Worship Keys Rig Rundown with Caleb King

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Join Carson Bruce and Caleb King on the Worship Keys YouTube channel as they provide an in-depth look into setting up an efficient and streamlined worship keys rig. Filmed at the Opryland Convention Center in Nashville, Caleb gives a detailed gear rundown, explaining the hardware and software configurations he uses for live performances. Learn how he utilizes a fly rack for easy plug-and-play setup, integrates MIDI with Ableton, and optimizes his Nord Stage 3. Ideal for worship keys players looking to enhance their setup and performance efficiency.

Caleb King

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. Hey, what's up guys? Uh, my name's Caleb King. I'm here with, Carson and the Worship keys, doing a little kind of a rig showcase, I guess, if you will. I'm here at the Opryland Convention Center in Nashville. We're playing at the Tennessee Ag Youth Convention this week, so looking forward to that. It's gonna be a great time. Expecting like 2000. Kids or whatever. So, uh, it's gonna be a fun time. We're about to jump into soundcheck and rehearsal. Uh, but Carson's here thought I'd give a little gear rundown, show kind of some of the tricks I'm using, some of the, uh, workflows that I've got going on. Um, and yeah, so we'll just jump into it. So I'll start with some hardware here. Uh, I've been putting together this little fly rack for the past year and it is a game changer. I've basically got it now to where it's plug and play anywhere I go. They're all basically running XLR outs. And then I bring a couple cables to, you know, for my inputs and stuff, but it's literally just this power con that powers the whole thing. Um, and then I've got over here, I've got my, I'm running 10 outs, six tracks, two keys, and then I've got this atmosphere. Uh, pedal. That's running our, our pad for that. Uh, so that's my 10 outs. Um, and then I've got all these, so basically the, the atmosphere is going in right here. Um, and that is hooked up internally to, I've got a UA volt on this other side. We'll get to that later. And then this is just a little midi out five pin. This is going from on the inside, it comes from the volt. It goes out to the atmosphere. And that's, again, that's another trick that's this little, uh, uh, headphone jack mid cable, which I never knew existed till last year. But yeah, we'll get into that in a second. But, uh, yeah, so that's basically it. It is just 10 out, uh, power. You travel with your own, uh, XLRs that come out? No, I do not. Uh, the only thing that's mine here is these inputs, this power, this midi and this USB. Okay, this USB is going from the Nord to this, and so, and then that hooks up to the computer. So, um, I am not running the Nord sounds, so y'all be nice. Um, I've got really good sounds that I prefer to use, so, and I can take it anywhere and not worry about inconsistency. So it's all about being consistent. That's, that is excellence. So, um, yeah, so I'm running the USB out of this into the computer, running all my patches and yeah, so that's kind of it for the back. Um, on the front if you wanted to see, um. I'm running all my outs through this iConnect play Audio 12. It is discontinued, uh, but it fit this the best. And then I've got this volt four. Um, this is how I get my inputs. So I use this for the atmosphere and on the off chance, if I ever needed to run outs from the Nord, I could go into that as well. And it's all hooked up internally to this, uh, panel that I have on the back. Um, yeah, and then just a little power conditioner, running power to the pad and yeah, that's basically it. And so literally I just plug up my outs power, all my inputs and all that. And then it's all routed within Ableton and it's ready to go basically wherever, wherever I go and play. And so it's made life real easy, made it great, um, makes set up time, uh, really short. And so that, that's always nice to have when you go somewhere. Um, yeah. So I'm running, uh, the gentleman as my main, key sound. Um, I do, whenever I come he, or whenever I go to like events. I will kind of run things a little different. So typically I have a mini controller right here that I'll use for pads, or I'm sorry for tracks firing, like in and out of tracks. Maybe some key sounds, some filters that I run on everything. Uh, but when I'm here, I don't have all the gear that I'm used to. I'll set it all up on the nord So, um, I've got this as my main piano sound that's on and off, and it's over here on Ableton. It's triggering, uh, on my chain selector. So my main sound right here is the gentleman. It's pretty complex down here, but um, yeah, clicking that button on the nod turns on my main sound. So red is on and off, just like if, as if it were running through here. That's my main sound and that's it off. This is a kind of brighter piano that I like to turn on for bigger sections. Um, and then I've got this running as my, if I ever want to play some pads. Um, that's on and off, obviously. Um, over here I use this button since it's real quick to access with my left hand. That's my octave button. So that's another trick that I use for kind of bigger sections. Uh, you know, I might be playing some big octaves. Flip that on. Now I'm playing four octaves at once, right? It's just a nice little trick I like to do. Um, I've got a filter on the tracks that whenever I bring this down I can fade tracks out. And then I can fade it back in if I ever need, and I use that a lot with, um, this is touch OSC. This is the first version, the MK one. Um, and this is just for flow within tracks if I ever feel like it's needed. Um, and yeah, I've got basically our set all in here can go between all the songs that we have planned. I've got a section for clicks if I ever need that for flow. We do a lot of flow. Um. Yeah. And so, and the cool thing about this, I did a good by yesterday. Tonight. Yeah. That's the first time we've done it with Garrett and Kate, so I'm interested to see how that goes. Um, the cool thing about this is I've also got, part of my big workflow is streamlining everything. So this my pad pedal, um, and to my purist. My transpose is all controlled through Ableton clips, so I'm not ever adjusting anything to like, I'm not coming over here and saying, okay, I need to change my transpose, move this knob. It's whenever I click start on a song, I've got clips in here in Ableton. If I open up this folder, you can see all my different channels. So I've got an Atmos channel, so this is a. A certain key and a certain patch. If I come over here, I've got my transpose, I want it in negative one. It automatically sets transpose for piano and pads. Um, and then over here I've got OSC. This sets it to page one. Um, and that's all this over here, so everything's streamlined. So it's really just controlling this. Uh, controlling where we're at in the tracks, and then my p piano sounds. Um, and then everything is just, it just all kind of builds on itself, and it's real streamlined. It's real easy. I don't want to think about, uh, more than I don't need to think about. Right. And so, um. That, that obviously has taken a lot of time, a lot of, uh, figuring out buying right. You know, buying the right equipment, making sure it's all good. Um, and then also just a lot of time in Ableton just kind of digging into the MIDI capabilities with, you know, sending midi cc versus MIDI notes and all that. And so, um, if you want, I can kind of dig into, uh, triggering the, the pedal. This Atmos channel. So if I come over here in Ableton to our kind of our finder section, I've got this folder here called Mid Clips. And basically what this is, is I have another project called Mid Clips that I set up that has all these clips, uh, that I built in Ableton that trigger the Atmos. So if I come in here to bank one. Uh, it's not fully set up. Obviously, you can set up, I think there's probably 10 banks on the atmosphere. Uh, it usually comes with two banks fully loaded, and then the rest is four. If you wanna load your own sounds, you can do that. Um, but I've only got it set up for bank one. That's really all that I use. Um. But you can come in here to bank one. You can say, okay, I really like this, uh, exosphere patch, so I'm gonna open that up. Now I have all the keys, uh, that I would need to choose from, or my personal favorite is this troposphere. Um, and so I typically use these patches and really all it is, is you would just grab it. You can click command C, copy paste, come over here to your Atmos channel. Set that up, put right there, and then click paste and then there it is. Um, and so then the routing with that is you would come down here, you would say MIDI two. So you're saying where do you want this, uh, channel. To communicate too. So the way I have it, uh, uh, routed within my fly rack is I have a five pin going out of my volt four, which is just an audio interface rack, but it has a five pin port, so it's gone five pin out of that into this rack on the inside of it. And then I have this cable, which is a five pin to, I think it's, was it one eighth or three eighths? Whatever the headphone jack. Is, uh, and that's midi in. And so you're going out of the vault into the atmosphere. And so if you want, so look, I'll put this up, put this on Exosphere. If you watch, whenever I click start on goodbye yesterday, it automatically takes it to the right patch and the right key. And so it's really easy if we were to change keys, say, Hey, I actually need it in a, not a flat. Okay, let me come over here. I had the Mezo patch, so I'm gonna now copy a, I'm gonna bring it over here, put it right where I had that click play. Boom, key of a super easy, super easy to uh, navigate. And again, I don't have to think about it, I just set it up, uh, pre-service, get it ready to go. And then whenever it's time to play, um, it's there, it's ready for me. Um. And so that's been nice. Uh, the atmosphere does do a cross fade. So, uh, if you're going from song one to song two, you're going in the key of a flat, you're going to B or whatever. Uh, it does do a nice cross fade for you. So it's not an immediate off, it doesn't just shut off and then go to the nookie. Um, if it's playing, you fire a new one. It will cross fade if you click abort. To kind of turn off the pad, it will do a fade out, and then if you click engage, it will do a fade in. And those are even settings that you can adjust within the atmosphere. Uh, so you can go into the settings, you can say, I want a five second fade in, five second, fade out, whatever, uh, and kind of set that to your preference. Um, but yeah, so that, that, uh, was something, I don't think that it was kind of, I don't know what. Uh, when Isaac was setting it up, if that was the, the intent for it. Um, but when I bought it, I saw that it had midi in, I saw the, you know, the cable that you can buy. So I reached out to Isaac. Uh, hey, you know, what is kind of the midi? Um, like the. The information that you have in here. And so he ended up putting out an update for it that gave me all the notes that I needed for the certain patches, the certain keys, um, and yeah. And so it should be pretty standard now on every atmosphere. So if you're using this, you want a easier way to run it. I would highly suggest using this, uh, trick. It just makes everything so much easier. Uh, yeah. So that's basically it for the atmosphere. I've gone back and forth between, this is the MK one, so this is the first version. They also have the MK two, uh, which is a more updated, kind of a more, uh, in depth version, if you will, of OSCI. I recently started using MK one. Again, it's so simple, so easy to use. MK two is very, very in depth, which is great, and I even have a template for that. Uh, but setup just took a little bit longer. Um. It wasn't very optimized for every Sunday morning at church. Uh, and so this is one that I've recently started using again just because I'm able to set it up so easily. Um, so I can kinda show you on the computer, um, right here. I've got this service for today. I'll go ahead. I'll open up, I'll come in here to template. So I have a set builder and I have a song builder. Um, so basically if I were to have a new song that we're doing, I'm gonna open up Song Builder and basically all it is is just outlines. There's no buttons, there's no midi information on it. And I'm just gonna go in and I'm gonna put in, okay, we're doing this new song. It's called Praise the Lord. I'm gonna do that and then I'm gonna go in on each of these sections. I've got, uh, 19 buttons or labels here that I can use. And so I would come over here to Ableton. I would find praise the Lord, if you will. If it was in here, I'd see all the sections that I have, 'cause I have all my tracks broken up into each section. And I would just go through and I'd say, okay, it's gonna start with the intro, boom. And I just go through and put all those sections in there. So once I'm done with it. I would click command A. That's gonna select everything on here, command C, that's gonna copy it's Then come over here to open. Yeah, ignore that. Go to templates and I would now go to Set Builder. Come in here. Alright, so we're doing praise along Lord and Song one. I'm gonna come up here to my page finder, make sure I have song one selected, and then. It's all, uh, built on the same layout. So when I click command pace, everything goes in the correct spot. So now I've got it over buttons. So if I were to sync this to my iPad, like I've got it over here. Um, now all of these are buttons that I can mini map in Ableton. It's a real easy setup. All it is is, uh, USBC into the computer. Um. There might be a couple of steps you have to do as far as like wifi, but I really think just, you know, going hardwired and you can run it wireless. I prefer hardwired at all times, uh, just less, you know, chances for mistakes. But if I came in here, click command m, find my midi info, you'll see all these buttons over here on the iPad are mapped to, uh, my Ableton set. And so really that just allows for, uh, me, uh. Turn this to computer audio. Okay. You know, if I wanna, there's the click for that song or, Hey, we're gonna go back into the bridge. Here we go, right here. Bridge. You know, we can fire into any section at any point. Let's go to the chorus right here. Pretty easy. Um, and then I've got all these kind of transport buttons. This count in obviously starts play, is just like kind of a master play. If I'm on a, a random scene, I, I don't ever really use that, but it's there just in case. And then I've got, all right, let's go to song two. And then you see it automatically changes to page two for rest on us four. Now we're in this song. Also, atmosphere change to the right key. Also transpose change to the right, uh, you know, iteration of that first one. Alright, we're done with this. Let's go to song three. We're gonna go to the blood boom. Everything fires by itself. Intro, so it's just it. It makes things really easy. Like I said, I've got this filter, so if we were in. Bridge. I can fade tracks out. Hey, we're having a ministry moment. Let's do this, whatever. I might go to the clique just to make sure we're out. Alright, let's fire into the bridge. Bridge. I'm gonna fade the tracks back in. Just trying to be musical. Right? Look at this as your, it's part of your instrument, right? If you're anything musical you would do on your piano, you are gonna figure out a way to do it with your tracks as well. Um, and it can be as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. I try to make it as easy as I can, uh, the least amount of knobs needed. Um, yeah. And so that's basically it for this. Um, like I said, it, it. On the Ableton side, I did do a little bit of building as far as like the firing song, it, it automatically goes to the right page. And that's just really getting into like the midi messaging within touch OSC and finding, you know, the right uh, CC channel or cc note within Ableton to set for that. I'm not running Nord sounds, but the Nord stage three has actually always been my favorite. Um, when I first started playing, we had a two. Um, and that was kind of my introduction to the Nord. Um, we then upgraded to a three, and at that time we were running Nord sounds. Um, I hadn't really gotten into sound design or anything, so I think I was running, let's see, I always ran one of the uprights. Which one was it? It was the mellow upright. That's my all time favorite Nord patch. And then I would layer this with. The bright grand, there it is. And what I loved about this is I could say, okay, I'm on panel B, I'm gonna turn bright grand off. So I'm just running mellow upright. Right now it's on panel A, but anytime I get to that, uh, those brighter sections, boom. Right. Oh, well that is actually my Ableton sounds, but you get the idea. So yeah, I would run the. Bright grand and I actually would put it in octave up, and then I would run the mellow upright on the regular octave. And that would just, again, would allow for some big sections, some brighter piano, some more, uh, kind of tangy piano sounds, uh, when needed. But the nord Stage three to me, feels the best. I love the user interface of it the best. The four did something really cool where it did like two piano channels. Um, but if you wanna turn one off, you have to hold down a button. Uh, and I just don't like that because I need my hands, you know, I need quick. Quick clicks. And so the stage three has always been my favorite. I just feel like they mastered the sounds there. Um, they, you know, I, I would prefer knobs on this, or I'm sorry, like the little faders that they have on the four. Uh, but I don't ever really use the organ anyway. So yeah, the stage three has always been my favorite. And if I could buy one, I would buy a stage three. We, I know we talked a little bit about OSC here. Uh, my typical setup on a Sunday, I might have mentioned this earlier, but it is using the aka I think it's the 2 24, 2 26. Um, and I got the idea from Scott at Red Rock Spooky Scott. Um, and basically you have it. Uh, we have like a, well now we have a piano shell that it just kind of sits on right here. Uh, but it's, you know, it's got its 16 pads and then it's got four faders with multiple banks that you can do for, you know, the, the pads and the faders. Um. And so the pads is, is this but a little more dialed back? It's kind of a more general, uh, tool. So like the, the top left button I always have as my intro to any song, not to count in the intro. Uh, on the bottom, the bottom two, I think on the right I've got song count in and click, um, and then like. Just general buttons, so like one row is courses. So I have course one, course two up course down course. So, uh, the row three, I have my bridges. I've got bridge one, bridge two up bridge down bridge. And then on the bottom row I've got breakdown ending. And then I think that's it. Um, and so yeah, it's just kind of a more general use of OSC. Something that I don't have to go in, you know, and build out the song on OSC like I do here. It's just, it's always ready to go. And then I just map it according to, uh, the layout of the song in Ableton. Um. And so yeah, that's, that's my Sunday morning. That's my typical rig. And then also it has the faders, which I, I have mapped to tracks, uh, filter. I've got it mapped to piano, verb piano. Uh, I sometimes I put like a low pass on my piano just to kind of bring, you know, bring it down in the mix, make it a little more mellow. Um, and then I've got certain buttons in there that are like, mm-hmm. Click on click off guide on guide off and all that. And then like my piano sounds, I use, I turn on and off through that. So. Uh, but I, I just don't travel with that. It's a little too bulky. Well, yeah, guys, this is, uh, this is my rig. So appreciate you tuning in, watching. I hope some of this helped you. Um, you know, my, my big thing with this is find what works for you. Um, do what works for you. Do what makes you comfortable. Do what makes you play and worship the best of your ability. Um, I said it in the episode with Carson a couple weeks ago. Like, do what helps you serve the room the best. Um, if that means you're running transpose. You know, I don't encourage it, but if you want to do it, do it. Um, if that means, you know, you're running pads on here as opposed to pads on, on the piano, like do it, you know, do what makes you play the best, do what makes you, uh, the most comfortable, uh, and what serves the room the best. And, uh,