|
How to Grow As A Worship Drummer
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 many 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.
If you wish to get permission to reproduce this article, send an email by clicking here
Web site and all contents © Copyright Junjie Huang 2008, All rights reserved.
Free website templates |
