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
How to Program Keys and Synths in a Worship Song in Logic Pro X with David O. Ramirez
David O. Ramirez joins us once again for another episode of The Worship Keys! In this episode, David gives a detailed look into his song production process from pre-production and working with bands to post-production techniques. He breaks down his workflow using Logic Pro X templates and shares practical insights on editing, mixing, and adding organic texture to your recordings. We also dive into his work with Heart Room, a youth conference project, and explore the creative choices behind it.
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. Producer, songwriter, synth keys, programmer David Ramirez back on the podcast definitely check out last week's episode all on his, logic Pro. A template, kind of what he starts with, when he starts to program everything on a project. Definitely check out that episode if you wanna hear more about stuff that he does. He is been working with Leland Belonging Co. Chris Tomlin. Phil Wickham, a lot of other wonderful artists. But today, he's gonna show us his whole process, all the stems and all the programming that went into the song here and now. So check it out right now. Also, by the way, in the description, in show notes, you're gonna see his website david o ramirez.com. Yeah. Uh, don't forget the o in there. 'cause there is a, yeah, don't forget the o. There's also just a million David's and a million Ramirez. Last names. Crazy man. Well, your website's below, there's really cool logic, pro X and main stage templates and patches. Yeah. So if you're interested in any of those, go check them out. Go check them out. I hope this episode is very beneficial. So this is a song I produce for some friends for a project called Heart Room. And it's basically a youth project for a youth conference that they hold every three years. And you know, like when I'm receiving songs, sometimes I'm involved with the co-writing. Sometimes I'm not. This song I didn't help co-write, but I would've received like this little work tape. And I usually ask them to send me something to a click so that I could, you know, have some kind of time and I could use, whatever they sent and stretch it. If I need to change different keys, mess with the tempo. So I would've just gotten like this little demo. Um, and then at some point I'd probably ask him to send me a cleaner version of the demo. The, so it's just been like a piano vocal kind of thing. Chorus here. So that's what I would've started with and I probably would've used this actual work tape to start building some sounds, get a feel and a vibe for it. Um, so usually with this kind of thing, I just try to look for kind of the micro loop thing I've talked about. And I think, I'm pretty sure the first, I mean, I would've actually started with piano first, and. Um, this is probably like a very more intimate type piano. Sounds like a Corda thing. Layered with something else. I've got the original thing here, so that would've been here. It looks like I would've layered keys scape with Corda and Winchester on this little bus. And then this is my like piano midi. And then I would've committed that to audio, which is now up here. See how it fits with this little work type situation here and now the. So we're working on this boy for a second. We're on this little loopy thing. Hi here. I choose, oh, here in found this little web here, some more little micro loops. And even within them, if it's a very constant droney thing, I love adding this. Good Hertz, wow. Plugin. And I, it's more like a pit. I use it as like a pitch LFO situation, um, to add more nuance. So if something's not so staticky. Um, and I'll exaggerate so you can hear what's doing. Um, so if I just do a little bit of that, it kind of makes it not so staticky and it fluctuates the pitch. Just a little more natural and a little more human. Probably do it with a lot of these to be honest. Just add a little more humanity to it. Um, little syn pads. Um, I do these little vocal chops a lot in songs. They're more like cookie things, so I. There's a lot of automation, so these have little filters. This one specifically would have, like if I unmute these, add some distortion. That distortion is probably automated, so different section of the song. It is so. The intro, it's less, it's not distorted, so it's clean. But on this, when the drums hit, it's a lot stronger with some roll off and little more filter. This is just dynamics for the songs, so like the intro is gonna be a little more versus the post chorus. That's why. So yeah, just more of these little loop, more of these low buckle chops. More. This one's cool. It's just kind of a bed. I kind of chop it up to like make a rhythm out of it. Sign, plug in. So, yeah, I mean. These bases are gonna be like pretty driving. Base gate situation. No sub base, no base stabs. I do like adding a separate piano base just to add, and it's usually a different plugin. Um, it's just something I've always done. I don't know where I learned it from, but. It makes it sound bigger. So this is your regular piano, but if you add a sub base or a low just octas, you can blend it in there versus without it. It sounds a little puny. So just add some more low-end and kind of beef and grit to the actual piano part, even though it's separate. That way the mixer can blend it however they want to blend it. Um, you know little effects here that are sometimes tonal. I like this guy. I do these a lot. Here's some plugins. Lot of verb. I use this a lot to, uh, bring out some of the color and texture of the sound. So if I mute it, turn it on, very like mid range, honky without it, you get a lot of the like, kind of sound. You can clean it up with this, just feel it'll, it'll get less muddy in those low meds, um, especially once you have a ton of layers. You want things to kind of breathe. Um, what are these? Uh, here's this sign synth. It's kind of neat. So I always commit to audio, but. I save everything. So if I have to change the part or change the key, um, I go to the original sound. So this would've been the original sound. This is a cool plug, a little shimmer. So I would've committed that to audio probably dry, um, so that I could clean up some tails if I need to chop anything up. And then I'll recommit it to audio. Sometimes with the effects, it just depends what the plugin is. This pad that I showed earlier would've been. Probably another prince thing. Oh, this is a cool one to show. So let's go to this post chorus. That would've been the raw sound. I would've messed with this stuff a little bit like the Aus are of it. Um, I like this texture thing. Had a little vinyl, just a little texture's. Nice. Use this again, kind of clean it up. Oh, what's this guy? Probably another. Yeah, that's those sounds. Um, here's some of the bass sense. Uh, so this one has just been. This guy, just some of the notes got this heart plugin going. Arturia probably would've fine tuned the decay of this somewhere around there. Unison. That's boring, not bad. Um, with this kind of thing, I do like limiting a little bit. 'cause then you got little, you know, base, especially as a way of getting louder and softer a lot. So I had a limiter to reduce like around three DB of. Reduction, gain reduction. And then another instance of it, and these are like mastering plugins, but I use a lot because it tightens it up a ton. And these, there's certain mastering plugins that, you know, they, they can handle a lot more than like a, a regular like compressor plugin would have. So like now you can see this scent is pretty. Even, and it's not gonna like, gets quieter and a certain note and super loud on a different note. It's just very controlled and you're always gonna get that. You're not gonna lose like the energy because say an A note is a softer volume than like a low D or something. Um, subbase, I mean, it's gonna be a raw sign probably in CRM. But it's very unintelligible, so I like to add tape and distort it. 'cause you bring out a lot of the mid harmonics and it cleans up a little more on the super low sub noes. Again, more limiting for like very basic gain reduction. Here I have it side chaining. To this compressor plugin, and I always have these side chain tracks in my, uh, templates. And so then I could write it because then I could just write, say I need this to be, say the chorus is halftime or something, and I need to, okay. I don't want it to always side chain on the quarter note and I want it on the half note. You could just do that. Be so muted, and then this part would go double time. Can't find it. Oh, they're down here. So. I'll say that again. Halftime would be now doing that. Then I'll, I'll, I'm able to like time these, like to the feel of the song, how fast the like side chain responds to the, and my side chain source. I'll go up here and go to like instrument and on my template. I've said it to where click and side chain or track one and two or instrument one and two so that I'm not like scrolling through, okay, which instrument am I side chain to or am I side chain to what audio file? It's just the very first thing is side chain and click. 'cause those are the first things I created in my template. And you can always change that. I think technically if you go here and track, uh, I don't know if you can change it. But you can always go to the track and see what these things are like this click triplet is Instrument 2 0 9, so I'd have to go search for it. And that little window, it just makes it faster if it's there. And then, okay. Side chain has a way of having little pops. Hang on so you can hear those little pops. So I always add this little mouthy clicker. Well, it doesn't like me right now. Ignore that whole section. Um, bay stabs. This would've been like an arturia plugin. Um, yeah, I just committed to audio. Let's see if there's anything else. Here's the base. Piano kind of plugins, same kind of thing. I'll, I usually like a high velocity and I like 'em all to be the same. Depending on what's going on here, it looks like I crescendoed it. I probably would've just on the bridge 'cause it's crescendoing. I usually do that if, um, but I hear it to the song, I'll find like what the dynamics of the song are asking for. So well that doesn't like to load. So. It's actually over here committed to audio. It's kind of same thing that's probably gonna be a little warmer, not as bright as like this section. Um, and I like coming to audio 'cause then I could really mess with where things cut out. So like, here. Like that. Very significant downbeat. I want it out. 'cause with the audio it's gonna ring over. And it's just gonna, you're gonna hear that three right over the four chord. And I just like it tight. And the same thing. I mean, this basin, it's gonna bleed over. Oh no. I would've kept that there, but, um, I like to do it that way. Um, you have more control over audio files with little stops and hits and. Like this stuff, there's probably a band stop here. So these kind of, so I just want those all completely out there. Maybe not that one. 'cause that's a little side chain thing that kind of sounds like a swell already. Yeah. So there's no need to get rid of that one. I don't know. It just depends on the song. Um, are there any little. Yeah, I mean this bridge is pretty neat if I just solo all the key stuff. Kind of. So yeah, there, I mean, there's more a little, I make sure everything's cut out for that little hit moment. Especially with the band, I, you'll notice I have these little numbers here. I do that because when I commit this to audio and send it all to my mixer, the mixing engineer, I, I used to send things. It depends what I'm doing. So if I'm sending just my key stuff to a producer, a different producer, I'll send it. I'll print this at the max volume without it kind of clipping. Um, so that they receive a. Louder signal without it being distorted naturally. I'll do like a one of these situations. I'll remember where this stuff is later 'cause that's why I've labeled it. And the 10 and the 30, that's where my levels are pre kind of where I had 'em sitting. I moved that one earlier, so I'll move that back. And then this one was 16, so. If I'm sending this to a different producer and they're dragging this into their session, I'll send them my mix levels, but I'll turn it up to the near zero value. Um, so this would go like fair and then that way they receive it hitting at a good significant level. Um, and it's kind of pre-mixed. And to do that, I would have these highlighted. You could do command E or just go to file export 14 tracks. And in this method I'll just hit include volume and pan automation. Always turn off normalize. Don't do that. And then you don't wanna do that 'cause this will add like a weird fake master that's not, it won't sound good. It's just a bad fake master. Um. To your files, and so then I'll find the folder that needs to go in and I'll, I would've, oh, before I do that, I would've done this. I don't know why I've done it this way. I've always just done it this way. I highlight the cycle region just to do the whole thing. It's just more redundancy. I've printed way too many things in my early years and things never started at zero or, and somebody's getting it, starting here on a weird downbeat, so I just go to. Wherever the song, what is, not Where the song started, but where the session started. Um, make sure that's highlighted. Get my playhead to the beginning. Command e turn off, normalize, include volume range. Then I'll do extend file to Project End. That way I'm not, and then I'll explore it. But if I do, it's a file end, then everything will always be this long. And they're not getting like a plugin that ends halfway through the song. 'cause then they'll be wondering, Hey, was this missing information? It's just, no, I don't mind if it's blank at the end. They can cut it out if they want it. Um, they just know this is what I intended for it to be. For myself though, if I'm producing and I'm sending this my stems to a mixing engineer, I will still label everything but. Say I am sending the whole song. Um, then I'll do the same thing, but this time, um, I won't include this, I'll leave that off. Um, I won't include volume and pan automation so that everything sends at Unity so that when the mixer gets it, everything is, they don't have to gain structure. From the ground up and they that'll take a mixing engineer another hour, sometimes 30 minutes to an hour of session prepping to gain structure every single plugin. So what I do is I send it the way it was gain structured. I never have anything clipping. I always kind of sit when I'm sound designing a, a patch or a sound. Max volume. I always want it to sit around, minus nine to minus 12. Sometimes it goes over. I just never want it to clip. So at max volume at zero at Unity, this piano is gonna hit around minus 12 with beats around minus nine maybe, depending if there's a really loud section. So when the mixing engineer receives this file, um. They're getting it at this level, but then if they want to get the mix that I had left off, say they're working in pro tools or a different DOTA mix, then they see my number 10. They know they just go to minus 10, and then they just spend 10 minutes doing this to every plugin instead of having to spend an hour gain structuring everything. If that makes sense. Because the reason that's important is say they wanna run this into a, their own compressor. Uh, say they wanna run their own compressor, they're gonna have to spend some time getting this game instructor say, this was super quiet like. Down there. They're gonna have to gain this up. They could do in the plugin. I guess this is a weird, I don't know why I'm compressing this way, but I just send it all at Unity and then they'll turn it up or down. And to get my pre-mix or I, this takes me an hour, but sometimes I'll just session prep the pro tool session for them if they're in Pro Tools. And then I'll. But when I'm bouncing between Daws, this little number helps me just quickly go through each thing and premix it. Um, that's what that number is for. I'm very, I try to be tidy with how I label everything. So drums always start with a little Dr, and I try to shorthand it so that you're not ended up with like a file name that's like a sentence. Um, so Dr. Drum programs like dp, um, basses or BS guitars are EEG keys are all key or ky. And that way when they drag it in, it's like it's already kind of organized, especially if things are organizing alphabetically. Um, and then even within those sub prefixes. I try to even further the down the, um, what would you call it, down the dominoes. You could say it's like Ky rev loop one, rev loop two, so that these would be adjacent to each other. Um, sense. K-Y-S-Y-N-S. YN is KY synths. And then these are your synths and they're adjacent to each other. So, and then these are all the V keys, Vox chops, so then alphabetically, those are all adjacent to each other. And this just makes everything very organized for whoever's receiving these files. And it's not a lot of like, what is this randomly named? I don't know, Morpheus. Patch, what is that? I don't know what Morpheus is. Do you know what Morpheus is? It's probably some weird synth sound. I get it. So then I would just prefix it key y Morpheus, and then they know, okay, that's a key sound, you know, have to decipher what Morpheus is. Um, that's kind of what goes all into it. And I don't send things mastered, but when I'm working, I have my master chain. Um, I. So that I have like a point of reference as to where things are gonna hit. And I'm always adjusting this per song. And when I'm programming, I actually don't use a master chain. 'cause in logic it'll add latency. Even if you have low latency mode, it'll, it, sometimes some plugins don't like it. So, um, I do save my master signal chain. Sorry, my master. Um. What do you call it? My master bus. Sorry man. That's awesome. It's a dirty loop song. Nice. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything else, like, I feel like I started rambling at a few spots. Also, this mouse is not the best mouse, so things are just like wee Oh no wee. And it's me trying to find where things go. Oh gosh. It's not like a magic mouse, so I have to like do like. Oh no. These like types of zooms. Yeah. Yeah. What would you, I'm kind of used to it, but can you tell us, with this project, how long did it take you from start to finish? Okay. And, uh, just like any little tidbits just to kind of wrap up, um, this little segment. Yeah. So I mean, as far as like a timeline goes, you know, you want, as a producer or musician, you want to be efficient with the time that somebody's asking you to. Do something, what, whatever role it is. So with production, um, like I said, I'll receive usually the demo or work tape. Sometimes they're flushed out, sometimes they're not. But my first thing I do is just pre-pro. I'll just sit in my bedroom. Spend an evening with a song, kind of see where it can go sonically feel wise, tempo wise, key wise. I kind of try to hash all of that out in the front end if there needs to be a, a chord change somewhere, or if I'm hearing like something that could be cool with the band. Um. I try to hash that out on my own time so we're not wasting a bunch of extra time with when I get into a studio with a band, if there's like guitars and drums and real bass. Which this song has, but I also don't want to do too much to where it pigeonholes the band to do one thing. I want to have it like be open-ended. So honestly, my pre-pro would've been as basic as like, you know, maybe one bass synth, maybe two. I. Um, just a couple of these little micro loops, probably the piano. Um, and then that's probably it. And it probably would, going into the studio. Going into the studio. This is what the band has a point of reference and obviously a scratch vocal. 'cause we wouldn't have had vocals yet, so like. So we'll take this, you know, arrangement and then we could tweak the arrangement if we need to when we're with the band. And then with the band, you know, you're tracking drums and. Uh, guitars and bass and you're trying to hash out those parts individually with them, collectively, and then you can spend more time. This is just band stuff. And then, so with the band, we'll spend, I don't know, it depends on the project, but a song like this, we would've done three songs in a day. Um, just drums, basing guitars in one day for three songs on this project. And we probably did. Out of six songs, we probably booked two days, I'm pretty sure, to knock out drums, bass, and guitars. And, and I would've already had my pre-pro with, you know, like 10 stems or something. And then once I have that, then I'll comp and edit everything. Um, and I actually have a tracking session with just that. And then once everything's tracked, then I'll import into this one. And I do these little groups, so like I have my tracking. I guess I gotta turn on my groups. Groups are not, oh, weird. Um, rewind. So I like to use these, um, what do you call these? There's a name for this. They're not playlists. Um, what are they called? I don't know. It's, do you see this little arrow thing? There's a name for it. And hang on. It's, uh, track alternatives. There we go. Okay. All right. Rewind. So I like to use these track alternatives. They're similar to like a pro tools playlisting situation. So like, this would've been the earliest version of tracking. Um, and then. I'm cleaning and timing, editing everything. So you can see my drum editing timing is all here. And this one, and then I'll print that as audio. And then I have another track play, um, track alternative called Clean Timed. And that's, I've timed all these drums and it's all clean and so. And the reason I do that is so that I don't end up with this, the drums alone are probably like 20 ish tracks so that I don't end up with like 60 tracks in one session of the same iterations. It's just, and if I need to do a quick edit, like, oh, that was edited weird. I can always go back into my track. Or if I need to recomp like a fill, I can always go back to my track. Um, playlist or alternative, um, um, track alternative and. Recomp, whatever I need to in that section. So say there's a drum fill here, I want it to comp, then I'll just comp that guy and then commit it to audio, then drag it back into my comp and editing one, and then time it again, and then, you know, drag it. So here I did n edit. At some point I probably flew a section. Um. And this is all my clean timed window though. But I always know, like say there's a weird kick snare hit here. Like say there's a flam. I like flying my already timed and edited stuff so that it's already in pocket, um, like specifically here. Cool. So I use these track playlist. So we would've just circle back. We to circle back, we would've spent, you know. Three to four hours on a song hashing out like drums, bassing, guitar parts. I would've spent, me personally, I would've spent an evening editing this song, or I would've sent it to somebody else to edit for me, and then gotten those files back. And then once I have. Time drums, time bass, timed unedited guitars, my pre-pro. Then I'll spend another evening doing post pro, and then I'll start adding all of the like, you know, extra keys and sense stuff that a song needs. Um, this bug is freaking out for a second. It's like scrolling itself down. So then I'll spend an evening. Adding some more post pro automating stuff, treating like things, kind of getting a mix going. And then there's a whole, I kind of have a rule of thumb for when I track vocals for any song. I usually spend a day, I only plan for one day to track vocals. And it's for a lot of reasons, it's I want my lead. To always be great. And if you try to cram more songs in a day, the vocalist is gonna be tired. Even if they're very experienced, if they're more experienced, you know, you can knock out two, maybe three songs. And I'm talking like a-list artists, um, most normal, your average foe, you could say it. I mean, two songs is already a lot on their vocal chords. So I don't know how, if we do the math. Um, let's say there's one day of pre-pro, an evening of pre-pro, um, a half day of band tracking, or a third of a day. If you have, you know, more talented musician or more seasoned musicians who are fast in the studio. Um, could be a third of a day on a song, getting the band, um, an evening of editing. A day of vocal tracking and then an evening of post-production. And then probably one final little, like one or two hour thing of just, okay, what are we missing? Anything? Um, so how many evenings is that? How many half days is that? Um, five. Four. Five. Yeah, it's about five-ish half days. Realistically, I'll spend like. Uh, three to four days on a song, like full days. If you were to spread it out over time, that's awesome. Um, but I'm also a perfectionist, so it's a gift and a curse sometimes, you know, sometimes I get too much in the weeds and the fine details, but that's also kind of what makes my personal sound is I have to, I don't know. I always tell people I'll know every ounce of audio. By the end of this project, I'll know every single nuance 'cause I've seen and edited everything through. Um, so I won't miss anything. And if you know by the end of it, the goal is to get the best sounding product that we want, um, and all those little things that kind of add up over time, if you pay attention to the details along the way, then hopefully you don't miss anything. Um. Because people are paying you money to release a product. So you want it to be great. And you know, there's the creative element of it, and you want it to be an expression of who you are, who God created you to be. And so, you know, if you always do everything with your best and with your excellence, then hopefully everything is a reflection of who God created you to be. Um. So that's good, man. Even in my own perfectionist intuitions, you could say, I found ways to unerect myself, like in that little wow plugin. I want some nuance and I want some humanity. So I find other ways to add in perfections. Same with like that, that synth plugin that had the texture, final noise, like things that sound un like not. Perfect and not real Anything to add more organic kind of earthy texture to something. I try to find ways to insert that, um, in some ways to overcompensate or yeah, overcompensate for my perfectionist kind of leniency or tendencies. But yeah, I mean that's kind of the process. Alright guys, I hope y'all enjoyed that full rundown of David Ramirez's full, uh, template from last week, of course, but the actual programming side of the here and now song. Don't forget, he has his website below here in the Description and YouTube here, but also. I really enjoyed being in the studio. Gnome Studios. Thank you. In Nashville. Y'all have done incredible job.Gnome Studios is available to book. This thing is actually. Just massive. It's like a mansion here. Like we, we haven't shown it all on video, but there are so many ice, like iso booths and vocal booths and pianos. There's like, I don't know, 3, 4, 5 acoustic pianos, tons of hardware, tons, like a few different control rooms and whatnot. There's a studio A and a studio B. So two different studios, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And you guys can book it on Gnomestudios.co. Yeah. But the link will be here in the description and show notes. But. Dot co on that, not.com, but that's right. Gnomestudios.co. But thank you so muchfor being on the Worship Keys podcast taking the time to, show us kind of what you do. Your sound design is incredible. No, I'm always happy to pour back into the community, especially the church. Something I've always been passionate about is discipleship and mentorship and the passing of the baton. I'm not here to hog it for myself. And that's how I've learned it from other people, definitely go follow David Ramirez on Instagram. Follow Gnome Studios. Are y'all on Instagram? Yeah. Okay. I know it's