Part 2 of Producing Stems for Elevation Worship with Jay Taylor

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Welcome to our Part 2 episode with Jay Taylor, who breaks down his Ableton arrangement of “Jehovah” by Elevation Worship, sharing how he builds dynamics with layered parts, loops, textures, and transitions while leaving space for a live band. He also talks about trusting the process, staying grounded in your identity, growing your gift, and letting prayer guide your calling. They also touch on sound sources, including Gospel Producers and Naja Snow’s upcoming System-8 pack, and wrap up with where to follow Jay on Instagram.

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Welcome to the Worship Keys podcast. My name is Carson Bruce. We talk all things music theory, gear, industry, and ministry for your worship keys playing. I'd like to thank Aerospace Audio for being a sponsor of this episode. They create unique incredible high quality atmospheric drone pads to be used for your worship services, productions, songwriting sessions, whatever it may be. They have an analog physical drone pedal that they call atmosphere. There's actually a version three out. They also have a MIDI end capability, so you can work in tandem with Ableton Live or any other dog that you have to be able con to control everything through that ecosystem. Or if not the physical analog pedal. They also have an iOS app that you can run the pad straight from your iPhone or iPad. It's called Aero Pads. Definitely check them out, aerospace audio.com and let's get into today's episode. Alright, y'all, welcome back to the Worship Keys podcast. My name's Carson Bruce, so glad you're here. And again, as you heard on the intro, sponsored by Aerospace Audio, last episode jay Taylor here, is back. Yep. On the episode. And you tried out this pedal, the atmosphere pedal by Aerospace audio, and you said you liked the Troposphere, right? Yep. Yeah. And there's actually, there's more sounds than this on the pad version on their aeropads Uh, so you guys can check it out on the, on, on the app store for iPhone, iPad, or buy one of their physical pedals. There's actually three different versions out and they make different colors. Oh, okay. There's like a purple one. Uh, there's a white one. Don't you have a white base? Do you own it? Yes. Or is that someone else? Okay. That's mine, dude. Yeah, I, I, I think a white one would go nice with this little midi, uh, with this arturia MIDI controller. And today is a continuation of your, of what you were doing last week. Yep. So I'm excited if y'all enjoyed what he did last week. And you're excited to see how he wraps it up. Um, today's gonna be a great episode, so, okay. But before we do, what is one advice that you have? I know you're only 25 years young bro. 24. 24, okay. I know. Don't gimme that 25 days. You're about to be okay. This summer you will be 25. He is 24 years young guys. Um, really, you're just getting started in your career, Jay. You really are. But what, what advice would you give to your, you talked about being thrown on the organ in church, but what, what would you give your advice to just. Just a 14-year-old, you, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, someone who's learning keys, maybe a teenager person going into college. What's, what's your greatest advice for them, bro? Um, I would say trust the process. Um, don't shy away from anything that's thrown at you musically, because it's all to make you better. Yeah, of course. Create your environment. Um, because there are gonna be people that come along the way that may see that you have something and they might be intimidated or anything. And sometimes those people connecting with them, they may mishandle you. Mm-hmm. And they make you shy away from the gift that God has given you. That's good. But you don't need to tie your identity into who you connect with and what they say about you, because God gave you the gift. So you're gonna let, don't let anyone tell you that your gift isn't enough. That's good. You know what I'm saying? Because you'll stop working to expand your gift. And you don't wanna be like, I don't wanna preach. But you don't wanna be like the person that God gave the one talent to. Mm-hmm. And go bury it. So. Mm. That's good. Yeah. Keep expanding. That's good. How did you know you were, how'd you know that you were actually called to do this music thing? It made too much sense. Made too much sense, honestly. Yeah. Um, and anytime I tried to get away from it, it always pulled me back. Um, that's good. But also through prayer. Um, come on now. It takes a relationship with God to know that you're in purpose. Yeah. Um, yeah, because one thing about it, when you're talented in any capacity, and you can have many different talents, um. god has called you to do a specific thing. Mm-hmm. Not necessarily that it may be one thing, but there's a specific thing he's called you to do and the only way that you can know that you're in the right place is through your relationship with him. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So Totally. I would say that's one thing that has confirmed it for me over time is letting God be the author and letting him confiding in him. Yes. 'cause confiding in people, they may tell you. Hey, you good at this? So just do this. Mm. But you'll end up facing a lot of trouble. Not that you won't suffer in your purpose, but you could suffer more because you're not in purpose. Right? Come on. So, yeah. Come on. I didn't know you were a preacher too. No, no. I'm not preacher. I'm not a preacher. I've just been in church my whole life and I try to listen. I love it, man. I love it. Jay. Yeah. Well, Jay, I don't wanna be, I don't wanna take up too much time here on the intro because I know we're all wanting to get to, uh, the Multitracks. Mm-hmm. Um, part of this. So thank you for coming all the way up to Nashville. You from Alabama, music Director at Love City. Church in Alabama outside of Birmingham a little bit. Um, but you play with Trey Robinson, you play with Arius Brown. Mm-hmm. And again, just kind of recapping what we said in uh, last week's intro. But thanks again for being here bro. Thank you for inviting me. Um, and dude, let's get into it. Your final touchups of Jehovah by Elevation Worship, bro. Yep. Guys, we are back with part two of Jehovah by Elevation Worship. Uh, last week. We got a lot done. We laid dummy keys, um, threw some pads up, got some leads going, did some nice changes in setups. Uh, some of them I didn't like. Um, listening back to it. Uh, and while I was gone I made sure that I named my sounds 'cause I had a lot of this stuff untitled and I know that wouldn't really be befitting to the viewers that are trying to learn and figure out what sounds they can use. So yeah, I went back and named some of my sounds and. I'm about to get ready to finish this on out. Hopefully it doesn't take too long, but the first thing I would say I, we were in, I think we left off at the bridge, so we're gonna pick back up there around the build. I'm gonna add a arc first. This sound is called voyage to new lands. It is real percussive, you know what I'm saying? Gives it a little, a little bit more body as we build through the song. So instead of me trying to record anything, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna copy and paste. I'll tell you what, we'll copy one that I already cut. We're just gonna paste it. Uh oh. Laptop is. Doing something. Alright, we're ready? Yeah. I think I want to go ahead and add that in the, in the second verse. So we'll add that second one in that second art in right here. I would say at that point I would say that we're in the V. Sure. Um, let me see. So I'll say for this we will, yeah. Give the, give the arrangement a little bit more weight. Of course, the band would be playing over this live, so they would add more weight as well. But an arrangement standing alone, you need to be able to tell that the music has went somewhere else and there's a build. So we're gonna go right before this section. And get ready to record. And then with that four bar loop, repeat, just repeat it. No need to keep recording. Saves time. All right. So that section right when we come out of the vamp, going back to the call, the name, the last chorus before we, or the last two chorus, before we, um, end the song, I would say what I recorded, uh, as far as with these stabs, add those back in there. But we gonna have to rerecord those because the progression is changing there. Okay. Got those. We gotta clean it up. Up. Remember we laid dummy keys. Usually when I get this far in an arrangement, I go ahead and cut off my dummy keys because at that point I'm tired of listening to all of the flubs that I made while I was laying the ideas. Um, so at that point, also, when I cut off the, the, the keys, it also gives me a good idea. As to what else I need to add. So we'll just take all those and mute it. I selected all, then I did control M and then muted all of those for me. All those key tracks. Um, let's go back into where we were adding bells. Thing about land base. That's gonna be the easiest part, in my opinion. That's the easiest part of landing arrangement. Okay. All right. Sure. Why not? I just had a thought, let's add back in the bell line that we were doing. 'cause it, I think at the biggest, at the biggest thing right now in this point of the song is you want to keep building on top of what's already happening. Of course there's a line, you know what I'm saying? You don't wanna do too much, but you wanna keep building on top of what's happening because it we're, we're trying to build a song, you know, that's the climax before we go back to those chorus to end it. So there's nothing wrong with just stacking, stacking, stacking parts here. Be tasteful, of course. Realize that at the end of the day, you know you are about to have a band that's gonna have to play this as well. So you wanna leave room for those guys. So, so now we got those stabs and that male line back in there. At this point I feel like if you're watching, you should be moving. I've added enough for you to like it. I like it. Now I feel better. So we going to do another repeat of that? Let me see. Okay, this. See what's happening here. Okay, so we're back in the, I say we can keep it. I can say we, I say we can keep the bail part and just go ahead and just let that be. In there for the rest of the song. Yeah. Rebecca called a name. Just for context, you. Man, I really went out there for that section. I really am kind of having second thoughts on it, but for time we're gonna stick to that idea. I am gonna add the bell line back in there. Um, it sound like it would work. Yeah, it worked. It was enough space in there, so where those moves aren't bothering what's happening. Okay, so here. All right. Um, we going to cut the loop in a minute. Usually when I make my arrangements, I never do just a, a loop that I just let go throughout the whole song. I build the loop inside of the song, depending, like just to feed the dynamics, firstly, feed the dynamics of what's happening in the song. Some, sometimes I may not wanna shaker. I I just may just want a tambourine. Today I'm just using. A loop, um, using the loop that I already made just so I can get the work done. That's the biggest thing. Maybe Carson will give you another episode to where he'll allow, you know, whoever's doing it, maybe me, someone else to build a loop from scratch and really get in, get an end up analysis on when and why we do certain things with the loop. But for now, let me see. Let's add the loop. I gotta figure out where I want to add it. Let's go listen. Um, I'm glad to add the keys back in there for a second just so I can. Know where I'm at. I gotcha. We'll add the loop after the lick for, to bring the three part harmony in. So we'll add the new in. There. There, because now we're doing more with the rhythms as far as building out. Which I had it actually place a little off, but for the right, for the most part it was ready to go. So now we got a clap in there and just so that loop got more body with our old loop. We're just gonna cut right there. Okay, so let's go back and finish our sweeps. We never finished those last episode. Okay. Okay, so I'm gonna make a decision here and we're gonna add the loop. Into that second verse. Lemme see. Yeah, I tell you what, when I record bass, that'll tell me what I need. So we'll go back, sorry. We'll go back to focusing on the Oh, okay. I don't wonder why I keep feeling like I should have pushed there, but it's fine. I know. Hmm idea, I think. Okay. Okay. Okay. See. So yeah, for that last build. So lemme see what I wanna do. Let me see. What am I hearing? Okay, so you got that. That's, uh, pretty much, lemme see, where do we start? All right, so. I have an idea, probably gonna end up going back and redoing the end of it. But for the build, 'cause I would say at that point, I know if I was m ding, I would call for call for the band to build through that whole last section before we go back to the chorus to end the song. Just so it can really, really, like at that point, you know. I would say, 'cause I'm crazy, I would say like the people should be losing their minds and you have to match their intensity. You know, don't lose your mind in church or, I mean, maybe your church allows you to lose your mind. Whatever you lose your mind in Jesus, be free. All I'm saying is at this point, the people should really, really be feeling like they're free. The song should be ministering to them. That much. So at that point, the band needs to match the intensity of what they're feeling. Get in, get involved with the song, what's happening inside the music. So there, that's why I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna do a line that feels like it's building, like it's going somewhere. Okay, so there, I didn't like what I did. I didn't really have an out, so I'm gonna split that, delete it. But we will keep this and now we will go back to, we're gonna go on Omnisphere. 'cause it's a sound that I like to stack with this lead. I actually used this lead in episode one and I changed my mind for those who stayed tuned. Uh, no, it wasn't called crunchy. It's called chunky Stacker. Thank you for everyone that came and watched that trusted division, you know. From episode one, you want to see the finished product. Yep. So there's no sense in rerecording. We may have to just force it to force it up. Octave I. Okay. And I heard those notes catch at the end. Spa. I probably would've did something else, but I actually heard just then I'm like, that could be a spot where the base does something and we get back rather than we need a lead. Just because you have a lead doesn't mean it has to lead everything. You know what I'm saying? You have somebody else room to do something. Sometimes I have to tell myself as a, tell myself that as a keyboard player, because I'm very, I always consider myself to be my, consider myself to be very melodic. And a lot of times I have to slow down. Like I have to slow down my words right now because I keep running them together. But yeah, um, you have to slow down and, um, give space to the music, you know. We were almost at the end of this arrangement guys. Uh, we have made it back to the last chorus, last two, so we need to all our praise there with those, with the bell. Us, you're probably just gonna have to use the nice be here. Ah, let's get those outta there. Yeah. All right, so there. We going only emphasize what's happening in the music. Mm. Well, we, we may do more than the bell. Yeah, I didn't know what I wanna do on the out there. Um, let's just. Clip it. Yeah, we can just clip it. So. Yep. Yeah. That was kind of cute. All right. That I hit that six a little bit late. No, I hit it early. Yeah. Uh, what I just did was I clicked that and I clicked, um, I have this move to play ahead. It is right by the. The, um, l that's gonna, like I said, I have the, have my keyboard layout for my key commands, but what's next to the letter L is gonna move to Playhead. So wherever you have your cursor set, it'll move it there. Why is it sounding off? So maybe it's not supposed to. Oh, okay. I see what's happening. I moved it where the. Crystal light was the bells. I think it's supposed to be here. Yep. And that's it? Yep. Okay, we're gonna lay bass and probably play it, uh, recording. Official key. Do some effects. And we gonna get outta here. Shout out to Naja Snow. I'm about to use. He has a sound pack that's gonna be releasing soon, um, for the system. Eight has some really nice sounds. If you got a system, if you have a system, eight, if you own one, it'll be really gotta be a good investment to make. If you go to my Instagram, the guy that's on there doing those collabs with me, that is Naja. He's a beast. If you don't know him, you need to get to know him. Let me see what we got. Yep. A lot of times I stack my bases. Um, I don't think I'm gonna do it. I don't think I need it for this one. I'm about to challenge myself, guys to see if I can do this in one take. I doubt I'm gonna make it. But hopefully you praying for me and not for my downfall. Actually, I wanna, I wanna record with dummy keys. It'll, it'll make me feel a little bit more confident in what I'm doing. Just gonna stay, take a stab at this again. Keys will take that beginning base back in here. Ah, I didn't like that. Okay, so we're gonna go back there 'cause I couldn't remember what I did. The walk down. Lemme see. What did I do? Yeah, let's, we should walk down from the one with the base. Yeah, let's do that. We gonna keep that base. Ah, okay. Yeah, maybe I, oh my bad. Maybe I should have added it. Because I keep doing it. Hmm. No, no, I can deal with that because in the context, drums will be building there, so it'll be Okay. So. What I wanna do on base. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. You can start subbing here. I forgot I did that. That's not probably it. That's probably not staying. Ah. Okay, so, okay, cool. I figured I was gonna have to stop there. Hmm. I really cannot deal with this. That actually is a nice band moment. Hmm. What did I do? What did I do? I think. We gonna do that? It's off, so we don't need to. Do I want that at all? Let's just delete it for a second. Yeah, we can add a F there for that three. Yeah, get outta there because you gotta, you have a guitar player there, so you don't want to start adding too much in your stem because then the guitar player has no space. Or if you have a ox player, he won't have space. So here I'm thinking we could do, let's just delete. I made a wrong sound of me, so we here. Okay. So yep. Cool. We there? We almost finished guys. We're almost finished. 7, 3, 6 of the five for those don't know what's happening in there. So one, two, we're going to the three. So the five of C sharp or D flat is what? A flat. So we're gonna do a 7, 3, 6 and a flat. So we gonna get a GC. F. Yeah, that was, that was, that was pretty good. I think I can deal with that. Um. Let's do some effects. We gonna, we gonna make these real short and sweet. We are not gonna do too much with the effects. Or do we wanna do effects Carson? Sure, man. Sure. Yeah, might as well. Okay, let's listen Riser. Let's be quicker so we are not searching through too many risers who move fast. Yep. I can deal with that. I'll just cut it. Let's do a down lifter. Sure. Uhoh. Let's go back. Let's do that one. Raza, let's pair that down. Lifter with a crash, not the car crash. I can deal with that. Uh, ignore that name. Sorry. Um, don't show the screen there. I don't know what they talking about. It wasn't of God. And don't forget about atmosphere, either one. Okay. That's really what I needed. I, I was, I was getting a little weary in my, well doing honestly. Lemme see. We'll tuck that. Tuck that down a little more. Okay, so in real context, uh, sorry. In real context, very minimal keys here. So, let's see. Let's add. That one was giving me issues. Um, let's just say in context, guys, we really actually would not use piano here in the beginning. We would let the pad do the work. Um. Let me see. Maybe we can try to record that real quick. Ignore the piano. Okay. But where it dropped in here was correct? Yeah, we set it up. Make it a little bit more, the pad is moving a little bit slower than the way the. Regressions are moving, but I can deal for now. Just turn that up. Oh, I was supposed to got somewhere rest on the base. Now. That's right. Six, three years. Yeah. Short. If I had the time, I would change it. Probably we right. So we need another down lifter. Beautiful. Yep, that works. We can cut it. If it's too long, we actually can throw that one back in the beginning and get rid of this one. 'cause I really didn't like it. Typically you. Want to add your risers along with any of your sweeps. Um, you don't have to every time because it can get a little old. Yeah, we can leave it, we can leave that open, that section A riser and. The down lift, you just need to make sure that there's an effect that makes it obvious that the band is about to come in. Like I said, the thing about arrangements, the purpose, uh, in building certain spots is so it's obvious that something's about to take place. So when, so no one can miss any cues. If it's not obvious what's happening inside the arrangement, then maybe you didn't build it. Well. I don't know if that's offensive. But then again, you may not have thought I built my arrangement. Well, it's subjective. But we're gonna keep moving. Yep. I am gonna do a riser into the chorus. Uh oh. We can be a little bit more aggressive with, um, the riser here. I have to find the one that I just had there it is. You can be a little bit more aggressive with that riser there, because that's going back into the, um. Going back into the interlude before the second first, okay? Yep. For time's sake, we're just gonna probably copy and paste some of these same ones. Uh, if you wanna hear some more effects, go to my Instagram today. I can only give you so much. And Liz Carson invites me back. Hopefully I didn't do terrible. And he's like, what decision did I make? Bring him. Never again because I'm like that, you know, sometimes I made bad decisions and I'm like, man, why did I do that? But then I also like to give second chances because I serve a God of second chances. Come on. So I feel like we need that other loop, um, in that second verse. I am changing my mind again. We gonna leave it out. Okay, we'll add it there. We'll add the full loop there for a brief time until we get to. The bridge. Yeah. We're in a bridge here. It did not stop, but I really feel like I should have did that push there. 'cause I keep leaning into it like it is. It was supposed to be there. All right, so you need a riser there. But you don't need a down lifter because that's a, that moment drops off. So if anything you need maybe some type of soft impact to let you know that the music just dropped out. Uh, let me see. Let's find another riser, rouser. Yeah, that was, that's a good one. It didn't get too aggressive, at least in the beginning. We're gonna end up cutting it when it get, when it comes to effects, it's very subjective. I, if I had the time, I probably would throw a lot more effects, uh, around this arrangement. Yeah, I use this one a lot actually. I. I actually think I'm gonna use that one, but I'm just going to turn it down. I. Another subtle riser I believe. Yep. Um. What could we do here? I need some type of hit, but I don't need it to be very. I tell you what we can do. I'll do that symbol again just so I don't have to search for another sound real quick. Okay, so that's supposed to be here. Okay. I need a riser. That's pretty lengthy for that section. Um. It might have been perfect. It's such a joy when the first effect that you could on. It is the one is the one, or maybe it's not the one, but like you're too lazy to keep looking. It's like, I'm just gonna make this work. All right, we gonna deal with that. Okay. Why is that off? That's a little off. Uh, supposed to be hit on B two. Okay. Yep. Alright, so we going on, lay some keys? Some keys that we can keep actually. The piano that I'm using is called The Natural Concert Grand. It's a, uh, concert grand and YF three out of piano verse made by IIK multimedia. Yeah, so we did not nail all of the changes that I recorded. However, comm. That is the arrangement. I didn't come here to, uh, play perfect keys. I came here to make you guys an arrangement and I did that. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. Um, this is a little bit of how I would approach arrangement. Like I said, give more time. I'll go and clean up a lot of this stuff. A lot of things probably would change, but we don't necessarily have the time to do so. So this will be your final product for this episode. All right guys. That is it. I hope y'all enjoyed his arrangement of Jehovah by Elevation Worship. Uh, you did great with this, bro. Thank you, man. Thank you. It was, it was tough. It was a challenge to try to fit all the ideas into. A time. You did good. I, I know literally, we, we only had a few hours here. Like what you see is ba I mean, we did edit it down just a little bit. I'm sure I'll edit a few things, but for the most part it's just the raw, like here we are layering. Yeah. And, okay. The, the, the O'Neill patches, bro, everyone wants to know, where can I download the O'Neill patches? Unfortunately, it's in the black market of the wor of the, of the keys world and the underworld. It's, it's like, it's a, you can't, you can't get to it. It's in this, this. This undisclosed, um, you know, mark off the market kind of thing. So I hate to be the guy that makes that be the thing, the, the about the O'Neill patches. I just got 'em some from someone and I don't know where they got 'em from. Yeah. I apologize to who created 'em. Sorry that your product got out. You probably never wanted it distributed like this. Mm. You know, right. God gave you that. God gave you that. Come on. It wasn't yours in the first place. Nah, just playing. But honestly, a lot of what you play and a lot of what Josh was playing too, can be found on gospel producers. So we're not sponsored by gospel producers, but honestly, if you want to go find gospel producers or there's a lot of plugins that have some really cool synth lines and stuff, you guys can go do that. Um, I think it's the, I was trying to remember the exact plugin. Peculiar sounds by gospel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, those are great. Those are great. I use those as well. Use. Oh, do you? Okay. Mm-hmm. Well, cool guys. Thank y'all for sticking around to the end. Thank y'all for liking, subscribing. Go follow j Taylor TaylorMade, ITT on Instagram for more live arrangements. Some, I mean, these are a lot shorter. They're, he puts these 30, 30, 60 second clips. Uh, but maybe you should do some longer ones on YouTube now, you know. I gotta figure out how to work fast. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta figure out how to work fast first. Hey man. Well it, you know, this stuff isn't, it's not like a microwave mill. It's not like you just stick it in and it's done. Like it does take time to make something good.