GROWING AS A WORSHIP DRUMMER

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How do you improve yourself as a worship drummer? The supportive nature of your instrument means that growing in skill and maturity is less a question of developing more riffs and chops and more that of learning how to choose the right notes for a song.

The root problem for worship drummers is this: they are usually not engaging with the songs that are being used for the worship. With this in mind, here are the three steps that will enable you as a drummer to engage more deeply with the worship songs, and help the congregation you serve to do likewise.

1) Get your rudiments right.
Many drummers playing for church are self-taught. This means their rudiments usually leave much to be desired. But you will need them in order to express the music within you and engage with the music.

So give the basics serious attention. If you can afford the time and expense get at least a few formal lessons in drum basics. Learn your single strokes, double strokes, paradiddles and double paradiddles; learn them well. Find a few four-way independence exercises and practice them diligently.

If time and money are an issue at the moment, seek out the free online drum lessons that abound on the Internet. Whatever you do, make sure you can express yourself through the instrument and get a good sound, or you may end up dragging the rest of the musicians down.

2) Learn a chord instrument.

If you want to play the drums with understanding and engage with a song, you need to think about how to use the drums to emphasize the important chord changes. For example, the crash cymbals very appropriate for bringing out the linking chords of a song. But it is hard to do that if you have no idea what is happening in the chords of the song.

So spend some time learning a chord instrument, maybe guitar or contemporary piano. When you can sense the chord movements within a song, you are better able to use the drums to support and emphasize these chord changes in a meaningful way.

3) Sing as you play.

It never fails to amaze me how few drummers actually sing as they play, even church drummers. But it is one of the simplest ways to grasp the feeling of a song and engage with it.

It also helps you choose the right notes to play on the drums. The singing will often give you strong hints on what rhythm patterns to use for a particular song. They will also tell you when to use fills and when to hold back.

And that is pretty much the area most church drummers miss it. They are as involved with the music as a drum machine would be, which is not at all. Or they play too much and become a distraction to the worship of the congregation. All these can be dealt with by just simply singing along with the song while playing and listening to how everything fits together.

Conclusion: These three steps are not flashy or glamorous. But they are very helpful to you because they force you to engage on a deeper level with the songs used in church. You will find that you then greatly enhance the worship experience of the church you serve, and glorify God in the eyes of his people.

THE PEACE HOUSE
GIVING PEACE TO OUR GENERATION THROUGH WORSHIP