. Yeah. I mentioned this before we started and how do you not get this to fall off? Because those things can fall and you see these things in like worship fells Okay. Instagram accounts and make things falling off. I don't know where it was or who it was, but we've probably well seen the video of the dude with I think it's a motif. Yeah. Oh, that huge thing. And he's like banging on it. Okay. I, if you look at that, if you go find that video, Uhhuh, one thing to know about the ultimate stands is that if you get the, I think they're all two tier, but Yeah, I think so the legs are different lengths. So I'm pretty sure that dude was using like, probably one of the biggest keyboards money can buy on like the short legs. So I don't think anyone told that guy. But I will say that has happened to me before. Okay. Really? When I was a kid. Oh no. So these ultimate stands have been around for a long time. But they look super futuristic, but I think they've been around since the eighties. I like, I think the first time I saw 'em was like a news boys tour or something. I, so my church got one when I was a kid. Okay. And I just thought it was the coolest thing. It is the coolest thing. The coolest thing. And ever since then, I've just always loved them. I know some people don't like them. But I think they're super cool. I think they're super cool. And they do have some they can wall lift if everything's not tight. Yeah. But I like how you can hide cables down the center of it. Yep. 'cause the X one, the X stands the cables you have to zip tie them or tape them down a long I go for log gaff tape. Yeah. With those X stands. Oh, I bet. Yeah. And also the weird thing about X stands most X stands is that it seems like they come out of the box crooked. Yeah. Have you noticed that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like especially the second tier. Like you can never quite get it straight. Yeah. Yeah. I actually was playing one time on a big tour with Jordan and I, we were in an arena. And. I was playing a double X stand. I'm not gonna say what brand it was 'cause I'm not here to, I'm not here to hate. But it, the stand started disintegrating. We were like on me, like literally, oh, there's 15,000 people out there. Oh my goodness. And I'm playing, I've got a Nord stage three. I've only got two keep two keyboards at this time. I got a Nord stage three and a profit six. So not a cheap rig. Okay. Yeah. And these are my boards. Okay. And I'm playing and I go reach for this lead line. And all of a sudden I just see this, just the whole keyboard does this. And I'm like, oh my God. Oh no. I look down and the the teeth on one of the legs had completely come loose. And I literally spent the whole rest of the set. It was like a 20 minute set doing like this, like playing, like literally playing one hand, just trying to save my boards. No. So I don't know. It's scary, man. Yeah. X stands don't that, some of 'em are trash too. Yeah. But as far as ultimate stands go, I did experience that one time where one collapsed on me and I think it was just old and it just wasn't tighten, but that was when I was a kid. And since I've been using them professionally, I've not really had a lot of issues with them. They do get crooked. They do, yeah. Sometimes. Yep. But actually doing the two stands fix that issue for me. Okay. Because what happens is when you have an X stand, you've got like the two points of contact, which kind of balances it. But when it's an ultimate stand, it's just in the middle. So it can teeter. Yes. Especially if you play hard. Mm-hmm. If you do the two, then it's you actually have four points of contact. 'cause it's, the legs, the, the, kinda like a triangle, right? And it's it's reaching, touching the keyboard in four places. It's way more sturdy than any like single X stand I've ever used. That's awesome. You just have to make sure they're the same height. We were in rehearsals for our fall tour for Jordan, and I had this thought after rehearsal one day. I was like. I'm gonna try this. And I set it up. I was like, this looks dope. Oh man. And I set it up and I was like, I feel like someone, someone has to have done this before. I'm, I don't know if anyone's done it with Ultimate stands or not. I know, I'm sure people have done it with X stands. Maybe someone's done it with Ultimate stands. Yeah. I don't know. But I did it and I thought it was really cool and it's actually very stable. That's awesome. And it accomplishes a few things for me. It doesn't just look cool. It's ergonomic. In some ways it was a little tricky because, if you're used to playing multiple keyboards you're used to this layout. And I've been playing piano like most of my life. Yes. But when you do it like this you're either doing like this or like this. Yeah. Which this is fairly uncomfortable. Or like this, but it's doable. And I just had to get used to that. It was so funny. The first day I did it, the, that entire day of rehearsal, anytime I would reach for a uni line or whatever, yeah. I would be like a whole step off. 'cause I was just so used to like putting my hand at a certain place, but my wrist wasn't. At the right angle. Wow. That's really specific, but once you get used to that, and I actually like it. Yeah, I can imagine that can be hard. 'cause yeah, you're on this one plane and then all of a sudden Yeah. Changing your wrists like that because you like, think about an organ, right? Yeah. Organs boom. But yeah, that would be difficult, but it forces you to move around. Okay. Which I think when you're on stage is important. Yeah. You gotta move around a little bit. You gotta move around. Those keys helps stage presence. And the other thing about is stage presence is that I, I've been trying three keyboards for a while, for a long time I'd have a double stand and then a single stand over here. Yeah. And that's cool too. But that was an ergonomic failure for me because I am not, I'm often playing, I try to play as much as I can in terms of I try to not have as much in the tracks as possible. So I'm not like reaching over just to play one thing. I'm usually playing at least two parts at once. Yes. And so I'm doing a lot of this. And so that's uncomfortable. Yeah. This makes it, everything's within reach if I can figure out how to orient, orient my body. Yes. And the other thing is that if you have a double stand, I feel like you're creating a wall with the crowd. And this is a big one for me. Doing it the way I've been doing it. I have all my keyboards within reach, but there's, in terms of what's right in front of me, it's just a single keyboard. I feel like my, I can interact with the crowd. It's good, way better people can actually see me. Which I just think it's important. It's important that people see that I'm enjoying myself. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so yeah I just really love it for that love. Also any keys players that are used to using a double tier can relate to this. You have to adjust settings on your bottom board, so you gotta do like this, yeah. Look, 'cause it's blocking. Yes. Yeah. It eliminates that problem for me because it's like they're, I can see most of everything. This, especially the center, the very, very center. Yeah. That's where you need to make all the changes, yeah. And so that's where that comes from. Are you sending three stereo feeds out? So yeah, I have I send everything to a radial Prodi eight. Okay. Radial Prodi eight. Shout out to Jim at Radial. Nice. High quality man. Yeah. It's just like, these are fairly nice keyboards. I feel like you should keep the signal flow nice to the very end. That way. If it sounds bad, it's probably someone else's fault. I love it. I love it. But currently I'm doing six stereo lines. I'd like to do eight. Awesome. Because I do main keys and background pads from the bottom one. I'd like to be able to split that out. Yeah. Yeah. But eight, eight lines is a lot. Yeah. You know for sure. But right now I'm layering those together and the stage four with its dedicated effects lets me really get the mix right. That's good on the pads. So I'm sending those out as a stereo pair and then I'm sending the analog, sent out another stereo pair in the organ slash ox keys slash whatever else, or hits bells, all that thing. Out the last set, how much are you guys doing tracks with Jordan? To be honest, how much is not tracks at all? Are you just doing a click and cues or you Oh, no. There's definitely tracks for sure. It's a four piece band and I love a big sound. Yeah. I will say there's pretty much all the guitars are live. There's not a lot of the only time we would have guitars in there is if there's. We only have one guitar player, so it's if it's something that, another part that they can't play, he can't play and he's playing his main thing live or whatever. Or sometimes like I'll pick up a guitar and just add like something to the, like power cords or whatever. Something easy. Yeah. Or as far as like base goes, like no it's, there might be some like sub base in there, just to feed the subs a little bit. But like our bass player is awesome. He's he's got he always has the right, he's got, I think he brings a couple bases out. He's got a Moog as well. Awesome man. Weal and we really spend some time in rehearsal to get all the tones right. As far as keys go, like I said, I try to play as much as I can. There's some things that I might like double in the tracks, like with a different kind of patch. Yep. Just because if we only did tours, I probably wouldn't need to do that. But because I also want our show to be flexible for like festivals, fly dates, stuff like that. I have a lot of stuff split out in the tracks and depending on what I need for that moment, I might mute or unmute some stuff. That's awesome. I think it's important to, again, because like it's a professional situation, it's a ticketed event. It's important that people know what to expect. Yeah. And so there's finding that balance between being a musician, being creative, being spontaneous, but also like delivering the product. Yes. And so that's playback allows us to do that. We're running a redundant system as well. So that also helps, if anything goes down. And another decision for me to do the mainly hardware thing is 'cause I'm responsible for the playback. And so it's I've got already got two laptops here. I don't really want a third one. In addition to three keyboards and all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And also just the immediacy of the hardware means that truthfully, I feel like in the tier of like priorities when I'm on stage, especially for Jordan, but in any capacity, like anyone who's doing playback, MD and Keys, it's like MD playback keys, or maybe even playback MD keys. I don't know. But I am I need I don't want to spend time for being I do wanna spend time being a keys player. 'cause that's what I love. Yeah. But it's if that has to take more bandwidth than it needs to, then that's a problem because those other good, those other two roles are really mission critical. Yes. That's good, man. Yeah. It's so funny. Playbacks like the most. Important member of the band and it's not even paid but it's we're sending lighting and video and everything, so it's like that has to go. And do you prepare that or does someone else prep that you do? I don't do lighting. Okay. Okay. I drop some time code in and yeah. Let the people that know about that do their thing. That's good. No, but I do prepare the playback and I. Do the live arrangements and stuff like that. All Ableton of course. All Ableton live, I've got logic and pro tools. If you're like, holding a loved one hostage, forcing me to use it. But I've really been an Ableton guy for a long time. That's awesome, man. A long time. And yeah, we were talk, we were talking about, just talking about the rig. Like I would say my touring rig is what we're describing right now. Yes. But during the summer I have a different rig. Okay. I mainly do two keyboards, unless I can backline a third one. Okay. Which again because so hot outside or? It's just that we do a lot of fly dates. Oh, okay. And I don't wanna fly with three three keyboards. And I also again, like I wanna give myself the home court advantage. So for me that means I might, could. I've been doing this long enough, I might could figure out my way through some synth that I've never used before. Where you could put a role in Phantom in front of me or something. And I think those are great sounding boards, but like I could probably figure it out eventually, but I definitely don't want anyone waiting on me. I'll say for festival is like, Hey, just get me ignored. Preferably a stage three or stage four. Yeah. And I can dump my patches on those, but if it's a stage two, I'll either make the patches on the fly or I'll use it as a MIDI controller. Like I said, I have that backup rig. And then for all my synth sounds, I've got in our playback we have the play Audio one U yeah. Which is a dope piece of equipment. We've talked about that with Seth Penn on Seth builds rigs. He, we just got it like a few months ago. Before that we were rocking the play audio 12 for years. Which, that's another great piece of gear. Yes. But what I actually do, which this is gonna scare some people, but Oh man, I, again if you do the prep work. And you do all the stress testing and you do your due diligence. There's nothing to fear. What's the saying? I feel like Matthew McConaughey said it, but I'm sure that he didn't. All right. All right. All right. It feels like a Matthew McConaughey quote to say A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Oh, there you go. Yeah. He's probably said it, but it probably wasn't him originally, but I just hear, I de I definitely hear it and all all right. After that, for sure. Yeah. But what I do for summer festivals is I have all my sense sounds either sampled from the analog sense that they're coming from cool or recreated in a plugin that I'm happy to share with you. And I run those in from the playback session. That's awesome. And so I will fly with a media controller, like an Arteria key lab. And I'll play trigger the tracks from those, like with the drum pads. Yeah. And then I've got like an instrument rack in Ableton. I don't know if you're an Ableton guy. Yeah. But no, not a big Ableton guy, but we've done some episodes about Ableton. I'm sure someone on this, someone who's listening is a big Ableton person. For sure. For sure. Absolutely. And we love Ableton, but I've got all my sounds in a rack in Ableton. Yes. And they're automating, like the plugins being turned on and off, so they're never using a ton of CPU. Absolutely. And then I'm playing that as well and I've just got a dedicated set of outputs on the play audio for that. Oh, that's cool. And so that's my ox keys. Oh, that's awesome. And the benefit of that actually is that I have all my sounds and it's also redundant because it's on both laptops. Oh, that's good. Yeah. And then I'll try to backline a B three if I can. I love that man. Which, depending on the festival, that sometimes that's doable, sometimes it's not. And that's okay. Yeah, because like I said, I've got all the tracks split out, so I can just un, I can just unmute the B three tracks. That's awesome. So it's all about having that flexibility. That's great, man. But yeah, you can definitely check if you curious about Ableton, we do have a Ableton Live specific episode. Nice. With Zane Stefans, you have to, might have to go back a lot, but there is a Ableton Live. If you wanna actually see inside someone's session and see, all the nitty gritty of Ableton. We do have an overview of that. I might have to go watch that. Yeah, definitely do it. Zane's awesome. He's in Atlanta, but great keys player. But anyway, yeah. Ableton Live. We love Ableton Live. Here's another tidbit Yeah. That maybe someone will find valuable. There's a plugin out there. Okay. From one of my favorite companies. It's called it, the company's called u-he Okay. And they make like this plugin called Zebra, which they developed with Han Zimmer. Ooh. So it's super cool. Yeah. They make another plugin called Diva. Okay. Which is diva is if you took all the Arturia. Collection. Yeah. And put it in one plugin. Oh, wow. So it's basically you create your own custom synth. You can take like a oscillator, you can, with the oscillator section. You can say, oh, I want a Moog oscillator, I want a Jupyter Oscillator June oscillator run into a MS 20 filter with a Moog envelope and you can tweak it. That's awesome. That one's really CPU hungry, that's why they call it Diva. But the one I want, the one I wanted to talk about that I actually use very often is called Hive. Okay. And this is not a paid sponsorship. I've just been using Yui for so long. Yeah. And I just feel the need to preach the good news. But y'all should sponsor Marcus here. Yeah. Marcus Wildes, if you're listening to this. Hey I can make you some content. It would be so easy. 'cause I literally use this stuff every day. But Hive is designed to be, it's from the ground up, designed to be CPU efficient. Oh, awesome. And it is amazing for live stuff, you can just layer sounds so your heart's content. And especially if you have the M1, like the apple, silicon, whatever. Oh yeah. It's just like very minimal hit on your CPU. Amazing. And so for live obviously that's helpful, but when I go out on these festivals, I've got, um, again, if you're familiar with Ableton, you can have these instrument racks and you can have these different chains in your instrument rack of all your different sounds and you can automate which one's being triggered. Yeah. And I've got a combination of samplers, like the Ableton sampler of sounds that I've might've created in either in a plugin for an arrangement that I'll sample in or from a, nor from my Nord or from one of my senses. Yeah. Or if it's something that just has to be, it doesn't translate well as a sample 'cause something's done. I'll create it in Hive and Awesome. I've been doing that for three years. Wow. I've never had a single crash. That's amazing. And so I, yeah, you should check out hi. We'll definitely link that in description here if you're looking for a CPU light. And it sounds great too. It's amazing. If you want to hear Marcus actually demonstrate this one day, let us know in the comments because man, we'd love to have you back to actually get down to the nitty gritty of synth and software. In fact, in September we're planning on doing an all like synthesizer and software specific episodes. Wow. So maybe in between when you're on the road, we'd love to have you back to like actually demonstrate some of these. It'd be a pleasure and I would love, especially if you get your profit. Six out, get some analog stuff, get the mo, get some software, man. I'd be honored to be so much fun. We're trying to wrap the episode up. I know it's, we could probably talk all day 'cause you're incredible, you have so much knowledge and just so many things we could dive even deeper into. But what's one piece of advice or may, maybe a few things so you could say to. A keys player who's learning maybe right now whether they are however old, does not matter. But someone, if you could speak to your younger self when you were learning keys, and I know you mentioned earlier that jazz was a big influence. Gospel was a big influence, and like expanding your listening is always a huge piece of advice. What's your best piece of advice to them? My best piece of advice is listen to everything. Yeah. And also find a way, even if you find something you don't like, try to understand why you don't like it. Don't just be like, I don't like this, because at the end of the day, the only way to be a successful musician is to be able to respect all music. That's good. You have to respect all music and the journey of the people that made them. That's good. And like if you wanna be intentional about the stuff you make, you have to understand that the stuff, like other people have been intentional about the stuff they've made too. Yeah. And so it's if you can find something to appreciate or respect about everything that you listen to, then you'll find value in it. And that's how you learn. That's how you gain something, that's good. It's if you just say, I hate this then, and I made this mis I made this mistake when I was younger, you know? Then you just, you're just losing an opportunity to gain an influence. Yeah. And then a little bit contradictory to that. Okay. But this is more to do with like just professional advice. I think as you're developing, as musician learn, listen to everything. Expose yourself to as much as possible. Yeah. But when it comes to being a professional, I think it's really important to find your thing, to find your niche. One would assume that to say I'm, oh, like in an ideal world, say I'm good at everything, would be the most valuable thing, but that's really not true. Like, when people need a job done, they find the person that is best at that. That's good. Yeah. And so I have, for instance, a lot of influences with jazz and gospel and, I might can dabble at a lot of things. But to certain people or in certain communities I'm known as the synth guy, or I am known as the playback guy, or I'm known in the church world, like I'm known as that guy that knows a lot of those old songs, but still has like kind of modern tones. Yeah. It's and it's changing as I developed my own journey, like my niche is changing, but I think that if you want to take the leap into seeing what it is to be a professional musician, like, figure out what your thing is that you can market yourself as, that's good. I'm trying to say that at a certain level it's good to be a jack of all trades. But once you get to a certain threshold and you wanna work for a certain type of client, yes. They're looking for specialists. That's good. And you, and so they're looking for the right person for the job. That's good, man. And so you have to know what your thing is, for sure. I'm sure a lot of people listening will be in a conversation about, oh, you're a musician. What kind of music do you do for me? That's a hard question. Yeah. Yeah. But it's important to be able to answer questions like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. A few things during this podcast, which we preach this all the time, but just ear training is so vital. If you guys can just pull up some songs, just try to match it. Learn the national number system. Learn your circle of fist. Oh yeah, that's a big one. Learn your skills. That's just all those things. And of course you guys can download the ebook of playing worship keys by ear. So it's a 50 page ebook. Outlines what you need to do if you really wanna start playing by ear. Maybe you know how to play, but you're like, how do people listen down to a 90 minute Set a Danny Gokey set and be able to play that on a tour where you didn't even get to soundcheck. I know. It comes from being able to play back here, listening and it comes from years and years of course, of practice. Like you can't, I. Skip the fundamentals. Yeah. And then once you get the fundamentals, apply that to your training, you have to, these oral skills are just yeah. Important. So I'll conclude this episode by saying, check out the ebook get some training on the national numbers system. If you don't know what that is, of course we have other episodes on that as well. Music theory tips with Kurt Buell and all kind of things. But thank you for sharing on the podcast. So grateful that you like, took the time outta your day to come. Of course, man. It was share with us. It's been fun. And y'all follow him. Marcus Wild's on Instagram. Super cool. But man, let's hear you play, bro. Let's hear you play some piano. All righty.