 | |
| | Session ONE & TWO
Right-click
here to download the twenty-minute MP3 “lecture” with audio examples
(10MB)
Q: How do you know if a drummer is at the door? A:The knocking speeds up.
Q: What’s the difference between a drummer and a large pizza? A: The pizza could feed a family of four.
Q: What was the last thing the drummer said before the band fired him? A: “You want to hear a song I just wrote?”
All right… they get kicked around, teased, picked on… yet the drums are a necessary part of contemporary music. The drum set doesn’t have to be a “necessary evil” in worship, though. It’s evident that the writers of Psalms didn’t view our bombastic friends that way (e.g. Ps 150:5 Praise him with a clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals). Songs like The River is here, Hungry, and Dwell all have drum patterns that assist us in worshipping God. Drum players are more than inconsistent metronomes… they are a vital part of our worship teams!
I have the honor to be on both sides of the drummer/worship leader fence. I have been the worship pastor at VCF Yakima (Washington state) for the last five years and I currently lead worship from the guitar. I have been blessed in this time to raise up more than four complete independent teams, one in which I’m able to play a support role by playing drum set. I take the rhythm section very seriously since it is the musical foundation for the rest of the team; it sets the foundation for the rest of the walls to be built upon.
What I have discovered in the last few years of being with other worship leaders is that the leader doesn’t always have the vocabulary required to communicate to the drummer. Maybe you have been in those conversations, the ones that need a translator? How many times has it been said, “just play it like the record,” or “hmmm...can you do something different then that?” My hope is that together we can care for and learn how to clearly communicate what we as worship leaders are after and to equip the musicians around us. My other hope is that we as leaders can better equip drummers to be a musical part of the team so that drummers will be able to follow the flow of a worship set.
So where do we start?
When I first started leading worship I had a young drummer that I had to train from scratch. The one thing he had going for him was that he had excellent timing. So we started with the basics and as he learned a new beat we were able to introduce new songs. The following teaching came from those times.
I have grouped the worship songs that we we’re currently doing into 7 different categories as well as an 8th “miscellaneous beat section” to hold what didn’t fit into the other categories. My thought was if I could teach a drummer 7 basic drum beats then as a worship leader I would be able to play most of the Vineyard worship songs available.
|
|
