How to Play Aux Keys for Worship with Micaiah Wesler

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Join us in welcoming Micaiah Wesler to the Worship Keys YouTube channel as we dive into the world of auxiliary keys in worship music. In this episode, Micaiah shares how he first discovered aux keys back in 2012 at The Ramp and how years of learning and dedication helped him master the craft. We’ll cover the key differences between main keys and auxiliary keys, why auxiliary keys matter in worship, and must-know techniques like low-pass filters and synthetic leads. Micaiah also shares insights from playing at Ramp conferences and offers practical tips for musicians wanting to level up their worship setup. Whether you're serving at church or playing on a pro stage, this episode has everything you need to take your aux keys game to the next level.

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Transcript

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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. Mackay, welcome to the podcast, man. I appreciate it. I'm so glad you're here. Guys. Today's episode is all about auxiliary keys, worship aux keys world. Um, can you tell us just a little sni, I know you're gonna, you're gonna intro us, man, but tell us a little bit about worship aux keys, what it means to you, how you got into it, a little bit about this world for you, man. Sure. I've honestly, I've enjoyed learning it, especially the more that you get into production, the more I've enjoyed crafting my stuff for aux keys. I got into it way back in the day about, feels like way back in the day 2012. So I guess that now is pretty way back in the day. I went to a church called the Ramp, and then, I had, was going to school there at their ministry school. So then I played for somebody and they were like, ah, you know, you can play a little bit. So then they gave me a Roland Phantom board and said, pick out a few good sounds, you know, like this is the song that we want you to play. Pick out a couple good sounds and see what you like. And so I did, I went through every sound on that board, which is so many sounds. It took me hours. That was the start of the journey is just rifling through board, after board, after board. And what sound is this? Would this work? Would this not work in this scenario? Wow. And so that's how I jumped in, like really putting in the time and the effort. And you know, over time you develop kind of your ear and figure out exactly what you want and know how to get there quick, but Right man, that's how it all started real. Real elementary. That's amazing, man. Yeah. Yeah. I first, saw mackay at the RAMP conferences back in 20 15, 16, 17, 18. 1919. Oh yeah. Ish, timeframe. And so what's really cool about you, man, you'll just, you get to come in now to the ramp during New Year's, new Year Eve service, conferences, summer ramps, stuff like that. Yes. And you just get to bring your, your Roland , do some software stuff and do fun aux keys things. Yeah. Which has to be so much fun, especially in a place like the ramp. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. What I love. So many things about the ramp, but one thing that I do love and I flow well with this is that they don't really have a set list. You know? Tell us more about this man. Tell us more about that. So there's different ways to approach, you know, church, music, worship. A lot of people are very structured they've got their keys down, they've got their arrangements down, they've got everything pre-programmed, you know what I mean? They got a time to a t and that's good. There's definitely a place for that. There's not one thing is better than the other, then there's the total flip side of that more like the ramp where it's a lot of flow. So once you start the song, you know, depending on who's gonna lead, you might play it in one key or another. Or if it's just getting tagged to another song out of nowhere, then you're just stuck in that key. Yeah. You know what I mean? You have to be able to just flow with anything at any point. Right. So when they give you a set list for a conference, you're getting a set list anywhere between 25 and like 50 songs. I think I counted 70 songs on the last the New Year's. Oh my God. So it was in insane. Now I know most of them, you know what I mean? 'cause you know, you, you learn the songs that everybody's playing, but. Man, it's wild. And then, so basically what that is, is they give you just a list of songs and they said, these are the songs we might do. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So then, a lot of times they'll pray before and, and get an idea of this is what we'll open up with. And then, so we'll have two or three songs that we're planning to open up with and roll. But once you start in on the song, even you don't know how the arrangement's gonna go. So you can, we can know like, okay, this is the key. We're gonna hit the first song in, and then we start, and then from then all bets are off. Right, right, right. Like, you just have to feel it. You have to know where it's going. You have to trust everybody around you. Yes. You have to watch very carefully whoever's leading, you know what I mean, so that you can watch their signals and know where to go and what to do and up and down in the whole nine yards. Crazy. So it's actually really musical in the moment because you can adjust an arrangement based on what's going on in the room. I love that. Which I love doing that. So much fun, man. I've loved her hearing, uh, Gloria Day at the ramp because it, it's kind of never the same really, but it's essentially gospel musicians on stage mm-hmm. With like CCM song selections and probably CM vocalists for the most part. Yeah. Of course Eddie James visits there a lot. So he needs, sees a big crossover between CCM and gospel styles. Incredible musicians with Eddie James Ministry and mm-hmm. Matt Gilman's there a lot. Katherine Mullins. Yeah. And I love her song. Jesus Did it. Have you ever played the, the s synth lines for that? Yep. Yep. Isn't that fun? Yeah, it's all good. I love it. I love, actually, when they bring in a bunch of different people, it's nice when Eddie James comes in. 'cause then we get to sit out and just, yeah. We just get to worship. Right, right. And, and, hang out like that. But, man, it's, it is a lot of fun and it's a lot of fun to play aux keys 'cause um. Being able to play there. They actually have a, um, they kind of, I don't know, they, I guess they understand aux keys in its role pretty well. Mm-hmm. So they have given a lot of open space for like, what they allow me to do when I play aux keys. That's good. You know, so it can fill different roles at different times to where a lot of places are is very bauxed in. Right. But there, they've actually allowed me a freedom to really expand and experiment and try new things and try to push the bounds of what I'm familiar with. That's good. So I love, it's a, it's a great place. That's incredible. Yeah. And you said, earlier, but not, not on camera, you were talking about how auto gross and Tyler England have been two big influences on your life. Oh yeah. You talk about them, for a second. Shout out to those guys. Oh, man. So, I had never had a music lesson in my life, uh, for the longest time. You know, I've always been musical. I was in band, you know what I mean? Different things like that. Of course. So there's. Always a foundation. My dad's very musical. I'm a pastor's kid, so you don't have a choice. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna be on the worship team and you're gonna, you know, you're gonna do everything. You're gonna stack chairs and then go play worship. Right, right, right. I mean, that's just how it rolls. So, um, you know, I have that foundation, but once YouTube came out, that was like my bread and butter, you know what I mean? I'd be hitting YouTube videos, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Um, it's a great resource, but I had never had a lesson, like one-on-one real lesson. So when I went to the Ramp School of Ministry, Otto had come in and played a few times and he played on drums and piano. 'cause he's phenomenal of both. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He's great. The main keys player at that time was Tyler England. And so getting to know him and he was like, man, what you need to do is go get a lesson from Otto. I was like, oh, okay. Cool. At that point, Otto was up here in Nashville. So I drove all the way up from Alabama and we met at a Sam Ash on the other side of Nashville over there on the east side somewhere. It's not even there no more. I think they closed them all down, but we met there at Sam Ash and just hijacked one of their keyboards and had a lesson right there. And then I drove all the way back. No way. But man, that was my first lesson and that one lesson taught me a lot. And it kind of started the journey and the realization of what, like you can learn a lot from YouTube. Private lessons are amazing too, in just a different way. You get a lot of ex of that person's experience through a private lesson. Right, right. You know what I mean? And he's a phenomenal teacher as well. So I absolutely, I just learned a lot. And then, I would give the vast majority of my credit for like, especially aux keys would be to Tyler England. Mm-hmm. So he taught me different things about aux keys that you know, you want to be felt instead of heard and kind of laying the foundation of, okay, what even is aux keys at all? What is its role in a worship setting? Right? And then, so he's the one who sat me down with the roland Phantom, I think it's G six board, and, totally not user friendly at all. And he literally said, this is the songs that we're gonna do. I want you to find three sounds out of this board that will work. And then I sat there for hours in his like home studio just. Sound after sound after sound, and then I'd write one down and then compare until I got to my top three. So he's the one who kind of started me in on that and learning how to find the right sounds and saying, now in this scenario, I want you to play more like this, or I need you to give me beefy chords, you know, and then when the base, if the base player drops out, I need you to go low and give me really low, you know, like gutsy octaves down there to fill in that low end. Mm-hmm. But then when the base player comes back in, I need you to go back up and just play two handed chords, you know? Yeah. So I give him a lot of credit. I learned so much from him, not just him talking to me, but literally just watching him, you know what I mean, from across the stage or wherever I was on the stage. And, um, and even in worship moments, this is great too. If you are a worship leader or an md, uh, or a main keys player and you have an aux keys player, he gave me a lot of, good things in the middle of worship sets. Mm. You know what I mean? We'd be coming into a moment. He and he, he'd gimme a heads up, Hey, I want you to bring this bright when we're about to go here. That's good. You know what I mean? Or I, I need you to doll that down right when we come down. Right. That, that simple like instructions. And I internalize that saying, okay, in these moments, this is what I need to do. Absolutely. You know what I mean? I, he, you know what I mean? He impacted me in a great way. That's incredible, man. Yeah. Well, we definitely love the Ramp in Hamilton, Alabama. We've had multiple guests from the ramp. You know, Otto came on for a few episodes on how to improv. Mm-hmm. Um, piano, very jazz heavy. So you guys check that episode out, if you wanna learn a little bit more about jazz and, um, uh, a little bit about the life of Otto. And it's so cool that he gave you some lessons, man. And Tyler England's awesome. We'd love to have Tyler on one day. I know he's all the way down in Mobile Alabama right now. Yeah. With Damon. But much love and respect to the Ramp Ministry, Karen Wheaton Ministries and all that entails. But today, guys, all about aux keys. What you guys can do to utilize that within your own ministry even professionally on professional stages. You've been on some pretty big stages yourself, Mackay, and um, even just the RAMP conferences come with a lot of pressure and a lot of, um. Well, well respected worship leaders that come on stage there that you want to do a good job with. But man, I love following you on Instagram. Definitely gotta check him out on Instagram. You're there playing a lot of bass. Yeah. What is it play at mackay? Is that Play mackay. Play Play. Mackay play. You gotta go follow him on Instagram, guys. Yeah. Good luck spelling Mackay. If you can find it, then, you know, kudos. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Man, I love, I love that. So we're gonna jump right into it without further ado, , we don't wanna waste any of your time here, but Mackay, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Yeah, man, it's an honor. All right guys, let's jump into some aux key stuff. So why is aux keys even important at all in the day of stems and loops and computers? Why does this even matter anymore? Well, first of all, most places don't have it and they need it more than they know. But, really what it comes down to, stems and loops. Yes, they might be awesome, but there's nothing like an aux keys player to traverse a moment in worship that stems and loops can never reproduce. So what are the important things with aux keys? . When it was introduced to me playing aux keys for the first time, it was told to me like this aux keys a lot of times is felt more than heard. A lot of times it's a background element and it's a supporting character. Now, clearly this means that it's not gonna be as flashy as a lead electric player, or, you know what I mean, something crazy, a drummer. You know what I mean? You're not gonna get all the oohs and awes probably all the time. But it's an important character in the band nonetheless. So it's not always heard, but it's felt. So with that means that a lot of piano players at churches all around, they don't wanna be playing aux keys. They wanna be playing main keys, and they feel like it's a lesser position to play auxiliary keys. And that could be no further from the truth. There's so much power and presence when you play aux keys and do it right. So we're gonna show you how to do it right to the best of my ability. We'll start with the difference between main keys and aux keys. Main keys is your piano sounds, your road sounds, all of those things that typically sit more out front in a mix and kind of drive a moment. Aux Keys has a lot to do with pads, synths strings, all of those sorts of things. So there's a big difference there. in many, many churches, you'll find that the main keys player is doing both. I know everybody loves the Nord, right? The big red machine there is like, everybody loves Nord. I see red, that whole, this whole thing. Nord is great actually for this, because it has your piano roads right there and it's also got your synth section. It's got your organ section. So a lot of times I like to play the Nord and it's got everything I need right there, but. When it comes to down deep, I'm a roland man. So I love my roland boards. And not only that, when I travel, I do use some software stuff. So I have certain sounds that I go to every single time. And these sounds are what I found to be the best. And you don't have to have the exact sounds that I have, but anything similar, I will show you how to handle aux keys like a pro. So the first thing I find for my aux keys rig is, well, I like to have two boards at least. Okay. I like to have my main board, and I like to have a lead board. On the main board. My main core sounds that get me through any moment it might surprise you is a trance synth. I want a roaring synth like crazy. So one of my go-tos is Omnisphere, and on Omnisphere is a patch called Gaga Fizz so, Gaga Fizz is, that's my go-to. And let me explain the reason why I want a synth. 'cause you're thinking in a low moment, I need pads, not a synth. Okay, well, yes, that's exactly what you need. But not only with aux keys, do you have whatever patch that you have in there, but we have the option to manipulate any sound that we have and make it the best for any scenario. So the reason I like to have a trance synth sound this goes for the Nord, it goes for literally anything, anything close to a trance synth sound is if you put an EQ on it and then you put a low pass filter. As you bring a low pass filter down, it cuts out the high end. It's letting the low pass through. Okay? If you don't know what that is, that's what a low pass filter is. So you put a, a EQ filter, and then you put a low pass on it, and then what I do is I connect it to a MIDI controller, a knob. So as I turn the knob down, the EQ starts to cover all of my high end. So with that synth, as you bring that synth down, all the high end, the harshness that you always hear comes down, it turns into a huge pad. So that's why I like a trancy type synth, because not only in these huge moments can you have this roaring ripping, like cutting your face off synth, like, oh my gosh, it's blowing my mind. When you fade it down, it's got this huge rich pad. Instead of having two sounds. One for up moments, one for down moments, and having to try and change all these things, to try and switch patches and make that clean and smooth. You don't have to do that. You just have one patch that you can manipulate with one EQ and it turns all, it turns out crazy synth down into a pad and it's perfect. So that's the first thing I find when I'm trying to get my aux keys rig ready for a gig. So second then is strings. I love the strings. I love 'em. So this comes with a bit of a mindset different because with pads we can just cord out really good, make some big fat, thick chords or whatever, or even hold the one in five and it's gonna sound great. But with strings, what you wanna do is you want some melodic movement, and this is where the melodic movement type things is where aux keys starts to get really, really cool, and especially where stems and loops will never touch. So when you do strings, you can have what I'll normally do. My left hand, I will play a chord, and in my right hand I will do for the most part I'll lay a chord down, but then I will move melodically. So if you're going into a big moment from like a verse for example, where a pre chorus going into a chorus where the music is starting to rise in dynamic, you can start to move your chords up, up, up, and, your melody up to help push that moment with strings into, the chorus. So what you wanna do, if you're playing strings, you can pat out and it's gonna sound amazing. But when you start moving it, that's where that emotion starts to come out. And it's great to listen to classical music. It's great to listen to different styles of music that have strings. Even a lot of pop has strings. A lot of worship has strings. You know, you'll hear a cello or a violin going on. Pay attention to those movements and how they're playing that. And then try to recreate it when you're playing a string patch so that way, you can get some cool movements in there instead of just courting out. That's the next thing I go to. So, so far we got a chancy synth that you can easily change down strings. And I do the same thing with the strings. I put an EQ on there with a low pass so the strings can be really bright or when I need 'em in a low moment to be really soft and kinda like muffled, I can bring that low pass down and it's gonna do exactly what I need. Sometimes I will put, a motion pad. In, depending on the moment and depending on the, worship set. But, for the majority of the time I really do use that translucent. And now some of this is going to depend on your scenario for worship. So for me, most of the time when I get a call to play worship, it's gonna be like a 50 song set list. And they're gonna say, this is the pool of songs we might pull from. And then I'm gonna get the set list like two minutes before we walk up there probably, or maybe in the sound check if I'm lucky. And we just have to know all of these songs. So I have to be ready for like 25 to 50 songs at all times. And a bunch of you church musicians know exactly what I'm talking about because half the time your pastor will come up and start singing a song and you just have to like jump to this song like out of nowhere. So the reason I come from this angle instead of having all these specific patches. The reason that I pick a patch that I can easily change and manipulate to do what I want is because it fits in almost any scenario. And so that's what I need. I need a, I need something that can be a roaring synth or a soft pad or bright strings to lead a big movement, or soft strings in a moment. Those are two go-tos for me that I have every single time. Now, my most favorite from there is my third go-to, which is my Juno board. It's a Juno di so much cheaper. If you want a Juno, get a Juno di I'm a big, big fan. It's lightweight, it's small, you know what I mean? And you're not gonna damage it when you're traveling with some, you know. Vintage keyboard that's worth half your house or something like that. So I love the Juno DI with all my heart. So what I do with the Juno DI, it's got amazing pads. It's got amazing synths, so I will use those sometimes. But mainly I will use it for a synth lead. Now this is something that I rarely see. So if you see aux keys players as a rarity in churches, which they are an aux keys player, that plays anything to do with lead is even more rare. I wanna change that. Like this needs to be a thing. We need to bring aux keys back to churches. So where I first saw aux keys with lead was the gospel realm. Gospel churches, a lot of times, even if you look back at some videos, they'll have like three and four different keyboard players. They'll have an organ player, a piano player. Like two or three different aux keys players. It's crazy. So everybody has a sound, everybody's, you know, playing and it's kind of died off a little bit with stems and loops. But what you'll see is a lot of times there's somebody who has a smaller board up top and they play lead synth and stuff like this. That's the first time I ever saw it. I never see it in CCM. So I wanted to change that. I don't really see it in church worship as much in my circles. I wanted to change that. So I got this board and started fiddling around with it. And I found the patch that I like, which is really, just like a synth synthy lead. And again, per my go-to, I put a low pass filter on it and I have it ready where I can turn a knob and that filter comes down. So now my harsh lead can either cut through and big, huge moments, or I can have it down. And, really chill for low moments to do different things. And what I'll also do is throw on a reverb and delay, and then you can't go wrong with that. So that way you can, do different things, which I may show you later, but you can swell up a note and then just cut it off. And then that reverb's gonna hang really, really nicely. Different things like that. So those are my go-tos for sound, Traci synth, strings and then a lead sound of some sort. Let's make a loop first and then that way it'll open me up to. Play some lead stuff. . We may have to talk about that side chain there. I forgot about that. I like it. So let's walk through this a little bit. All right, so first I'm using Ableton. You can use main stage. There's different sort of dolls out there, Daws. I used main stage when I first started, but I found that it didn't give me everything that I wanted or maybe I just didn't know how to do everything on main stage that I wanted. So I found myself gravitating to Ableton. In a normal band scenario, you'll have the rest of the band playing. So then you, if you're doing a lead thing, you don't wanna abandon your original post of supporting character, but if you're doing a lead thing, you need to have that stuff behind you. But in a band scenario, they're playing that for you, so it's a lot easier. But with Ableton, it's just set up a looper. So then you can loop eight bars, four bars, two bars, 16 bars. They have different loopers in there and you just throw it in there and you record and loop, which is also good, by the way, at the end of service if people, you know, if you're at a church and people come down to an altar and they're getting prayed for, ministry's happening and we all know how sound guys and some media people work. We all know it. It's some powerful moment in the altar, and then the band stops playing and then this like, you know what I mean? And it totally like, there's 15 people praying, they're like weeping and then all of a sudden this party music comes on. You're like, no, it, you know, smash the mood. Ableton is also good for that because you can put on a looper, whoever, like, whatever you're playing piano aux keys, you can just loop whatever's going on in that moment. And then if you're tired and you need to go get, you know, some water after playing an eight hour service or whatever, then you can go and in that mood that atmosphere is still there for you. So I love the loopers on Ableton. But what we were doing there is I had that looped, and again, I've got a low pass filter on everything that I do, and it gives me the options to manipulate everything. One thing that you also heard was on my trance synth, and I will do this on. All of my main board sounds. So that's my trans synth, my strings, any sort of pads, things like that. I will throw on a plugin called Kickstart. Whether this is, even available anymore or if it costs money. I don't know. I've had it for so long, I don't remember, but I use it. I wear this thing out. Kickstart, what it is, is it emulates a side chain so you can, basically tell it to give you whatever side chain that you even want. On Kickstart, I just had it to where it was hitting every downbeat, so that way I could keep time without a click. I use that in, real life scenarios as well, and I just adjust on the fly. So look at, look that up. It's a kickstart by nicky Romero. Okay. I use the, I use that like crazy. So that's on everything as well. You heard that going on? So what you heard though, is especially at the end or when you noticed the dynamic was coming up and all of these things, all you were hearing were the synth and the strings were brightening up. This keyboard was brightening up, going from, , dull to bright or back of the other way, especially at the end when I was sustaining and letting that loop go and just slowly fading it out. It's all the low pass filter, it's all the low pass filter, and it sounds amazing. It does so much for you. But you can see that one simple thing, manipulating the sounds one simple way changes the dynamic of everything and gives you so much versatility. So playing aux keys doesn't have to be difficult. It doesn't have to be confusing. You just need one or two good patches. And the ability to, uh, manipulate those, manipulate those patches in a few different ways. Let's, let's go over this one song that helps illustrate the low pass filter. It's a faster song, the synth is really important. I can show you also how to throw a lead thing in there every once in a while to help in these bigger up moments. Some of you may know, oh, I don't even know the real name of this song, but, I know it goes, this is what it sounds like. And then the syn, it's a whole band thing. So, so while they're singing. Really, I ha it just hangs on the one. So I'm just, I'm holding a synth on the one, you know what I mean? Try not to be bored, trying to just worship and praise my way into it. And all of a sudden they go, this is what it sounds like. And I know it's about to be this crazy synth. So while they're talking or exhorting or singing, this is where I'm at on this synth. And as it leads in, I know they're about to hit. This is what it sounds like and it pinnacles. I'm gonna use that low pass filter. So, and then this is what it sounds like. And then we're back down. And then you're hanging here until the next time. This is what it sounds like. So in these down moments, sometimes you can get away with like a something random, you know what I mean? You can pull that off. So again, this is that low pass filter from zero all the way up. So I don't, in a low moment, I don't want it to be distracting, but I, you can throw it in anything like that, you know what I mean? So one good thing though, if you have a lead synth or a trance synth, as a second option, you can stab a downbeat and it's perfect. So you're here and so say, you're going into a course, but you're gonna sustain that note, so you're there. So then on the downbeat, like 1, 2, 3, 4, slide it off, it, 1, 2, 3, 4, little things, you know? So I'm still holding the fort right here. Still holding the chords. Always. You always have to slide off of it. I mean, come on now. That's just, that's 1 0 1 right there. You gotta hit it and slide. 'cause it feels good. All right. So that's a little tip though. If you do get yourself into a lead board, those little stabs add a lot. So sometimes it's not some like rip roaring lead solo, which is not even my cup ofit to like really solo out. But if you do those little things to help accentuate things, it's perfect. another thing with the lead that you can do, you can also do this with strings and it's re works really, really good, is follow the melody. Follow the melody. So whatever they're doing, you can catch in on those big moments. Let's see. The one that comes to mind is an old school song. Actually, the first thing that comes to mind is Old Hillsong, called with everything. So with, lemme bring that down. With everything. With everything. Then they go into these os Oh. So that's like perfect. You can follow that. And even so, a lot of times that moment's gonna keep going. So with that low pass, you can still have some good. So one good thing too, if there's still energy left in a moment and it's about to be thrown somewhere, this is one of my favorite things to do. So you're on this note, you just like rip it up and then just let it loose. Just let off of it. And let the reverb kind of handle it and delay. It's always really fun too. A lot of little fun things you can do, that people don't ever think about, but they should be thinking about because it adds so much. These are the things that stems and loops can't touch those elements where you're letting out your singing, like you're, you're able to sing in a way. Stems will never be able to capture and reproduce every time. That's what I love about aux Keys is you can have those dynamic elements. So the hard part with aux Keys is fitting in with the band. Where does it fit? So you kind of have to think a little bit like a mixing engineer in ways because you wanna fit in there just right. You don't wanna step on people's toes, especially with this lead board, you're gonna be all in the guitar world. With a lot of these pads and syns, your chords need to jive with whoever's on keys, on main keys on Oregon, anything like that. It's gonna matter your cord structures, your, your leads and staying out of each other's way. Aux keys, I think of it similarly to guitars like a rhythm guitar where tones matter, tones matter more than what you're playing. So yes, I'm playing lead synth a lot of times. Yes, I'm playing this, but my tone is what matters. The how harsh or how soft it is in a certain moment. It's the same as like a rhythm guitar. Your chords matter, but your tones are very important. I think of it in that way, and also in the same way it fills a huge sonic spectrum. It can go all the way from low end bass notes to where you could be in the way of the bass player. Little sidetrack here. Just like a piano player, if you have a bass player, keep your hands outta the lower register. Let that bass player do what he needs to do and, change things up if he wants to change things up. And that way you're not in the weight. But it's the same with aux keys. If you're playing in these low, low notes and the bass player's playing you and he decides to play a three instead of a one, if he goes to some inversion, you're gonna be really clashing in the, in the low end. You don't wanna do that. So you wanna stay outta the bass player's way and play chords in your left hand and your right hand, even if it's like one note or two notes when you first get started, that's the best thing to do. So stay outta the way the bass player in the low end. But then, your rhythm guitar is gonna be a lot of your low mids filling up that your piano, your chords on your piano is gonna be a lot of those low mids. And. The middle range. So you want to make sure your chords are gonna sound really good if you're on aux keys. I, I stay away from playing super complicated gospel chords on aux keys. They're, it is never needed. Even in praise breaks, even in crazy stuff, you don't need complicated chords. It's more about your tone than the chords that you're playing. Okay. I mean, you can, sure, and especially if you're doing like an organ patch that's a little bit different. But for synths, for pads, for strings, things like that, you could be doing everything that I'm explaining, just holding the one and the five. And if you have the dynamics of that low pass filter on, you can get away with sounding really, really good. But we wanna stay out of complicated chords in that low middle range. It'll muddy everything up and the high stuff with the strings. How I mentioned we need to be playing strings more melodically. You can do that, but you have to watch what the guitars are doing. If you know their parts and you know what they're gonna do every time you can play off of that, you can play the same things as them to help push that forward as well. Or you can play a harmony to it, something like that. But don't be playing, you know, a hole in half steps away from them or anything like that. So what I do in this scenario, because a lot of my playing in worship scenarios is all spontaneous, is based on what feels right in the moment. I will communicate with my eyes with the guitar player and normally we'll talk this through in soundcheck and say, Hey, listen, I know you're the the lead guitar player. I've got some lead stuff. Like, if you ever think it needs it, let's just look at each other and communicate. And then musicians have this special gift. To look at each other in the eyes and just, most of the time you just know what they're thinking. Or like a simplest like head nod like that, you know what I mean? Like, all right, you go, you take it. So I'll do that. We'll communicate so that we're not stepping on each other's toes. Even mid solo, like if a league guitar player's really playing out and it's great, but he's like I'm feeling this thing is coming to an end, but they're still like, they're not ready to sing yet. Okay. You take it over there so that way you're not stepping on each other's toes. If there's a gap and the league guitar's not playing anything, and you start to play something, and then he starts to play, just stop. Just whatever, mid you're, mid run, whatever you're doing, just stop or like go back down and come off of it because you want to, give them their space as well to do what they're supposed to be doing. And that way you're not, clashing. 'cause if you have your lead roaring synth and another guitar player, and then the bass is doing the just, and now it's not gonna work, it's not gonna sound great. It's gonna be more chaotic than anything. This is how I do it every time. Defer to the electric player, but then have clear communication where, um, he's like, yep, you got this. And then, all right, here we go. Then you play. That's maybe one of the harder things of aux keys is because you have to listen so much to everybody else because you are a supporting character. So if somebody else is playing, if a piano all of a sudden starts playing, da, da, da, da, 1, 7, 5 1, 7 5, and you hear that, okay, cool. If he plays that, if he, if I hear him starting that, I'm look over here watching his hands. If he plays that again, I'm grabbing these strings, I'm doing that right with them. Or if you've been doing that a while and it's, getting more monotonous, you can do the harmony of it. 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, um, over top of what they're doing. And it's, it can, that's what I'm saying, be a supporting character. Even if it's melodic, you're supporting what you just heard them do. And making way for that. But because it spans frequency wise from the high-end frequencies, it's the entire spectrum. aux keys can fill, it can fill it all at once. We have to be aware and listen more to everybody else than ourselves. We have to want to make sure that whatever they're doing is supported and pushed forward in a moment. It's about that supporting role. Think of this like. A producer. So my aux keys game stepped up dramatically when I started producing music because I started learning layers and I started learning in a song, you might think you hear three things going on in a simple song, but it could be 20, and they're just layered in there just perfectly to where you have no idea it's there. But the second you mute that track and something's missing, all of a sudden there's a weight that's missing behind it. And that's our role. We come behind and we say, okay, what are the layers underneath the most obvious ones? The most obvious are drums, vocals, lead, electric, you know what I mean? Even rhythm, electric, piano, these are very obvious, but what's underneath that helps support a song in a different way. And to get started, if you have stems and loops, you can go through on those keys tracks and find a patch that sounds like one of those, and then just mute the one. You can have all the rest while you're getting started, but then just have that, and then you can play that track to, to hear the different layers and, start to learn different layers and how to layer things properly. if you wanna play aux keys, start to dissect songs and write down everything. This is what I'm hearing, this is what I'm hearing, this is what I'm hearing. And then find a patch that works with that song and go play it to help support whatever they're doing in that song. It's a great way to learn and it's a great way to start hearing and listening to everybody else that's going on. If you're at a church that doesn't have electric guitar players, aux keys will be your thing. So what you want with aux keys is to fill the gaps that electric players normally would fill. This is the exact scenario at my church. So I've been there five years, and I think we've had a handful of times where we've had an electric guitar player. The majority of the time we have no guitar player at all, but we can still manage to make it sound full because we're playing aux keys sounds. So what you can do with an aux keys player, again, it fill such a spectrum of sound that guitars also fill. So those synths, those pads, those strings, the lead synth, all of these things are the same things that guitar players do. But instead of playing it on a neck, you can play it on a keyboard. So if you've got multiple keys players and no electric players, set up a MIDI controller. Set up your computer, get them a good synth sound. Put your low pass filter on it, and let 'em go to town, because that will help you and your sound go from feeling weak and anemic to huge and robust and no time at all. And it's so simple. It's that time again. It's time for the fun run. What does that mean? I don't know. I just made it up. But it's gonna be fun and I'm gonna show you a run. So this is what you're gonna get. I hope you think it's fun run time, 'cause it that's what time it is here anyways. All right. So let me show you something for real. Runs can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be. All right? For a lead synth, most of the time I don't do anything crazy, but what you can do, if you know your scales, you're set to do a run. Okay? So let's take the key of D 'cause that's what I've been playing all today. So key of D, right? Your major scale. Take one note out, just one. And in effect, let me make this easier on you. Take one note out, but make it the four or the seven. Take only one note out. Four or seven. All right, so say it's the seven, or if it's the four, all right. And you just play the scale fast. There's your run. Take your major scale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, and you'll repeat, take out one note. I like taking out the 4, 1, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1. And then just loop that all the way up or down. So runs don't have to be complicated. You just pick up your speed, start slow, pick up your speed. It works wonderfully. So there you go. fun, run. So as far as my gear for traveling at my home church, we've got a Nord. So I stick to that and does everything I need. Great. But when I travel, my gear is I run everything on a 2015 MacBook Pro. Okay? This thing, as far as computers go, is ancient, but it's a beast. And until this thing croaks, I'm rocking it. It's been faithful to me. I'm gonna be faithful to it till the end, all right to death, do his part. That's how this one's gonna be. So 2015, you don't need the fancy gear. I mean, it's nice, but you don't need it to get moving. Okay. 2015 MacBook Pro, I run everything through Ableton. I've got my lead synth going through actual audio. It's not MIDI or anything like that. So I run that through Ableton. Today I'm running a MIDI board. Normally I'll run my Roland Rd 2000 and that will also run just audio into the interface. And so the reason I do that is so that I can manipulate the sounds, I can put my low pass filter on it. I can put my reverbs delays, shimmers, whatever side chains that I want to put on it, however deep you want to go. And that gives me the option to do it. It also gives me the option to route things exactly how I want them to be routed. Also this, I route it in there because I'll, if I use any MIDI at all, I want to be able to route things together. So I'll do that, throw it all into Ableton, and then it's routed through my interface, which is a MO two hybrid MK three. That's been around with me for a long time as well. It's great. I know they make smaller ones now, but this thing is durable. And I love it. So this thing gives you eight inputs and it gives you 10 outputs, I believe, 10 outputs. So it gives you plenty of outputs. I've rarely ever needed anything like that. Normally I will run four out. I will run all of my main sounds, synth strings, pads, things like that. I will run out of one and two a stereo, and then I'll run my lead board out of three and four stereo because a lot of times the sound guy, if you're doing a lead sound, a lot of times the sound guy's gonna want to have control of that separate from whatever synth or sound like the bed that you're laying down because they might want that to be again, heard or not heard but felt. But they might need your lead to be heard. But if they're stuck together, then they have to move it like this. But if they have control of each one individually, you can move the lead up when it's needed and leave that there. So that's how I've got everything routed though. , not too bad. Fairly simple, does the job. So if you're starting from scratch getting into aux keys, what rig do you need? There's two different ways you can do this and not one is not better than the other. So I'm a hardware man myself. I love having a million keyboards surrounded by keyboards. It's amazing. But that's a lot of money. That's a huge investment. So most people already have a laptop. MIDI boards are very cheap. And you can, and interfaces are also pretty cheap now as well. So that is way more of a cost effective, route. Now, if you wanna go hardware, I would suggest something like a roland Phantom. They're not always user friendly, but they have amazing sounds. Or again, you could get something as simple as this. Roland Juno di you get amused and they're not expensive at all and it's got everything you need. It's got all of your synths, it's got all of your pads, all any lead thing, just like the one I have. You could do it all on this board right here if you wanted to. But as far as MIDI goes, I would get something like main stage. I think it's still free, able to cost a little bit, but you don't need this to get going. You can just run main stage, throw a patch in there, and you're pretty good to go. It's very simple and easy. That's the two different routes though. Hardware or software, I don't know, they might fight to the death and, I'd be on the hardware side, but software gets it through just as good and nobody can really tell the difference. As far as sound quality goes. Software keeps getting better and better and better and more affordable. All at the same time. Alright guys, I hope you really enjoyed it. If you did like, subscribe again, make sure to follow Mackay Wesler on Instagram play mackay play. Again, if you're a bass too, check him out. 'cause he's got some good base content. I know at least during one time during Christmas time you had a lot of Christmas videos. Yes, I did that. That was very entertaining. I liked that. Bring it back. This Christmas game. It gets goofy. It gets goofy. It gets goofy. If you enjoyed it, let us know in the comments. If we didn't really hit on something specific that you really wanted us to get down into, let us know. 'cause we'll make another episode in the future about it. And maybe we'll do a full rundown of your Juno di one day. Oh, I love it. What all it could do? I, I don't know, but it's a beast. It's amazing. But seriously. Mackay, like the way that you loop things into Ableton, the way that you use hardware and software, the sounds you use, the runs like the, the whole scale without using the seven in, or No, the four, right? The four, yeah. Without using the four. That's pretty cool. I'm gonna steal that. That's pretty nice. Take it. So I hope you guys, were able to take some of that and, and. Take it back to your churches, take it back to your band, wherever you play. Um, let us know where you're listening from and we'll see you next.