How to Build Worship Tracks for Church in Logic Pro X with Marcus Perry

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Join  Marcus Perry from Mount Zion Church in Nashville, Tennessee as he takes us behind the scenes of worship music production, breaking down how he builds stems and creates tracks for “Fire” by CeCe Winans. He walks through his full process in Logic Pro X, shares his go-to plugins and gear, and gives practical tips for arranging tracks that shine in live church settings.

Marcus Perry

Transcript

Speaker: 0:08

Guys, welcome back to the Worship Keys podcast, Marcus Perry, part two. Marcus, welcome back to the podcast man. Glad to be here. It's gonna be a good time. Been hanging out in his studio, beautiful studio here in Nashville, Tennessee, and he is on staff at Mount Zion Church in Nashville. Plays a lot with the choir room. Shout out to Dwan Hill and the choir room, sir. Today we're getting into the nitty gritty of music production, building stems, , making tracks. And you do this pretty much week in and week out at your church, right? Yes, sir. Mm-hmm. And today, what song are we, what song are we doing today, man? Fire by Cece Wains. Awesome. And I say we I'm not doing anything. You're doing everything. What? Some Are we doing? We're all doing it with you. We're gonna see Yes. We do it together. We're gonna, we're all your cheerleaders. So yes. If you're cheering on Marcus and you love him, just let us know in the comments. I need your cheers. Yeah. Cheer. If you're listening on podcasts, maybe you're on a drive, a run, that's great. Stick around as well. Mm-hmm. But you might wanna switch over to YouTube because you're gonna see a lot of good things on screen. You're gonna see logic, you're gonna see what vsts he's using. Mm-hmm. You're gonna see some of these wonderful corg and rolling and other, you know, physical racks that you have. Mm-hmm. Um, the mid controllers, the Yamaha, CP 88, I know many of you guys ask about gear all the time, so you're definitely gonna see it in this episode. But fired by CeCe Winans. Groovy song arranged, produced by Dewan Hill, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That whole album I just learned last week. You said that the whole album was produced by Dewan Hill. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Pretty amazing. Crazy, love Dewan Hill. Love the choir room. Cece Winans, obviously she's been, she's amazing. She's been a staple for many years. Decades. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you've been on tour with her? Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's cool, man. Yeah. Did a few, uh, spot dates with her a few years ago. That's awesome. Well, without further ado, I don't want to talk too much here on the intro. Mm-hmm. Are you ready? I'm ready now. Quick disclaimer. Okay. I can't play the song like the actual song itself because we wanna make sure he doesn't get a copyright. Ah, that's right. Thank you, bro. But we're gonna, you know, we're gonna stay offline. That's good. That's good. If y'all feel free to, if you don't know the song, listen to the song on Spotify Apple. Yes. Listen to it for a reference. We did an episode again that was kind of similar to this and we couldn't play a song, and people were like, I wish I knew what song sounded like. Well, yeah. I guess just go listen to the song, go listen to it, and then come back here and see how he, uh, makes some stems for it. Yeah. So if you wanna make your own stems, original stems tracks for your church, of course there's resources, multitracks.com. Mm-hmm. They sell, uh, multitracks. You have loop community.com. Yep. Those are the big two ones, but there's other places. Too many of them, you know. Anyway, hope y'all enjoy this. Let us know in the comments if you do. And again, Marcus, thank you so much, man. So let's dive in. So my process of how I build stems, well, first of all a little bit about me, or no, we heard it in the introduction, but I am the music director at Mount Zion Baptist Church. And typically how I kind of approach building stems, it kind of depends on the day and on the situation. Today we have a resource called multitracks.com and loop community.com, where you can get a ton of tracks, a ton of songs and things like that. But there are some instances where I want to maybe, you know, build from scratch or arrange from scratch or come up with a different arrangement. So today we're gonna kind of do a two-pronged approach. So we're gonna keep the original arrangement, but also kind of throw some fire into the fire. That was a joke, but it wasn't, it was corny. So the song we're doing is Fire by Cece Winans. First off, what I typically do is I will of course drag the song into logic. So, lemme see. Fire. There we go. Now there are a few different ways you can get the tempo. You can use, uh, BPM counter, which is pretty, pretty accurate, but sometimes I want to kind of dig a little bit deeper to make sure that it's all the way there. So another option that I've been telling a lot of people about is, smart Tempo. So, smart Tempo is down here where actually it'll analyze your tempo. You see how it, 1 34, there we go. Then to apply that to the Project Tempo, you just go here to edit, apply Region Tempo to Projecto, make sure both of these are checked. Put your metro on, man. So, for copyright reasons, I can't play the full song. I can't play this song there. But what I will tell you, another great resource that I also use is called Stem Splitter. You can create your own stems from this. So what I'll do a lot of times in our band rehearsals, I will, put the song on the doll, line it up, make sure everything is there, and then use stem Splitter to make sure I can put vocals, because I want to be able, we need to be able to hear the song as a band is rehearsing. So I'll typically do that. So I'm just telling you about this process, which of course today I'm not gonna play the stems for copyright reasons. But. You know the next best thing, I'm gonna create the sims from scratch. So let's go, to open up the song, there is a anado that you hear. Lemme pull this up. And this is coming from my Yamaha Motif X six. And the sound is called pad and sign so it does that for a few times now. Sound by itself. It sounds great, but I actually want to add to that. So one of my favorite plugins to use when it comes to doing just more pop driven songs is Serum by Expert. There we go, click now. So let's actually just drag this down. You see how right then and there, it just gave it a little bit more bite and a little bit more push to it. So yeah, and let's actually add one more to that. So let's add, from the emulator, from the Arturia V collection, what song I want do with the Alpha Machine. So let's add that to there. Okay, cool. When it gets to the verse, when she comes fire, fire, when she does that, it kind of changes. So I think it does. I, there we go. And let's add some percussion to this. So I have two different ways of how I build loop, how I, uh, approach building loops, drum loops. I'll either build a drum loop myself, or I have a good buddy named Jeff Pegas, who has a company called loop shack.com, where he has these fire, sorry for the pun, fire drum loops. Kill it all. Can you say killing and gospel music? I don't think you can. 1, 2, 3. And the BG Bs. Come in with it now in the song. So let's add some keys and start building this song. So one of my favorite, keys plugins is, of course, keys Skate by Spectrosonics. So let's get into this. So if you see here, I have a basic core chart to let me know kind of where the form is. Now today, you may hear me kind of veer off from the core chart, um, 'cause I want kind of put myself into it. But I just have this number chart. It's called One Chart. It's an amazing core chart. You can either do number charts, you can do core charts, all kind of things with this. So, , let's stop it. Just that quick disclaimer. Now, a lot of times when I'm arranging different ideas will come to me and I'll try to figure out, all right, so how can I fit this in there? But the main thing when it comes to arranging, always make sure that you don't get in the way of the melody. Don't get in the way of the vocals. That is the prominent thing that's the most important. So make sure that with your arrangement, with your re harms, make sure that it still fits within the context of the song and doesn't clash with the vocals. Now during this section, when you heard me do. The, vocalist, she's just talking during that point. So, it doesn't get in the way and it's really just keys. So since we got those two sections, let's actually start building stems. This aona right here that goes throughout the entire song. So actually I'm just gonna copy that over. And actually I think with that actually the base note changes with that. So let's open this up. Let's do this here. Go to that four. Oh, and when I get working, y'all, I'm sorry I'm very unorganized. Sometimes I just have to get the idea out. So, if you see me kind of jump from one section to the next, it's just my wheels are turning the entire time. So, hopefully this is helping you. Now let's see how we can make that sweet. Now I have a few different sound modules. One is the Cork Triton, which is a old nineties, um, synth module, and one of my favorite sounds on here. Bill sound amazing. So let's add a few swells. So I have a folder that I typically have a few sweeps and swells. That's too big. Let's see here. That work. Ah, yep. Then let's add a big boom. Let's add cinematic Big. Boom. There we go. Let's, it would help if I was recording, you can do shift R. Press shift R real quick. You just taught me something. Come on man. Dude. Come on Carson. Yeah. Come on. You just taught me buddy. You just taught me. And then of course the same Asana is going the entire time. Move that over there. And then for this, I think it's actually too low for me 'cause it's, when I'm thinking about bass, I'm thinking about guitar. I'm thinking about just the room. This right here, honestly, I feel like it might get swallowed up. So let's see if I can maybe transpose. Some of these up and Octa transpose material. See how that sounds with everything? Then let's actually here flip the groove. Keep, let's do this. Um, it left. Uh, let's do that. Yeah. Yep. Got that line in there. Add the bills. I just, I'm a bell fanatic. I just feel like it just takes things, another level I'm on once said I had a bell fetish. It might be true. All right, let me label this. And then we are into the course. So as you see right now, what I'm kind of doing is building the arrangement with just a piano. Um, 'cause that's, you know, I'm a piano player. That's where, you know, I kind of start building everything and that's the framework. And then I'll just start adding different senses and things like that. I just came up, when I listen to this song, I feel, you know, I'm a very big fan of the eighties and it has that kind of eighties groove. And I'm a huge fan of Prince Michael Jackson, as y'all can see, Michael Jackson. When I feel, when I got to the chorus, I'm like, man, I feel like we can throw some type of prince groove. Like, um, one of my favorite songs by Prince, I Wanna Be a Lover. So it kind of has that feel in it. So, um, I was like, Hey, what does it sound if I add that kind of feel to it? So what song do I want to build on that? Let's use, since I said Prince, one of his sense that he used a lot was the BXA. So let's use the OP X eight and let's use the 1999 keys. Yeah. Yes, sir. The patch I want to use for this is called Moving brassy. So when it comes to me building, um, polys sense and Polys stacks, uh, one of my things is instead of just grabbing random sounds that sound alike, which you can do, I like to find sounds that have a certain characteristic that the other one doesn't. As you see, you listen to this one. It's a, it's like very, very bright, very in your face. It's important that I find another sound that's either a little less tame, uh, well a little bit more tame rather, so that it's, it doesn't like get in the way because I have that asado that, that going on. You got vocals, you got the guitar, you got bass, you got a lot going on. So you wanna make sure that with your stems, with your sense that they don't get in the way, but they're just really kind of a, a help, a support, you know, to kind of help pad everything and glue everything that's going on together. So I like that. But, um, the release can come down, then that delay can go away. And then let's actually. Pull the filter there, just a filter and take some of the whereabouts. Let's see how it sounds. So that second cent kind of came at the bottom, just kind of really filled the scent out. So you got the keys going on the spear. Just a pro tip for you is very helpful and saves time If you star and make a list of all the sounds that you use, kind of your favorites. 'cause you'll go down a rabbit hole trying to find sounds. So I see, there we go. Pull that back. That delay ain't right. Get all in the way. Let's try that. Hey, time. Yeah. Start that lead down. Pulling into, and actually let's put a Yes sir. Yes sir. Drums in there that, yeah. There we go. These sounds that you're hearing are all from splice. Some of these transitions. Mm-hmm. Uh, what's also important when arranging, you wanna make sure your voicings are, uh, just compliment each other. Uh, so I'm doing, when I was recording, I did this, I think I'm going to. Invert it down a little bit lower. And actually I liked how I voiced it the last time. Yeah. When it comes to, um. Voicing and tracking sense. I think what really works best is like more open voicing rather than fuller. As a keyboard player, of course we have 10 fingers and we can muddy stuff up, but it's very important to, when it comes to like arranging and things like that. Um, just kind of leaving the voices a little bit open so that you have a little bit more freedom, when you're playing live. So things are not as cluttered because if you have these cluttered senses and things like that, and then you add your keys on top of it, it can get just really, really muddy. So, yep. There we go. So actually, let's, uh, just layer all of these together. That's my sad. I'll keep that E in there. Let's do that. See how that sounds? Yep. I like that better. Played Deon. Deon Hill was MD on this, and he's killing. And then we go back to the groove. Yep. There we go. This is a breakdown on, uh, that I heard Transformation Church do at one point, and when it comes to arranging tracks for church, I mean, yeah, you can arrange it all, but there's, so one of the blessings is there's so many churches, so many creatives out there that. At one point, someone has come up with some type of arrangement that you can not steal, but, you know, make it your own, use it within your arrangement is very important and it just saves you time. Um, there's a lot of, lot of great musicians out there. Um, so like I said, I heard this arrangement, um, for this breakdown and I was like, I gotta use that within this arrangement. Yes, sir. And once again, bells. Put this lease in. Yeah. Cool. So let me kind of add some transitions and effects into this 'cause really helping get into the, making sure that it's coming together and moving. So when it comes to doing certain stems. I like to some, I like to quantize so that it's straight. Others, I kind of like to have the free feeling. So when it comes to this synth right here, this aade, I wanna make sure that that's quantized. All right. Left one out. Once again, I wanna make sure, uh, one of my old media tech teachers was very hard on me when it came to frequencies and, um, making sure that, you know, if I'm. Playing something in a certain frequency that if I'm arranging like the scents or things, different things like that, that everything isn't playing the same, so it's not muddy. So that's already better. That's already better than me. So let's take this out already. Better. Yep. So, yeah, I just cleaned it up. I did it. Somebody hit a six, I guess you. See, I'm using the same effect. I mean, same transition, and actually I'll use another symbol as well. Yeah, that'll work like a sweep. Once again, do that. Dropped out. Yeah, I think this could definitely use some, uh, DX seven Love. Let's try this. Digital keys. The MK 80. There we go. So I like to, um, layer different keys like piano keys. Now live, of course, when I'm sending the stems and we play this live, I'm definitely gonna mute this piano, mute that. But I'll also sometimes put like a, a DX type of sound, even though this is a MK Eddie. But I like to put something just to have a different pad under it. Yeah, here's, uh, see a couple of the keys. Yeah, that's tearing me up that line with it. Yep. All right. Let's cut the loop there since that's a special line. We go back there, so stretch those out. So guys, uh, actually I should have done this at the beginning. Let me organize some of this stuff because sometimes I get so far into it that I'll have like 80 different tracks of things and I'm like, what is going on? See if I can make one of these in spit. Nah, not that. Maybe that ain't right. Let's see if I can gimme another type of brass. Syn. Omnisphere. Oh, Omnisphere. Yes, sir. Let's see here. Let's take some of the release now. There we, here we go. Here. A hit there. There. So let's actually throw a orchestra stab in there. I think I want to use the 30 80. Uh, alright, let's find. No, no. I'm gonna use the Integra. Now. These are synth modules are great, but I wish they all had editors that you can basically use it as a soft set so you're not having to go through menu diving. 'cause those things take forever. There we go. Let's try that. How was it? So you see, I just moved. I like. Whenever we start a new section, I always, like I said earlier, wanna make sure there's a hard one, even if we're hitting the four or something like that, that, that you feel that, that we're into a new section. So you see I drag the um, or shit and the, uh, big boom that I've been using the entire song. I like it. Cool. So let's, uh, there's a few more things I wanna do in the add, but I actually want to try a different intro with this. At church, one of the things I always like to think about is what's going on in the service. Um, like, just context, what's going on? Is there. Do I need to give our worship leader a little bit more time to get into the song? Um, just different creative things, well, different logistical things. Uh, so for me, a lot of times I may try to, not every song, but try to arrange something so that, you know, we can get into the song clean, that it's big, that it just feels like if we're coming from, um, maybe coming from offering or we're coming from, you know, an announcements or something like that, what can I do to help set up the song so it feels like, alright, we're into the song. So, um, that's one train of thought for me. And then also another arranging thing that I like to do when I'm getting, when I've given songs, like, let's say like for our church, uh, we, um, like to plan our songs a month in advance. So I've been sitting with this song for a while. Let me kind of think of a intro or a transition or something like that. So I may go down, you know, to a piano and say, all right. What's a good way to do this? So I may just play something and then once I record it, my voice memo, drop it into the doll. So you wanna see me kind of listen to that real quick? All right, here's an intro idea for fire. So, uh, two, three. All right, so I remember that. 1, 2, 3, 4. All right, so that's how we going each other, the song. All right. Where are we at? That'll work. I almost say if I was killing me, it, it is me. Here we go. Let's try that way. Yep. This is, that's a special, let's, uh, gimme a little sweep into that. Nah, keep it out. Nope. This took movie actually, this is what I'll do. See this one? Yep. Let's drop that in. Another trick that I use is I will bounce this down and reverse it, so you have this rise and you have this fall. Put it there. I do intro. 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. Verse two, three verse, verse, verse. Alright, take that down verse two. Verse verse two, three. Now I'm doing this because one, it helps the band, but it also, and I'm not gonna go through all of of the sections, but one of the things I like to do is doing this because, uh, our worship leader, our, uh, worship pastor, he, uh, uses ears. So he hears what's going on in the track too. So that helps him know what's going on with each section. Uh, so let's listen down. I'm not gonna go through all the different cues, but you all get the idea. So let's listen down, say what we got, anything I need else to add, and then yeah, we'll be done. There is one thing, but I'm gonna do it in in real time base. We gotta have base. So this is a custom patch that I've made, um, layering a few cents together. It's too low. Yeah. Showing good. Yeah. Let's go to the first, I mean, course. Yes, sir. Yeah, I'll play that with him. Yeah, we'll do that. What, uh, let's quantize that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Like that. I. Yes, sir. Up. Where are we at, right? Yeah. Here we go. And on this one, let's add. There's a sound on the Triton that I think might work that has like this swell into it. It's called Digital Poly six. Yeah, I think that's it. Yep. There we go. So it's actually Open Triton. There we go. Yeah, like that. What'll happen, it's the, it's playing the bell patch on top of that. So actually, let's record. It's bill to audio it. Audio. So what I'm doing is recording this audio since it's midi coming from the, uh, actual rat. Gotta make sure that I convert it to audio. All right, so now I could use a poly six and just mute that. Poly six. We are getting somewhere. Yeah, that Then we enter, I need the Holy Ghost digital. Probably six. Let's cover that to audio. And actually I think there it goes to the top of this. Mm-hmm. There's this one. Just copy that over. Here we go. This close here. Yep. There we go. I'll let that voice. Yeah, so I'm basically just kind of shortening the bridge, uh, shortening the vamp rather. Uh, it's about seven minutes long, but, uh, for this context purposes, I don't want to hold y'all too long. Let's record based on that, this loop. So this is, uh, I love this keyboard. It's a CP 80. Um, the pianos are incredible, but um, the scents aren't all that great, but they have a few that are actually really cool. So this should be this. I love that. That's one. Alright, let's record that. Add all of this. All let's go. And that phasing that you're hearing is because I actually have this in record mode, so you're hearing the sound twice, but once it record Yep. Now let's see through here. Yeah, I, I'm add that. Let's add this Poly six, a little bit louder, club down, but I will play that line. So I will play that there. I see what it is. It's sustained. Sorry. User error. There we go. Got that longer. Yeah. One. Of course of Arturia and maybe some verb, oh, that don't sound sweet. Voicings matter. So a lot of times, I mean, you saw that I did a lot of copy and pasting, but sometimes with some of these scents you may have to kind of replay, uh, some of it just so the voicings aren't like weird. 'cause see that didn't work. So taking it up some. Hey, when you're doing stems, you gotta produce yourself. So if you rushing, if all of that, hey, get yourself right. Still feel like there's something more that's more a little airy and it's bigger. I like the sound, but I think there's something bigger than that. Let's go to poly. Yep. There it is. I'm gonna sound like a octopi. Yep. That's what right. Yeah. But yeah, that definitely was what I was hearing. So let's start gluing this together. Let's add the, this right here. A, yeah, let's add this or. I add to sleep, yes, that that mother's kind of washed up. No lead said, you know what? Just so y'all think I'm biased on Omnis Spear, let's find a diva. You. He diva. This is another one of my favorite saints. Is, is so cool. Mm. That's one of my favorite ones to use on ballots. Nah, that don't really cut through as much. Uh, let's try the, actually let's try the motif Excess six. Yeah, that go. That's it. That's the one. Appreciate y'all could hear that, but. Don't fear because we're going to make sure I can record this audio. Let's see here. Where did I, so I think I got everything I need on. No, no, no, no, no. One more. One more. Let's turn this model off. Here we go. Hi. Too early. Okay. So let's do some cleanup and then let's take it from the top. I think we should be good. So if you, so if you see me naming it generic names, a lot of times when I'm working with engineers, they don't care if it's called, um, OID or Digital Poly six, they just want to know what the tone name is. So a lot of times I'll give it like a generic polys sense so they know what, what, um, you know, just kinda what you know, what they're listening for. Now, some people have different preferences. Mine is just to call it polys sim, call it roads, call it piano, but just make sure everything is uh, named. 'cause the last thing an engineering wants to see is. Instrument one, instrument two, that would drive them above the wall. So, and then also for organization, it just helps you. So you're gonna see me do a little bit of cleanup that I should have done in the beginning, but when my juices get moving, I just have to get the idea out. So, so that is a hit. All right. All right. So make sure I got these bells recorded. So this is midi. All right. Listen, that sustain. I just feel like it's still, it can be a little bit tighter. So I use, uh, transit Master to, let's see. What, just, why isn't it playing? That was very odd. It's kind of messy to me just putting everything in folders just so when I put it up my church, everything is in one. So we got the art stack right here so I can get all of my. Hits together. Add the base to that. Yep. Do the higher out there. Right there. Put you right there. Uh, yep. What should we listen from the top? Let's go. Uh, yeah. Well, there we go. So, um. Just, you know, one of, one of my things I have, I'm a perfectionist, so every time I listen to something, I hear something else. Like I hear, I maybe should have added some pads or some different things. So one, you know, encouragement, always one of my, uh, biggest pet peeves is working at the last minute. So if you know that you have some stems to build, don't do it the day of. Don't do it the day before, do it. At least I would recommend a week before, so you can live with it. If you want to add some different things, like even sitting with this, probably after this I'll add some more pads, some more transitions and things like that. But I wanted to give you all kind of what my workflow is. Everybody has a different workflow, but um, this is kind of how I do, how I build tracks. Um, and hopefully you got something from it. And, um, yeah, thanks for tuning in. Tell us about your core chart software there. What's that thing called? What do you. So this is called One Chart. So basically how I use it is, um, you're able to, it's based off the natural number system. So you're able to basically chart the entire song out. Like let's say, you know, like with this, with fire, um, I have, you know, the first chord in the verse is four or five. What you can do, um, is actually give each chord a beat. So you see it says four, I know, uh, uh, two, lemme get a piano sound. Two. So plays two beats, put two circles, one, two, and it pushes on five. So you're able to literally. B as an even, you can honestly put, you know, rhythmic figures and things like that, but that's going to kind of too deep. So in a nutshell, it's a national number chart system where you can chart the entire song out. Um, and it's a good tool to have. Have when learning music. Awesome. Yeah. When you're done making tracks, uh, what do you do to actually play them and get them to be playable on stage? So what I do is, um, I'll bounce these as, so at our church, I still run logic when it comes to like big fouls. I can put everything into Ableton. Um, but what I'll do is I'll convert all of my, um, software instrument tracks and all of my midi tracks, and I'll turn that into audio because our system at our church doesn't have omnisphere and things like that. I make sure that, you know, it has the bare minimum. So I'll turn all of my software instruments and midi tracks to audio, um, consolidate everything. Even when you see all of these different tracks, I'll even consolidate it even more. I have one that says, you know, keys. So I