The Best Advice for Worship Keys Sound Design with David O. Ramirez

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Join us in welcoming David O. Ramirez to The Worship Keys YouTube channel for an inspiring conversation. David is a renowned keys player, producer, songwriter, and sound designer. In this episode, he shares his journey of playing with the band Leeland, his passion for sound design, and his experience touring around the world. David also breaks down the key differences between being a producer and a programmer, and opens up about the importance of keeping the right heart in both music and ministry. He talks about working with artists like CeCe Winans, Phil Wickham, and Chris Tomlin, and the incredible story behind transforming Gnome Studios into a premier recording space in Nashville.

David O. Ramirez

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:08

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. We're with David Ramirez. Welcome to the podcast, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So glad that you said yes to coming on the pod guys, this guy is incredible. You've probably listened to a lot of music that he's been a part of, you've been with Leeland's brother. Okay. And then he started a church or became a pastor at a church. Okay. And then they needed a Keys guy. So then I joined the band and then I've been touring ever since then. The biggest thing for me was Leeland and Casey are very special people and they're the realest people. And so touring it was like, you're with your best friends and you all love Jesus and you're all of one mindset. And it's not like we were just, packing our bags, going to play a show, tearing down, not hanging out, and then going home. So I was very fortunate to be a part of this for basically a decade. Yeah. There's so many beautiful and special moments and memories. Leeland's the guy that will be on a plane and he is reading his bible, praying and not saying not demi or minimizing what other artists may or may not do, but he's always that person who's always been rooted in the word. That's awesome. , and he is like a big brother to me. And I grew up listening to Leeland, so I was already a fan. And so for me it was like, oh, this is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I had to play some of these songs that I grew up loving when I was a teenager. Yeah. Like Sound of Melodies opposite way. There's so many tears of the Saints. And so for me it was like, this was a new season, especially when I was like 21, 22 years old. Get to travel the world, with your best friends. And met so many people across the world, like different types of churches, different cultures like Scandinavia, Australia easy, the uk Yeah. Brazil, like so many. And then, through the years you might go back to some of these churches and you like, have friendship with people in these churches and you pick off, pick up where you left off. And so there's also the aspect of this global community. But not everybody has that experience that I had with touring. So I feel very blessed that I had the good side of it. Not to say there weren't challenges with it. In the sense of there's

6: 3:00

00 AM flights gotta be up at three in the morning and you're exhausted. And you show up, say you had an eight hour flight, you get there, you gotta set up all your gear. We didn't have like roadies or anything. We set it all up ourselves. And then you gotta leave worship that night. And by, it's like you're wrapping up 11 midnight and you're, your body is physically just tired, but you still need there's this side where people want to talk to you right. And then learn from you. And so you're like, how do you navigate being awake for 18 hours and then still having a productive and conversation that could bless somebody. And Leeland and Casey were always the best at knowing how to manage, the intensity of what touring can look like. But also still have the heart of worship and Hartford people. And honestly, I learned so much from them and how they navigate that I didn't just wasn't just. Have that, I didn't walk into it with that mentality. I like learned it from them. So they were always examples for me. And yeah, I learned so much from Leeland specifically on how to bless people, how to walk, inspire people and but also you have to walk through it yourself. Before you can show somebody else Absolutely. What they, what potential they may have. For sure. Or even just motivate somebody and encourage somebody, absolutely. And so there's a lot of beautiful memories of touring. I don't tour anymore, but so it was bittersweet when I had, would play my last shows with a lot of artists that I was dear friends with. Guys, I really just wanna talk more with David, get to know a little bit of his background, who he plays for currently here in 2025, what's in the future as well. How he got started with songwriting producing. He's a producer, songwriter, a programmer. But the big thing we're focusing in, on, here on the Worship Keys is really keys and synth programming. He's. A nerd of all things. Sound design, all about, who is David Ramirez and what does he do? What's programming synth like, maybe some of you don't even know, what does that mean, like programming? What's the difference between producer and programmer so all those things are in today's episode. But right now we're in Gnome Studios in Nashville, and we're, if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on podcast, you might need to switch over to YouTube and see this. 'cause behind us we have this beautiful 1974 console. Tell us all about the studio. Tell us about this console, which I loved. Yeah. 1974. I have an old Pontiac Lamont since 1974, so that was just kinda like a special year. I wasn't alive during 1974, but, I can imagine it was, a great year. I like to tell people I have not three lives, but three lanes that I have different hats in. That I've lived at least the last, like 15 ish years. Like one of 'em is David, the, keys player, musician. Then there was always David, the producer, writer. Yeah. And then there's David, the Gnome Studios. Yeah. And somehow I've had to navigate all three of those lanes in the last 15 years at the same time. Okay. And in the process, you're involved with a church and I get married and now I have two kids. And so then there's family life and all those things. And so the studio ki I, we, I started the studio in 2014 with two other guys right outta college. we were 21 years old with no money. But we had, we were in a synth pop band that we had started in college and had a synth and would make synth pop music. Yeah. Yeah. In college. It was a lot of fun. Where'd you go to college? Belmont. Okay. Okay. Awesome. I went there for two years and then quit halfway through. Okay. Because I didn't want to pay for two more years of tuition get two more years of debt, basically. Yeah. I didn't want to do that. And we're in Nashville, Tennessee right now. That's where the studios are, just down the road from Belmont universities. Outta college we decided Steven Ernest, one of the other studio owners randomly called me. It was like within the same year that I had just joined Leeland Band. He was like, Hey we've always dreamt about building a studio in our like forties or fifties. What if we started it now? And I was like. Wait, what? You wanna start a studio now? Like with what money? Yeah. He was like I'd been like, I had two or 3 cents that I had bought at that time. And our other friend, chase Weber, who's it was the three of us who started together at the very beginning. Steven and Chase had met at an internship at a different studio. They became friends. Steven invited Chase. Steven and I were roommates in college, so he invited Chase over? Yeah. For a hang. What's hilarious is, of all the movies we could have watched, we watched 500 days of summer the first time we all hung out, which is hilarious. And had ice cream. Just like a house of five guys in college, you know that. Yeah. Yeah. And, but Steve and I were good friends. We were in a band together and then Chase became our engineer for our band. Okay. And then we just started making music together. And when I was in college broke and unemployed, I stumbled across like gear flipping. And so I, when I was a sophomore in college, I wanted to teach myself guitar, but I wanted an amp, I wanted an electric guitar. Yeah. And I wanted some pedals, but I couldn't afford it. So then I looked around in my dorm when I was. It was probably freshman year, actually. And I was like I got this ps, this PlayStation, I'm not playing it that much. I could sell this for a couple hundred dollars. I have my trumpet from high school. I could sell this for a couple hundred dollars. So I started looking for random knickknacks that I could just put on Craigslist. And I bought like a guitar, a Fender Blues Jr. And then a distortion pedal. And then I was like I want to try more sound effects. But I don't have more money. I didn't have, I didn't just have any money lying around. I was literally like, no money in my bank account, didn't even have a car. So I was like I have this pedal. I don't let me think what it, the, oh, it was a tube screamer. Okay. Probably paid 60 bucks for it at the time. Maybe 50. And then. I probably want to try it like a delay pedal or something. So I sold that, got my $50 back, bought a $50, like DD five probably at the time they were like 50 bucks. I'm like, oh, I wanna try a Rever pedal. So I'd sell the DD five, I think. First pedal I bought at that time probably would've been like an RV three or an RV five. But I sold the DD five for $80. So I made $30. There you go. So then now my budget became $80 and I kept doing it. Yeah. And I was like, wait, I'm making money off of this. And then I could keep acquiring more things. Yeah. Yeah. So then it became this whole, like you start with a penny end up with a million dollars kind of thing. I don't have a million dollars, but that like very basic principle. I created something called No Music Shop. Yeah. Which is the predecessor to Nome Studios. So then I, before rere.com existed, Instagram had just been created. We would post pictures of food and you would use the built-in filters. And you just post dumb pictures with your friends. Yeah. It wasn't like this thing that we've created now. It was just literally social media at its very core. And so then I created No Music Shop Instagram page that no longer exists, but then I built a website for it. I would post like a pedal or a guitar for sale with this little Gnome. Yeah. And it became no music shop. Yeah. And so it built a following on Instagram in those very early days of, I don't remember, it probably had seven or 8,000 followers, but in those days that was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And. And this is, everybody was wanting to get like a verified kinda Oh a real verified user situation. Where then it was like, oh, you have 10,000 followers. That's crazy. But I had built this thing and I would just post things for sale on Instagram, would sell 'em, ship 'em. I would also sell stuff on eBay. So Nome Music Shop built a following and a brand. And so when we decided to start a studio, we're like, what are we gonna call it? The other guys were like, we should just call it Nome Studios. It's already a brand. A lot of that gear that I was flipping we would have in the studio. So you'd have say a Juneau 60 just sitting around because I was flipping it. Yeah. But it would be useful at the studio. So then it was there, and then it'd be gone. 'cause I needed to make money. But then I would buy something else and there'd be another really cool random synth or guitar or. Whatever. So that's how Nome got started. And then, we started to make music for ourselves. And eventually our friends were like, Hey, can we use your studio? I'm like, okay. Then a lot of our friends started wanting to use our studio and we're like, okay, let's just turn into a business and charge people so that, yeah, we don't have to pay for this. We basically found a commercial building got a year long lease on it and then built like a small studio and it was literally like a control room and a live room. We just wanted somewhere we could track drums. And then we brought all of our, combined, all of our gear. Steven had his guitar stuff, chase had a lot of guitar stuff. They both had some outward gear and some mics, and I had a bunch of keyboards and a bunch of random stuff that I would always float through No music shop. So then we put it all together and I guess this is a studio. Yeah. Our own I think were our first monitors. They're probably like. KRK somethings. I think probably my v eights maybe would've been the very first monitors we had that I found like Craigslist for like a hundred dollars when I was in college. We used what the tools that we had available to us and everybody started, a lot of our friends started using it. So then we turned into a business and then for 10 years we were in a different location. That was a quarter of the size that we're at now. And then in the end of 2023 we moved to this location, which is four times larger, and it's an old cabin from the seventies. It's beautiful. A lot of history. There was already a lot of, hits like country hits from like the 80 or mostly the nineties. It recorded here. Like the Dixie Chicks did their first two records here. Oh wow. Kenny Chesney did a lot of stuff. Aerosmith there, there's a lot, like a very long list of artists who have crazy, it used to be called Westwood Studios. And so this console specifically was a good friend of ours, Ethan's Ethan Barrett. And so he found this console at a sale and it was completely gutted. And for context, this is a 1974 API and there weren't many of this model made. I believe it's a 32 24 if I remember correctly. But this is probably the only 40 channel of its kind because a guy named Leon Russell had API custom built this very specific one for him. Wow. And he would've written with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles with this console. Whether they were demos or masters, there's no way of finding out. But there's like pictures of him with those artists with the console in the back. That's amazing. And so Ethan found it completely gutted. 'cause I guess the previous, it had been outta commission for I don't know how many years, maybe five or 10 years in LA or somewhere in California. And this guy in Nashville bought it, shipped it to Nashville asked a bunch of techs to restore it. They're like, this is gonna cost you way more to restore this thing. You should just sell all the preamps and all the accused, and you'll make a lot of money. You'll make more your money and a lot more. And so it was very, it was completely gutted. A lot of those components were still there. I'm not super console nerdy, but it was basically the pres and EQs were gone. And then a lot of the internal functions were missing. And so Ethan spent I believe it was six to eight, eight years restoring it. Years. Yeah. Not six to eight months years, restoring it in his basement. Wow. And trying and use, using it on projects. Wow, man. So he's a very like, successful engineer in his own right. And we had met him, I believe around six-ish years ago, while this was still in his basement. And at Old Nome we talked about parking it there, but it wouldn't have fit in the control room. So we're always, it was always like a, oh, if we ever move out of here and have a bigger studio, maybe one day we can have that API. 'cause it's an iconic classic. It's vintage API console. So when we found this space, we're like, Hey Ethan, this could work out. Yeah. So we've, between our team and his team, like we've. Combine our efforts to fully restore this thing that's incredible. Which I'm, I can't tell you how many man hours has gone into this console, but when the first time I heard this epic room with drums through this console, I literally started tearing up Really? Because I was so used to what Oldum sounded like. Yeah. Like small room brick walls, and then a little bit of wood walls. I knew how to make that room work. But it was never like this incredible drummer. It was like the room that you could make it work. Yeah. Yeah. It was better than a garage and better than a home studio. It was bigger with taller ceilings and the whole thing. But I always made it work with this one. It was just like, you plug in everything at Union and you're just like, what? Why have I been missing this my whole life? But the magic of the console in the room, like it's a cabin. So you have the log walls and wood floors and wood ceilings. Yeah. And it's really tall ceilings. It just translates. It's like a match, man in heaven. I love that man. And even getting it into the studio is hilarious. We had, you said it was through the window, right? Yeah getting through the door, we had to saw the roof. Oh man. Or the ceiling. We had to saw the ceiling out to get it to fit through the door. Go upright. It was on its side. Goodness. Yeah. And then we flipped it this way. It weighs like a ton. And so we were scared that somebody would get if it landed on somebody's arm, their arm's gonna, it's gonna shatter. Oh my gosh. So we were more concerned about somebody getting hurt than getting into the studio. So we deliberated. A whole day, like friends had come to help. There's probably 20 people friends of ours ready to help move this thing. Man, you can only fit two or three people in the sound lock. Oh, wow. So we had to get on its side in a very precise and collective. If anything goes wrong, this console will fall and nobody gets hurt. That's what's gonna happen. We're not gonna risk anybody getting hurt. Thank God nobody got hurt. We safely not dropped it, but let it slowly fall. Not fall, but it had to, to some degree. Like our strongest friends who work out all the time. Most musicians don't work out. But we called our gym friends to come help. They were on the other side. Side holding it. Yeah. I've never heard men make these sounds before the grunts I heard of the weight of this thing. Oh my God. It wasn't, it was terrifying. But by the time we got it on outside of the window, it was like the biggest relief. Oh man. Because before we installed the windows, we knew, okay, it can go through the window 'cause it wouldn't fit through the door. But then as soon as it made into this room, it was like everybody was cheering and it was like, we made it work. So over the years, like I would start collecting senses Yeah. And leave them at the studio. 'cause there was, I always saw value in like other people using the. Its really hard to find instruments. It was always my personal dream to have at least two, hopefully three uprights and a like your studio a and also a grand. We always knew like an A-list studio in Nashville needs a C seven grand. That's just the right, the standard, whether you're in love with a C seven or not. That's not really the conversation. It's does the studio have a C seven? Yes or no? Yeah. If they do, okay. Great. Country sessions can make it work. If it's another random up grand piano then you're out of that equation. So we knew we needed a C seven. So then we found this one, like a, it was a piano Cellar had gotten this one from like a ballet studio from New York, brought it to Atlanta, and then he brought it to Nashville when we bought it. But this studio A has, the upright Steinway from our old studio B, it has our upright grand. It's a lot larger, so it sounds a lot bigger and fuller. And then we also added the. The C seven and then our other studio B, the new studio B has like my old Yamaha, M1, Japanese, that was in my house. Just in my living room for writing and stuff. We needed another piano in the studio. So then I paid movers to move it. 'cause I didn't want anyone to get Right. Because it's upstairs. Yes. I didn't want any of us to get hurt. Yeah. So yeah, there's technically four acoustic pianos in the studio. I have so many piano plugins, but there's nothing like the real thing. Because then you can choose your mics, you can choose how distant you want it. The feel of it. You can felt it. There's so many things you can do with a real piano and there's like the human emotion. Not every song will have real piano that I work on, but. It just depends what we're going for. Yeah. Yeah. the prophet five, the Juno 60. You gotta have Orchestral. kind of synth. Yeah. So I have the sequential prelude. It's a really obscure synth but I've gone through 10, I obscure string brass synth, and this is the one to me. Wow. To me, this is the one that captures that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm not getting rid of that one. Cool. And then we have a moog prodigy. We're s restoring a Moog mini model D. An original one. Okay. And we just found out actually today. Berdo said one of our house engineers was looking at Under the hood, 'cause we've been trying to restore this one for two years. It's just been at the back burner. But he opened it up and he's a friend of his saw it and he is Hey, it's missing this logo. This was definitely one of the not prototypes, but early versions that Bob would've personally been hand wiring on. Oh wow. Like him, he's trying to figure out that's crazy what the Model D should be. And somehow we didn't even know. Like we have one of these Oh my. Which is crazy. Goodness. So hopefully it'll be fully restored. That's cool. And then usable in the studio. I mean we have tons of stuff and if I ever have to get on like a live recording or something and I need Which has midi So for live recordings. That's cool. That's cool. We use are on the City of God album and all of our TB co albums we have. The CP 60 on the stage, and if Henry's leading or Mitch or Bernie, M's. Incredible. So good. Very gifted special people. Yeah, they're, it's there. And so that's amazing. I actually have two the one at our church is mine and I just, it's been there for forever. I just leave it there and then I found this one here. Yeah. And this one lives at the studio. Okay. But if, but we moved it for the City of God album. And so that's all over that album. It's mostly midi. I think one song has the actual audio. So you've been at TV Co for a while? Yeah, I've been there since the beginning. That's amazing. Since before it was like proclaimed to church. Yeah. It was just a worship night and I would just go on these worship nights on Tuesday nights and I was. It, a lot of my life started around 21, you could say, like started touring with Leeland around that age. Started the studio at that age started I produced my first EP with Andrew Holt. Yeah. That was the first thing I ever produced. That's amazing. All within the span of one or two years crazy. And then attended the Belonging before it was a church and then became a church. And I was like I guess this is my church. It was like a thing that meant a lot to me at that time as like a Tuesday night worship gathering. And then when it was a church, I was like I'm planting here and if, if I move cities and that's one thing, but I never intended to ever leave the church. I'm gonna be faithful and there's gonna be hard times, there's gonna be great times. Right man. So there's different seasons in church. And for me, for my own personal, like walk with the Lord, it's like I just wanna be rooted in one place through the good times, through the great times. Through the hard times, through the really hard times, which my family went through a really hard time last year. Really just with like our baby. She was a micro preemie. Wow. Was in the NICU for five or six months. So we would go to the hospital while renovating this studio. Five or six months? Yeah. Half of, basically half a year she was in the hospital. And then, my goodness, she just got off oxygen last, two weeks ago. Oh my goodness. And had just started sleeping without an oxygen tank. Oh, wow. So I couldn't have imagined going through that season. We're still in it. Yeah. But last year was like the thick of it. Without our church family. They were always praying for us, supporting us. And that's what the church is for. Not obviously just to help everybody through hard times. There's I. The positive side of things championing people even when they're like succeeding in life and whatever. Yeah. But then that's the purpose is like you have community of people and you're not meant to do life alone. And I don't know how we would've gone through the thick of last year without our church community. Like aside from all the albums I've helped with, as a keys player played at church countless times, like on worship team, I've always valued the servant heart of it. Like none of us got paid for it serving on a Sunday or a Tuesday night. So for us it's just this is our family. We want to, pour into our church. , and I don't think there's anything wrong if you make, if you get a salary or anything. I'm not saying that. It's just more for our church, this is the model that we found like. Yeah. We could filter like the people who really just wanna be a part of this community. It was just, it helped enable that kind of side of it. Wow. And then a lot of those people, they tour with other artists, so that's where they make their money. 'cause that's how you make a living on this side of being a musician, that's a big navigation. But when it came to church, like that was a very special thing. And that's amazing to hear about your newborn, y'all's baby. Yeah. She's literally a miracle child. That's amazing. Which is wild. Like I think the Wow. Youngest surviving micro preemie might be like 21 weeks old. Wow. Birth she's at 23 and she was born at 23, but she was measuring 22. That's crazy, man. Yeah. A miracle. It is crazy. There's like the medical side of things, like the nicu, like incubator thing, simulates like the womb and all this stuff. Like prayer was so powerful. And then our church community God and our church community were with us during the whole process. And wow. Man, praise God for that. Yeah. Praise God for that man. Tell us the difference between, for one, just tell us the difference between. A producer and a programmer, because some people, it's a brand new term. We've never actually talked about keys programming, sixth synth programming as far as production goes with for a studio thing. Explain that a little bit. Intro that for us. What's the difference between producer and programmer? Yeah. So one of my biggest goals and dreams personally from when I was like, a 16-year-old kid in worship team, like just a key, like you're like teenage keys player at a small Hispanic church, that was me. There was a word spoken that I would hear the sounds of heaven and translate them to earth. And that was when I was 15 and I was like, I guess that's what I'm gonna do with my life. Wow. From that moment, I was like, okay. Whatever my life looks like. Not that I make the calling the center, it was just like decisions I make are influenced by does this align with what God's called me to do? And then the real challenge is, am I having the heart while I'm doing whatever it is? Am I still treating people the way God calls me to treat people right in the process, whatever the calling looks like. So my dream was always to produce and write. I secretly wanted to be like a Max Martin. Yeah. Yeah. That was my like teenage dream. Love it. Did not intend for that, but that's pretty great. Yeah. But yeah, when I moved to Nashville to, I didn't, I just knew I was led to music. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I just knew I'm gonna align myself in a situation where I can be surrounded by music and we'll see what God does. I didn't know keys and synth programming was a thing. What's funny is Patrick Mayberry was my first worship pastor and he was the first person Nashville to ask me to play keys at church. And we were part of a small church here in Nashville, like a church plant, and that was the first time I was like playing keys from not the church I grew up, and my parents were pastors. Awesome. Small Hispanic church. Everything's Spanish. Our youth was in English and stuff. Okay. But, this was the first time I was like, wait, I'm playing keys at a church. This is, that's not my, like church that I grew up in. This is it was a weird, not a weird thing, but it was like a new thing that I wasn't like accustomed to. From that moment I was just like, I guess I'm good at Keys. I was trying to teach myself guitar. I was just like, maybe I just lean, fully lean into Keys world 'cause I can make beats. I would make beats in like Fruity Loops and Acid Pro. I don't know if anybody would know what that is. And Garage Band when it first came out. Okay. Wow. Like maybe the first iteration of it. Wow. And then when I got to college, 18 years old and I'm like, maybe I should upgrade to Logic. And I'm pretty sure it's Logic seven at the time. Okay. Okay. Maybe I feel like it was Logic seven was the first time I got Logic. Okay. And then ever since then, dove into Logic and I know it like the back of my hand now. So when asking joing the Leeland Band, they had started working on the Invisible album. Like they had just started co-writing for that song. And then Kyle Lee, the producer, he's one of my heroes and my biggest mentors. He's probably the person that's invested in my life more than anybody else. And I was like 22 years. 22 or 23, something like that. That album came out, I believe in 2014 maybe. So he must have started in 2013 or 14, sometime around that window. Okay. He was like, David, you should just do, Hey, you should just create some sense sounds and send 'em to me. And I was like, okay, this is fun. I do this when I'm like working on like my own music or a friend at Belmont or something. That's another singer songwriter. And so then I was like, okay, let me just go to town with synths. Leeland plays piano amazing. So he would've done a lot of the piano, Casey's incredible guitars, like. All the pieces are there. And most of the Leeland days. And he has his own thing. It's very keen esque, yeah. Maybe some like Death Cab influence, like a lot of that kind of thing. And he always was that and yeah, it inspired me as a kid from afar. And so that when Kyle Lee asked me to do sense on the Invisible album, I was like, this is crazy. I didn't know you could just do that. I didn't know that was even a thing. And so then obviously he's the producer. And so I was, he brought me under his wing as like a key synth programmer for specifically for the Invisible album. And then he just kept asking me to keep doing that for a lot of albums he's worked on. Wow. I feel like the second album was maybe like a Lincoln Brewster album, and then there's a Michael W. Smith album, surrounded. Wow. And then from that, a lot of the gateway stuff over the years. Gateway Worship. Yeah. Like the last five albums, Coley produced them and you did sent stuff. Yeah. Since monuments till now. Dude, I love gateway worship and what's hilarious is I was always this secret guy that none of them knew until a few years ago for the Espanol album, Uhhuh or one of the Espanol albums. I came out and played with the band Uhhuh live with them. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, for years we didn't know who you were. We're like, who's this mysterious David Guy who does all these sits for our albums? But we'd never met him. But Kyle's really good friends with him. I like show up and I'm like, Hey guys, but we had the best time. It's like the Wizard of Oz. I'm crazy. So I was always like this kid in Nashville, this random guy. So dude, so that is so cool that you could gateway worship synth stuff. Yeah. A lot of it just sense stuff. There's a producer, there's Keith players, there's other musicians, but then yeah, you're doing like this programming synth stuff that kind of, so Yeah, to answer most of your question, like in those roles, like Kyle Lee is the main producer and then there's a artist, and then there's the musicians like drummer, bass player, guitar player. Maybe a piano player. But then Kyle, I don't know if it was super common at that time, but. More like very, like more prolific producers in like the pop world have their ghost producers and like people that like Jay-Z might have somebody who makes him a ton of beats and then he sorts to stuff. There's that kind of like framework, but I don't think in CC m it was very like the same kind of thing. There's been a few people who went before me who paved the way. Someone like Matt Stanfield. Yeah. He was probably one of the people I can think of who was, older than me who had been doing that and I didn't even know that was a thing. And then I found myself doing it because Kyle Lee had asked me to do a bunch of stuff. And then like within a year of invisible, Jonathan Smith had just, he was just starting to produce and write a lot of the stuff he was working on and, , I'm trying to think. The first project he asked me to be on was like a North Point. Thing in like 2015, I think. That's awesome. It was just like one song he was producing. Okay. And then he was like, man, this is great. And so then I, he took me under his wing too. Yeah. And then for years, Jonathan Smith is in his own right. Also, he had me be a part of a bunch of stuff. And he is also one of my other big heroes and Wow. One of the people that really poured into my life in this side of things. There's a handful of producers who I've worked under that I've just soaked in so much like a plethora and wealth of knowledge, not just the technical stuff and song structures and songwriting and how to work and, communicate with a band and an artist. Those are all great things. But more than anything, like Kyle and Jonathan, like their hearts are in the right place. I have just learned so much from that side of things to where I can operate on the technical side and the nerdy side of things from like a healthy place. One of the big things I learned from Kyle, he always had this phrase, that I caught on very early when we first met. He is, he has this phrase of just do things the right way. Not like the technical right way, but with the right heart. ever since I heard that, I was like, I'm going to, I'm gonna use that. Wow. Because whatever I do, like whatever hat I'm wearing, whatever role it is, , if I don't have the heart of Jesus when I'm doing it, then why am I doing it? I might as well quit and do something else. Come on. And so that's always been my heart. I didn't know, I didn't know you were a preacher too, man. , that's why we do what we do. It's like that's gotta be why we do it. Absolutely. And we're not gonna get it right all the time. You know what I mean? I'm sure there was times I wasn't very friendly to somebody on the road and I could make a million excuses of yeah, we had one or two hours of sleep. At the end of the day it's like, why am I doing this? I'm here to bless people and give back to others what God has given me. And so that's good. And I wouldn't be where I'm at without people who have paved the way before me and yeah. Mentored me. So people like Kyle, Jonathan, some, other people like Bernie Erms, Jason Ingram, those are all people, Jacob Cedar that over the years, Henry Sealey, so many people who are way old, not way older, but older than me. Who've gone before me and done things the right way, right with the right heart posture, but also believed in me, to do the technical thing well. I wouldn't be where I'm at without those people pouring into my life. Yeah. So now I'm at an age where, how do I pour back into the other 20? Who's, who are the 21-year-old Davids that's good that I can pour into. And so that's a whole aspect of why I do what I do. Yeah. It's yes, do what I'm doing in this season really well with the right heart, but also there's a season for everything. I'm not gonna be producing my whole life as much as I would like to. I know I'm gonna be old and irrelevant at some point, and that's just, that's fine. Like I've accepted like the reality, like it's gonna be okay. Like my identity's not in this thing. That's good. It's rooted in Jesus and the kingdom and who he's called me to be. So how can I pour back into the next generation, while still being good at what I do in this season, but also learning from the people who have gone before me. So to answer your question, I love that. There's different roles. I've learned to be the musician role, like on a church, learned to be the like keys programmer, synth guy under a different producer. And then there's many projects that I've also produced and I'm in the shoes of the main producer. Yeah. And then, delegating a lot of work to other people. Like I'm hiring the band, like the drummer guitar player. The doll was always logic I would use analog sense all the time. Rotate. Rotate different gear. 'cause I was always like, how do I get a new sound? That was always my thing. It's very biblical to make a new sound. I never wanted to just pigeonhole myself into these are the tools I always use. It's like I always made an effort. Same thing with the pedals I was talking about if I buy a prophet, I'm gonna exhaust the prophet. Yeah. I'm gonna learn every detail about it. Literally exhaust every ounce of sound it has. Inject into music. Yeah. In the right way. I'm not gonna force it, like I'm gonna learn it so that I know how to insert it when it's necessary. And then I would sell the prophet, get money back to buy something else. Yeah. At Juno, these are all examples. And then exhaust the Juno and then for a year or two really exhaust that. But okay, I wanna try something else. Let's sell the Juno and get my money back. Put that into something else. And then over years it's oh, I know how to maneuver Juno. I know how to maneuver a prophet. Yeah. That's good. And then a lot of these analog sense, they have the same like kinda wiring, like the way the signal flow works, it's all kinda the same basic math. So then you can get on any keyboard and you're like, oh, I know what this, I know what the A DSR is. I know what the filter is. Then you just know how to program things on the fly. Like even if it's something you never worked on before. That's good. Now, of all the things you've worked on, I want to let everyone know this, that you don't really love Omnisphere and you don't really like the Nord. Not that I don't like them, but when I was first starting out, Omnisphere was this thing that everybody used. It was one of these things that was like, I can't afford this Uhhuh. So you use the tools you have and you learn how to make gold with a $10 Casio keyboard. And I've always done that. That's good. And so then I dove into, okay, logic has a bunch of stock plugins. They're not gonna be the fancy thing, but I'm gonna learn how to make these stock plugins sound incredible. And I'm gonna, the same way I would exhaust a prophet or a Juno. Yeah. Or any hardware keyboard. I would do the same thing with individual logic plugins. So like E ES two, I dove into that and learned everything. Didn't know about ES two when retro synth was brand new. I remember when that transition, when it was like introduced, it was like, what's this is kinda like an analog synth, but a plugin. Yeah. So then I exhausted everything to know about that synth, and I applied it to everything, not just the like software instruments, but like the built-in effects, like chorus modulation, any kind of modulation, delays, reverbs, EQs, everything. So then I would deep dive into every little compartment or like sphere of whatever this effect is or the sound. And so over time, I just never bought Omnisphere if you didn't need it. And it was also like after the Invisible album, it was like people want to hire me to make sounds because they would all tell me it sounded different. Yes. Like I've never heard these sounds before and it's because I wasn't using the things that everybody was using. And especially at that time, like everybody used Alicia's keys. Everybody used Omnisphere and everybody would use a Nord. And I wasn't trying to be different. I just literally could not afford them in those seasons. And so I was trying to like make the best of what I had. Yeah. Yeah. And in the process I found oh, people are hiring me because I'm making sounds people haven't heard. Or learning how. And so it was unique to where oh, I want David for this thing because he does this thing. And they would tell me this. And so then I would build off of that, build that. And and then it's hilarious if you put an nor in front of me. I don't know what to do. My brain just fries. I'm like, like what do I doing? What are these knobs? But you can gimme any analog synth that I'll know exactly what to do. It's hilarious. That's too funny, man. Like I've used Nords over the years mainly as a mid controller, but yeah. I just could never afford one. Yeah. For a long time. Even though I had all these other synths, it was, for me, it was like I always had a laptop. And I always had a $200 MIDI controller. And in my mind I'm like this piano plugin and logic is free. I'm gonna use that. And I use that for years. The very first not stock piano plugin I bought was like UVI, the model, I think Model D. It's something like that. Grand piano. And that was the first oh, I have something that's not stock. But to me, when I would compare it to nor I'm like, ah, it doesn't sound much different. So then I just got used to doing mid controllers with software and I just found myself doing that, and that's what I was fasta uncomfortable in. It's not like I was rejected the nor and I, yeah, rejected Omnisphere, but it was always like a backhanded joke with my friends. They're like, David doesn't use Omnisphere. I'm like, doesn't need to. I just never got it, and then not even just doing the same thing over and over again, but applying the same philosophy of it. Okay, I've used this one sound too much. Okay, let's next year let's not use a sound at all. Yeah. And I'm gonna go searching again. That's good. And I'm always soul searching with songs and sounds. It's what is the right feeling? What's the emotion? What's the sound that connects to this I to this lyric? What's the sound that collects, connects to the meaning of the song? What, like how do you connect those things? And that's where my brain's always sound searching. . What advice would you give to beginner, synth keys programmer that might wanna start doing what you're doing now? It's always the same thing that I, for me it was like, the way I learned piano was, I'll tell you this quick story 'cause it applies to, yeah. Tell me man to the big picture question. But growing up I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music. Really. Where'd you, where did you grow up? In Austin, Texas. Okay. Wow. Texas. But I was adopted my, my family's from Guatemala and that's, man, it's a very long and tragic story. Oh, wow. But long story short some pastors adopted me. Okay. And so they were also Hispanic. My dad, my adoptive dad is Guatemala and my mom's Mexican. Wow. So my mom wanted me to meet her side of the family in Mexico. So we went when I was like. 11, 12 years old. Went to Mexico for a whole summer to live with my grandmother for a month. Lived with one of my aunt aunts for a month and one of my uncles for a month. Okay. And at my uncle's house with my cousins, we would play like crash Bandicoot on an old Dreamcast, I think. I remember, going to the bathroom, they're still playing and I'm walking down the hallway and in the corner the TV's on and the living room. And I hear this song and I'm like this very vivid memory of like my ears, just what is this? And MTV was on, and it is a music video of Chris Martin walking down the beach and black and white. I'm pretty sure it's black and white, singing yellow. And that was the first time I heard music for what it was. Wow. And I was just this 11, 12-year-old kid just enamored by what I was hearing. Never I grew up, we had songs in worship in Spanish. I spoke English, but learned Spanish as a kid, but I never like connected with it. And we didn't have songs in English either. And so that was the first time I heard music for what it was. And I didn't have a dad who was like, Hey, listen to this music. Listen to this. It was just, like I didn't have that kind of relationship with my dad. And he didn't, he wasn't musical. And so I was stuck watching this music video of Coldplay and my cousin runs out and he's Hey, we're waiting for you. You're taking too long. I was like, but what is this? And he is oh, that's a band called Coldplay. I have one of the CDs. So that night he burned me a copy of Russia, blood of the head. Whoa. He let me borrow his cheap CD player with really, cheap plastic headphones. Yeah. Yeah. That are probably 2K and up and no low end and like cheap plastic thing. Yes. Or $5 headphones. That night I put in the CD player. First track is politic. It's the guitar is like Jing. And I'm like this 11-year-old kid and I'm like, I'm not allowed to listen to this. But I was like, enamored with the sound. Wow. And clocks and the scientists and green eyes and all these songs. I was just like, what in the world? Like I connected with a sound. Yeah. And the like emotion. And so I secretly listened to that cd every night for three years. And my parents did not know for three years. Yes. And my older brother had a cheap cassio piano that somebody like donated to our family, to our church or something like a cheap, just like those toy keyboards. So every night when I'm listening to this, I would listen to the scientists or clocks and find the notes by ear and teach myself like, oh, this is the melody. So then I started teaching myself piano in my bedroom at night without anybody knowing. Wow. But then one time my dad heard me around 12 years old. But he didn't know what I was listening to. And then he was like, Hey, the lady in our church, she's older, she the piano lady. We're gonna need a new keys player. I heard you playing something, can you play at church? And I was like, I don't know how to play piano. And he is I heard you playing something and it sounded good in your room. And I was like. Okay. I guess I can, so then I learned how to make block chords. Yeah. Yeah. And then from then I was just playing, like I learned like the four three and three four, how to make major minors and only one inversion and one base note. Literally like a robot in church playing chords. And then, then I was like, wait, I can move this one up here and get inversions and I could add notes. And then it, everything was basically self-taught, but then YouTube was starting to become a thing, so then I would learn a lot on YouTube. But most of the music is self-taught. You don't need to have this expensive piece of equipment to make great music. That's good. That's good. Other very funny side story. Yeah. That is also relevant is, I remember the first time I heard Hillsong United because they had translated United, we stand to Spanish. Oh, that's cool. That was the first time I heard worship music sound the way that I had never heard it sound right. Because all I grew up with was a span or Christian music that was in Spanish. But then I heard United, we stand in Spanish and I was like, whoa, I didn't know worship could sound like this. And so our guitar player, we were playing, we were gonna try to introduce a song. I was like 13. And he bought a DD five and before he only played his guitar through an amp. And that was at no effects or anything. Just like volume pedal or volume knob. But when he plugged in the CD five and I heard delay for the first time. Brain, it's the same thing. I've always been connected to sounds and like music in that way. Yeah. And I saw, I looked at this device and I see these quarter inch inputs and outputs and we had this cheap, what was it? A korg n 2 6 4 workstation from like the eighties in our church. And I'm like, can I plug my quarter inch that goes into the di into the sound system? Can I plug this into that? Into your amp? And he is it doesn't work like that. They're made for guitars. But I was like, but it has quarter inch inputs and it worked. Yeah. My 13-year-old brain was like, I want to hear that sound with a piano. So then I played it and then I was like, this is the sound of that U2 song, city of Blinding Lights. And you found it. And then after that I went to Guitar Center. As like this 13-year-old nerd. Yeah. Yeah. And there's this wall of boss pedals. And I was like, there's more of these. And they're different colors. Yes. Yes. So I didn't know how to play guitar. I would just hit a string, plug it because you could test 'em. All right. And I would hear every sound the same way I approach logic even and sound designing today. It's like that 13-year-old brain. Of I want to hear what this sounds like through this. I wanna hear what this sounds like through this. And then I landed on the boss RV five Oh man. And I was like, modulate setting. 13-year-old kid just ran me. Didn't know pedal pedals were a thing and heard that like sound of what reverb was, but I didn't know it was called reverb. And I was like, I want that to be the sound of my piano. Wow. So I bought that, I think my dad bought it for me and. I would play my cheap, Corg workstation at a church. It wasn't mine, it was just the church's plug, the corg into that RV five and I would have modular setting and I was sound designing since I was a kid. So Crazy man. The best advice I could give anybody from the musical standpoint is, always search for something new. There's always a new sound to be found. Like it doesn't matter. If you think everybody, every sound has been discovered. It has not. There's so many different, there's so many frequencies. There's so many different types of sounds like since plucky, liar, dulcimer, sound instruments. Yeah. Toy keyboards, casios that sound, digital and 8-bit there's so many things and then you apply effects, you can do compression. There's so many like avenues you could take and the, the world's your oyster. Yeah. Yeah. But the best advice I could do is approach, like always have that awe and wonder with music and sound and, but also use what you have. You don't have to spend a ton of money. If your church has a cheap keyboard, there's probably built in effects in there. There's probably built-in things. There's a million sounds there. I would scroll through every sound. Yes. I'd go to Guitar Center whenever there's a new piano or a keyboard workstation. When I was a kid. Yeah. I would scroll through every single sound and hear it and be like, that's cool. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Ah, that's weird. That's really weird. I don't like that one, but this one's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And so then I would just, hear sounds and like connect with music in that way a lot time, man. So never lose an awe and wonder of creating, and always try to tap into even as an older person, like I'm still trying to maintain that 13-year-old Yes. Nerd kid alive. Because I don't want to get burnt out doing this thing that I've loved doing for a long time. Yeah. Then there's the like spiritual side of it. It's I never knew I would be touring with one of my favorite Christian bands. And a lot of my favorite Christian artists. As a kid I never knew I'd be writing and working with people that I always aspired not to work. I never like wanted to work with anybody. Like it was, I just never saw that was even a possibility. It was just, I'm this kid from this tiny church in Austin, Texas. It's all in, we're all Hispanic people. Yeah. Yeah. Like I just never in a million years thought I would be where I'm at. Wow. But it's the same thing. It's like I would tell myself like, don't ever lose the why. That's good. Don't lose the reason why you're doing what you're doing and the best things, the best reason is like, Jesus created me to be like him. Yes. So in the process of playing keys at church, whatever hat I'm wearing, running a studio, working for a different producer, being the producer, writing, interacting with people behind the scenes on and off stage, who is David? That's the question. Who am I? Am I somebody who has a lot of dreams and wants to acquire a lot of accolades and things along the way? Or am I someone who is kind wants to bless people even when it costs me, gives people the time of day even when I don't have the time. Like all those things add up and that's what matters. It's wow. Am I who Jesus created me to be in the process. 'cause if I'm not, why am I doing music? I might as well do a different thing. I could be a soccer manager, which is, if I quit music, I would love to. Is that what you'd wanna do? Yeah. That's awesome. I play too much fifa. Not anymore with kids I don't have time for fifa. But before kids, there was a lot of fifa. That was my like escape for music. Yeah. But yeah, I never wanna lose the why and the heart of why I do what I do. That's awesome, man. , that's how the kingdom is and Yes, sir. My time will pass, so I gotta pass the baton too. For me personally, like I've always seen like these different seasons. I'm like, if I hang on to this season too long, I won't step into the next thing God has for me. But also whoever's supposed to go into the season that I'm been in, I'm actually holding them back because I'm in the way of somebody else walking into what God's called them to do. Yeah. So it's season to season, glory to glory for that matter. Yes. That's good stuff, man. Yeah, that's good stuff, man. Now that I know that, it's amazing because I'm gonna be thinking about you as a 13-year-old kid in Guitar Center going through all the sales. Oh yeah, I know. Because it's kinda like you with the mid controller now and Logic and with your template, it all makes sense. It's all just embedded into who I am and how I operate. Yeah, I love that man. That's so cool how God has gifted us each uniquely, even within this niche of piano world there's so many things that go into it and so many different avenues, even within just the keys world, talk a little bit about some projects you've been working on right here in 2025, whether that be production work, like producer, role songwriter, or key synth programmer. We were talking earlier and you've had some stuff with Chris Tomlin and Phil Wickham, which. Worship keys players, especially at churches. Tons of us are doing Chris Tomlin songs and Phil Wickham songs and, talk about some other artists and things that you're working. I know of course you've been long time friends with Leeland and you've been involved with Belonging Co as your church, but what are some other artists that you're working with right now in 2025 that you're super excited about? Yeah, in recent like years, the main things would've been with CC Winans since Belief for It, and then, oh, great man, a lot of Phil's new stuff. A lot of Chris Tomlin's new stuff. Phil Wilham always has this huge layer of sound Yeah. Within his stuff. So yeah, I start, I was involved ever since Living Hope. That was the first involvement I have. And then ever since then, I've been part of Crazy Man. Not every song, but each album that's come out since then. That's amazing. And those are through, because Jonathan Smith has been the main producer on a lot of those albums. That's awesome. And so he, and then he just brings me under his wing. So then in those situations, I'm not a producer role, but I'm wearing a, I'm wearing the Keith synth programmer hat. That's so cool, man. But yeah, earlier this year in January there was Lizzie Morgan. I was just playing keys live with the band. And then there's a lot of other projects I produce and help develop. And, , just did a couple songs with Aaron Sch connected with, the Christian Missionary Alliance denomination. Okay. And one of the songs we'll kinda walk through is under that, Christian Missionary Alliance umbrella. There's the youth project called, heart Room. Okay. And so one of the songs, it's more like pop, like more youth friendly. That one is part of Heart Room. But then I'm also helping develop and work with the more corporate worship side, like worship, Alliance Worship is the other side of under that big umbrella. And then I work on like pop music randomly with friends that like, that's fun kid that wanted to be Max Martin is, still there. He's still there. And so I have a friend named Justin Kellum and he's a amazing person, worship leader in Houston. And I've known him for, I don't know, like seven, eight years maybe. And. I've helped with his pro, his music for that amount of time. That's awesome. And that's just like pop music like he has, he's a Christian and yeah. Still leads worship, but then he has a side project every day looks different and so yeah, there's a lot of projects. I hope you've enjoyed it so far hearing about David and, just as your musical background man, and just how you came to love sound design.