[ WM ] David , you run a website called SundaySounds . com and you guys focus a lot on worship keys sounds . For those who might not be familiar with you and what you do at Sunday Sounds , give us a quick rundown .
[ David Pfaltzgraff ] My background is as a worship leader , mostly in church plants and smaller environments where there wasn ' t always a huge budget for new equipment .
At one of those churches we had an old keyboard from the 90s that was really struggling to keep up with modern worship music , but we wanted to do justice to the production and keys sounds we were hearing on the worship songs we were playing .
First , I tried to pull every possible ounce of quality sound out of that old keyboard , but I hit a wall pretty quickly and realized I was going to have to find some other way to get the sounds , that old gear just wasn ’ t up to it on its own .
That led me to a deep dive into the world of software and plugins , connecting my computer to my keyboard , and using the computer to run the sounds . I discovered software like
MainStage and Ableton Live and started designing sounds and patches for my own worship team there . I ’ m not going to lie , it was a rough start and I had a pretty difficult time getting my keys players to buy into what I was trying to do . The main appeal upfront was how affordable it was , not how easy to use it was , but my keys players didn ’ t care as much about the budget , they were just alarmed that I was asking them to manage this computer on stage .
Eventually we figured out ways to make it work and started to really enjoy using software for the keys rig . I started sharing my patches online and built up this community of folks that were interested in the work that I was doing and along the way it turned into a side business , then eventually became Sunday Sounds .
About five years ago we released a product called Sunday Keys , an all-in-one worship keys template , meaning it has all of the sounds you could need , all the workflows , and the visual interface to let you modernize any existing keys hardware you have by plugging it into your computer .
Releasing Sunday Keys was a defining moment for Sunday Sounds . From the beginning this approach really resonated with people and we ' ve been able to grow a great community of users around this product that we really love creating resources for .
[ WM ] You ’ ve also been writing articles for us for several years now about those same topics : worship keys , MainStage , and Ableton Live . What are the biggest changes you ’ ve seen in the keys world over the last five years ?
[ David ] One thing I like to say to worship keys players that reach out to us is that “ it ' s never been a better time to be a worship keys player .”
What ' s asked of modern worship keys players does feel like a bit more of a moving target now than it did say in 2016 or 2017 . But with these new playing styles and types of sounds and all of the new music theory ideas and skills needed to be able to pull those sounds and arrangements off , there ' s even more opportunity for keys players to have fun , to feel empowered , and to try exciting new things musically .