Worship Keys Rig & Sound Design with Anaji Powell

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Carson is joined again by Anaji Powell, a worship keys player, MD, and creative behind powerful sound design. Fresh off last week’s episode with his wife Kaci, Anaji now gives a full breakdown of his worship keys rig, from the Nord Stage 4 and Ableton to TouchOSC and live looping. He shares how sound design isn’t about showing off, but about serving the moment, supporting pastors like a movie score, and pointing people to Jesus. Anaji also highlights the value of patience, practice, and mastering your instrument before adding advanced gear. Whether you’re just starting on keys or already leading as an MD, this episode is filled with insight and inspiration. Don’t miss out—hit play and share with your worship team. You won’t want to miss this!

Anaji Powell

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. I'm with anaji Powell. Welcome anaji. Thank you for having me, Carson. It's good to be here. Dude, last week we were talking with you and kaci. Yes. Your wife kaci, and I hope you guys were a part of that episode last week. If you missed it, definitely check it out. And we talked a lot about ministry here in Rochester, New York. Yes. Which we're here filming right now at your church. Faith church Faith's Church. Yes sir. And really good conversation. it's really cool to see you on the keyboard. M ding. And your wife kaci on Oregon? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Super cool. Really neat congregation you guys have here about a thousand people Yep. Or so? Just congratulations on the new renovations. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. New carpet. Um, yeah, new seats. No more hard pews. Praise the Lord. Amazing. Praise the Lord. God's good. God is good. 90 years this year. The church. Yes. 90 years. Incredible. 90 years of faithfulness. Many of you guys, uh, know anaji from Instagram. Maybe you're a part of his Patreon program, his Patreon channel where he gets to teach MDs how to be a better md. Yeah. Real quickly, tell us about that and how people can be a part of your Patreon. Well, if you go to Patreon and you look up my Powell, you'll find me there. My face is. The profile picture, so be a little easier for people to find me. Right, right, right. Um, but yeah, there I share some tips, tricks, I share some exclusive behind the scenes stuff that I don't post. Anywhere, like rehearsals and stuff like that, you get to see the ins and out of that. And my heart behind it was to just share more the knowledge of what being an MD is. It's more than just calling chords. And, I mean, I know Aton of, you've probably seen some of my video of me just dancing and, and shouting in videos. Yeah. Yeah. It's more than just that. Like there's some logistical side of it. Absolutely. And just some tangible things that I think will be very helpful, and I'm always looking to grow and grow in feedback, so if anybody, they're like, Hey, I wish you talked more about this, or talk more about that. I would love to receive that and put some of that content out that would help you. So good, man. As y'all are watching this episode on YouTube, you can comment if there's something else we didn't get to today or something you wanna nod you to cover later, or something you want us to cover on the channel in a different way, let us know in the comments. Today's episode is gonna be one of those that's just super. Saturated with amazing nuggets. Yes. Like, I'm so excited to see your whole keys rig, guys, and, and if you're not watching on YouTube for those listening in, maybe in the car right now or on a run or whatever, he's got the Nord stage four right here. You got an iPad with touch OSC? Yeah. You got Ableton running, you got your interface, you got your sustained pedal, you got your volume pedal expression, PE pedal, you got the loop tous. Yeah. Which helps you loop things. All of this, um, JI'S about to take it away to demonstrate what he uses, the sound effects that you use. I'm excited to hear those. 'cause I heard you got some like risers and other cool things in there for special effects and in a church like his, where it's. A lot of it's spontaneous. You do prepare, you do prep. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's a lot of flow, there's a lot of spontaneity. Having these tools in your toolkit is incredible, man. It's very helpful. An naji, take it away man. Let's go. Hi everybody. It's my rig as promise. We're gonna do some little tech breakdowns of all the stuff I'm using. I got my iPad here, got the Levy Nord, stage four here. My laptop, my MacBook Pro, my interface and everything's connected. I got some foot pedals and all this other stuff going on down here. We'll go into detail about what each product is doing and how I'm u utilizing it. I know many people in the worship keys world uses the Nord as a glorified mid controller. I'm doing both. Controller, but I'm also using some of the onboard sounds. So right now. This is the piano from the Nord, just straight piano, the Royal Grand 3D is what I like to use. Then on my B side, I have a felt, so that's, I love the versatility I have at, AT with the stage four. Compared to the stage three where I had the AB panel, this one has faders and it's easy for me to bring up a sound and bring them out, and that's phenomenal. Now with doing all the heavy lifting, a part of this entire rig is my MacBook Pro. Over here. I'm gonna pull up my specs so I don't give you wrong information. I have 64 gigabytes of ram, and I think I have around two terabytes of storage in it. M three max. It's a beefy computer. 'cause I knew I was gonna throw all of this at it, and even still to this day, some of it bogs down a little bit depending on what I'm doing. So I might be looking to upgrade at least my storage in it at some point. Um, but yeah, so MacBook Pro here, M three iPad is connected to it. This iPad had no sounds on it. I know people look at video and go like, well, you're pressing the iPad and it's triggering different sounds. It No sounds. I mean, you can touch OSC on my iPad. I have multiple different pages for all the different needs that I have, depending on what I need to do. This is a, my main page is where I mainly work off of. I can hook up to many keyboards as I want to with this setup. I usually, at one time, I'd had like four keyboards. This main one, a top board, small Novation 25 key, and my keytar. Now I've stripped it back to only using one or two at a time. Right now I'm using mainly one, but so I stay on my main page. So as I go through, I'm gonna demonstrate on what some of it does on the main page. So if I click piano, all my pianos, activate them all. That's to demonstrate. This piano is just an octave piano, so when I'm playing lines, it sounds big. It sounds immersive. Then I have an ep. So I turn that off, and then I have a soft keys one. All these sounds are a combination of using, uh, some native instrument stuff, some omnisphere stuff, keys scape, obviously. Uh, this is the una cord by native instruments and all of these sounds. Can be used with reverb delay, which is fun. Fun stuff. Under that is my pads, all my pad sounds. And then the top like right section are my synth sounds. So I'm gonna demonstrate my sun stuff too. One of my synth sounds. And then I got a big synth that I layer with it. The sense stuff. A lot of that for like shout, praise. High energy stuff is what I use that for. Then my pads right now have a string, two of my main go-to pads right now, so I know you can't see on camera, but on, lemme have a volume pedal that's attached to the of my strengths. We just. It is subtle, like you're an actual string player, and I learned that from some guys that use volume pedals in this way. Have some other pat sounds. I really like this. This is, uh, a stock sound and atmosphere. It literally is just like a wind sound. I layer that with. My pad strings and stuff sounds heavenly. I feel like I'm going up to heaven off that one little pad right there. Then I have some Arps. A to have like a guitar sound. It's also from atmosphere. If you do not have Omnisphere, you should like invest in, because the goat, you have to, technically, you do not have to spend $6,000 on a Nord. You don't have to. If you have keys anonymous here. You are set, killer combination, but I like the versatility that I have with using this app is called Touch OSC. Using that in tandem with Ableton, I'm able to control all my different sounds. Uh, I have different pages and stuff used for it. We do use click and stuff, so I'm able to tap out a click and. BPMs and all that stuff here on my iPad. Again, no sound is coming from my iPad. It's just a glorified mid controller that's hooked up to April and now demonstrate a cool function that I have in my template called Looper. So I'm gonna demonstrate that route. So I'm gonna tap out three. You're not gonna be able to hear the click. Only going into my ears 'cause I didn't want to annoy you guys with the clicks side. But, so I'm gonna show you and demonstrate this, uh, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3. So I. Looking and I. Yeah, now you can stop all those and go on. And so I do some of that live in case either I'm playing keys by myself or just me, a drummer and a bass player to make it sound a little bit fuller. Like I'll loop stuff live and I'll go through all that. To just add a little bit more to where we're going and add more energy to the song, if you will. So that's a fun thing. Now, this template is not mine personally. I got it from my, a good friend Warren Brown. You can go on his website and actually buy and access some of this stuff. You won't have everything that I have access to because I've tweaked and adjusted as I've gone on. But he's selling a template with Ableton. Go support my bro. Like this. It will change your life. I'm telling you. Touch USC Ableton, the combination of the two, it will drastically change your life. So now the one thing as an MD that I like always say to people that like I'm either training or talking to regarding playing in services. One of them is what I like to call underscoring a pastor. So like, if they're up preaching or like at the end of their message, they're doing an alter call moment. As a specifically as a pianist, as a keyboard player, my job is not to play everything I know. My job is to support them and I treat it almost like a movie score. So what they're saying, my playing compliment what they're saying. So I'm gonna demonstrate a little bit of that for you. Obviously we don't have a pastor here talking and doing our ultra call moment, but I'm gonna demonstrate kind of what I would do in those moments. I had. Pool band here, and you can build the, the rhythm behind what I'm playing. So let's say I had band. Six. Three. Four. Four. So obviously it, it would've feel a lot differently if I had a full band behind me. You know, supporting that moment. But that's kind of how I MD those moments. And even, I'm not saying a lot of words, one, because the band knows my cadence and they know where I will go. So a lot of that stuff, I don't have to call out in the moment. They can just feel in the moment. You have to be attentive to what's going on in the room. I want to make sure that my playing isn't a distraction to what the pastor might be speaking or praying over someone like You want to make sure you're supporting that moment well, and that the md, your job is to bring everybody together and bring them into alignment. So as you're playing and as you're moving forward in that moment, everybody going with you and they're not wondering, alright, what are you gonna do next? What's the progression that we're doing? That's why it's key for you to know your Nashville Number system, because it would've taken a lot for me to say. Alright, E flat, F sharp, major six miner or B flat miner. A flat over the F. Like that's a lot of words. If I can just say 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 4. That's another reason why. That's a tool. A tool. As an md, you have to know your natural nervous system. Open up endless amount of opport. You bring your band along and. Some theory for you. 'cause I just did something that like drew my, I do it all the time. You can ask any of my band members. I do this literally all the time. The key. I was just in, I was just in C, but then I switched over to to e, e Major. And the reason why that worked is because C Sharp in particular is the, the relative major of it is E, because C Sharp is the six in E. So if I, this is major. So, yeah, that's C sharp, but the, if I'm looking at it from the perspective of all keys, correlate and gel together, this is also the sixth of Eve major, minor C on me. So what I did was I went from C Major, then I introduced. That's E right there. A minor, and I'm playing a, A over that C sharp. That's the four of E. B Major four, flat seven, and C sharp to the one which you see. So demonstrate One more time. So c. A, like I, this is something I do all the time. I went from E, so A and E says 4, 5, 4 or six, and she sharp. Do it again. So I could go to, I'm in E, all I can do practice Sharp. You always want to have. Always think of every key correlates together because I can change keys like four times during that one movement, everything. So everything goes together. That same movement, that same flat six, flat seven, one movement. That's all I. Be flat, same thing, and be flat. Be flat or back to C. So all of it goes together, right? All of it blends together. A, I got it, river. I got it. Sweet. I also got like a 8 0 8 drop, but I use those in in different times. Another tip about touch, OSCI technically do not have to ever touch my computer if I don't want to. Everything I need is at my fingertips right here. So every sound I want, every perimeter I wanna control. I don't technically have to ever touch my computer, which is what I want, like I wanna be able to focus on. I already have a lot going on with being the MD and trying to make sure the band is good. I wanna focus on. That aspect more so than have to fiddle with my computer and make sure this sound is triggered. Tuck with C gives me a clear blanket solution for that. Now again, tuck with C is intimidating because when you get out the box there's no, there's nothing there. This template is what's created so you can purchase a lot of templates from a lot of different people. Again, shout out to my boy Warren. He makes this so you could essentially have the same similar setup that I do if you go to his website and purchase it yourself. This is pretty much all included and he might have a little bit more other features that I don't have because of my use cases for it. I made it user friendly to what I needed it to do, and you can adjust it to how you need to do the compunction YouTube videos and stuff out there. That is blame. Touch your see in detail. I encourage you to check those out. Even for myself, I break down a template on my Patreon of my keys template for touch OSC and how it's all being configured with Ableton and all that stuff. I break that down, all my Patreons to go check that out. Yeah. All right, so down on my feet you'll see many different pedals. I have a volume pedal here. Have a sustainable here, and then in the middle of my loop numbness pedal. I'm not using this to trigger tracks at all, but I know that's what it was intended for. I'm using this for also the live looping effect. The looper I showed you on my iPad is different from the one down here on my iPad. It's records an eight bars, so it starts and then it loops eight bars of it. Here I can loop as many bars as I want. At the click of a button, so let's say I want to go stop it. It's a reset button up there and it clears everything and I can do it again. So that's just a more, a, a quicker way for me to loop certain things on the fly. 'cause some, like we were saying in our, our episode last week, we're very spontaneous and songs come out the wazoo around here. Like the one time we did 30 songs in, uh, 30 to 45 minute set. And I wanted to be able to have the flexibility, name the game for me. Flexibility. I want to have the flexibility to loop things live and to do it quickly without having to go to my Looper page, wait for the eight bar count, because sometimes what I may play may be shorter than eight bars or even longer than eight bars. So this gave me the flexibility of looping it live and having it be whatever I want it to. So let me demonstrate that a little further. Listen, this is a. It's not a secret, but it's a secret. So if you are, you better pay close attention to how this is happening. The lu plugged into my computer. If I go over to my laptop on my return channels, that's where the sounds are going out. I have a looper. This is just all stock stuff in Ableton. I have a looper on here, and then I map the buttons to the record, the stop the play, and the clear. Of that looper. So watch, add. I'm gonna loop something really quick and you're gonna see it trigger on Ableton. So if I go, lemme pick a key. Obviously that you have to have a better timing than what I just did. Um, but it allows me to do it live and quick and fast. So lemme try it one more time. Four, one. So yeah, so that's simply how that is done. It's routed to this looper that's set to my outputs. I have that for my pianos, my pads and my A stuff all have that same looper functionality to it. So that's how I'm using my Loop Tous. I'm not using it to trigger tracks. I'm not using it for any of the other stuff that you may have seen. This is just a glorified MIDI controller, which it basically is. But I'm using it for that instance. So like the boss guitar pedal looper that you may see. That's how I'm kind of y This is to resemble that aspect of it. Yeah. Like I, people think, yeah, people think that I am like literally just DJing. There are different moments and I do like all those rises and stuff that you just heard. I use all those things live. The impact the river flows out the suite, the 8 0 8 drop. I use all those in different scenarios in a church service to enhance, not to take away, not to be showy, but only to enhance what's going on in the moment. So like if I'm in like worship stuff. It's like usually during the worship stuff I have like big strings or my player has strings on and we're. Yeah. That's how I view every time I'm playing an altar Carl moment. I'm viewing it as you're watching a movie. When you're watching a movie, you don't, you notice the music, but you don't notice the music because it, it pulls you into the scene. So I'm kind of my job as MD and as a keyboard player and underscoring a moment. I'm like, what am I playing? Attracting attention to me or pulling them in focus to what's being said. That's always my mindset. When I'm scoring a moment or even like they're sharing announcements, it could be like, our kids are having a kids camp next week. My, my what I'm playing in that moment matters. 'cause I could easily play like whatever I want. Like all that is distract. There are times and places for that, but like I need to make sure my playing assembled what's being said and like see like cutting out all the other distractions. 'cause many people come into church, distracted with life, and we all get it. But music is so powerful in a way where it can be used to either be a helpful tool or a not helpful tool. You want to be helpful in those moments. So anything that you can do that can limit the distraction, that can get people's focus on what truly matters in this moment, and that is always Jesus Christ, do it. That's my mindset every time I touch a keyboard. And how, how is my playing gonna compliment what's going on in the service and allow people to encounter Jesus in a deeper way. So I hope this segment of my Ableton rig and sound design and just the mind of an empty helps you today. It took me a long time to get to this point. It took me a lot of practicing and honing in on my craft first before any of the technology we introduced. It would just mean a piano, practicing and learning sheet music and learning all the different things. That allowed me, and when I got to a certain level and caliber of kind of mastering it, and I'm still mastering it. I'm not the greatest in the world, but it allowed me to introduce all these things and then not be overwhelming. If you are just starting out as an md, as a piano player, I'm not suggesting that you go out and you buy all this stuff and try to do what I'm doing because you'll be overwhelmed quickly and then you'll be distracted and then you can't do. What you're ultimately there to do, and that's play unto the Lord and help people get into the presence of God. So it takes time, it takes learning, it takes dedication. You could even ask my wife. She, uh, there's times I'm spending hours and hours and hours on end, then at night in the bed with my computer trying to figure out this one technique and design. But that comes out of a place of just wanting to know better and do better. And make what I do more efficient and more helpful for me. So it's, you're gonna take time. I'm not saying that you should be staying up till 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM like I do, but take the time.