We are busy people. Most of us worship peeps are busy with life, family, school, work, oh ya, and church.
As a worshipdrummer, you’re more than likely expected to be at practice if you are scheduled to play for an upcoming service. Did you know that what you do leading up to practice, during practice, and after practice matters?
4 Simple Ways You Can Be A Blessing To Your Worship Team.
1. Know The Material Before You Get To Practice.
There’s nothing more annoying than a drummer who lacks the right feel for a song (and dynamics) and who has no clue of what you’re taling about in a specific song. Listen to the music and be familiar with the different sections/parts of the songs.
2. Arrive Early for Practice
The guitarist can get away with showing up 5 minutes before practice starts. But. You. Can’t. Your sound check usually takes the longest and you might need to adjust the kit if the last drummer moved it all around. Although this seems less serious than our first point, this can easily swallow up 20 minutes of precious practice time. As a drummer it comes with the territory and you have to take ownership of it.
3. Stretch and Warmup Before You Start
This is probably the most overlooked activity for us as drummers, but also one of the most important. The athlete stretches. The vocalists warm up. So should the drummer! Drumming uses your core muscles and you should get a good stretch in before you sit down for any lengthy period of time. You should also get into the habit of stretching the muscles and tendons in your forearm, wrists and hands, and in your legs, calves, and feet.
As you do your sound check you can warm up on the kit and start getting the blood flowing to your limbs. If you are late for church you can forget stretching. You’ll jump on the kit and put yourself at risk of serious getting a serious injury.
4. Record Your Practices
You don’t need a fancy Pro Tools Digi rack, or even a macbook with garageband. I simply use my iPhone. I place my iPhone behind my kit, approximately 4 feet away and use the native Voice Memos app.
Here’s how I use it:
Launch the app
Start recording your pratice
Give titles to your audio recordings to keep things organized!
As you can see above, I’ve recorded myself playing bass on one Sunday and drums on another. The quality is good enough so you can analyze and critique your playing. This is something I never stop doing. Always strive to be at your best and this comes with studying our own playing and seeing where we need improvement.
Here’s an audio sample of a Sunday morning worship service from Jan 22. I was drumming for our youth band and I always like to go back and study my playing. As you can tell, the hihat and cymbals can get a little annoying but it definitely does the job and for FREE!
All in all, to be a blessing to others on your worship team, the rule of thumb is love. Love them. Treat them the way you want them to treat you, and practice a culture of honor and respect. This will put you in an excellent position to serve your team well and please the heart of God.
What are you doing (or going to do) to be a blessing to your team? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
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Great stuff, never thought about using my phone to record. Thanks for the tips!!
Excellent article! This definitely applies to every member of the team as well. Thanks for this.
One thing I would recommend, related to point #1, is to transcribe the songs you regularly play for worship. This has helped me to become a better drummer from day one. Before I would just play something to fit the song, but it’s so much different when you try to play exactly what’s on the recording you are given, if you are given a recording. That way, if the worship leader wants to change a bar or two, of even a single note or two within a bar, you can tell, visually, exactly what he or she is talking about. A word of warning- this method can be time consuming and frustrating. I recommend finding a program or hardware that can stretch or slow down the tempo, so that the drums will be easier to learn. Plus, if I want to teach another drummer this song, all I have to do is give them the sheet music to help them out.