What Every Worship Drummer Loves...and Hates

What We Love

1. A good groove between piano, bass, drums, and guitars…slow, medium or fast.

2. A good bass player…not perfect, but someone who listens well and is willing to work with us. Especially with the shared patterns that need to occur between the bass guitar and the bass drum.

3. Well organized rehearsals

4. Music that is easy to read and very close in form to what we are actually supposed to play

5. Listening CD’s to give us a sense of the groove subtleties that the music may require

6. Both music and listening CD’s prior to the rehearsal. Preferably at least a week before rehearsals.

7. A good monitor mix with a solid blend of all the musical components to hear what parts of the music may need to be set-up or modeled in our simple and tasteful fills.

8. Meaningful relationships and discipleship. We can sometimes be quiet and appear to just want to play drums 100% of the time. But in actuality, we participate in worship bands because we are trying to find purpose for our lives and our music.

What We Hate

1. Being asked to play so quiet that we cannot lift our arms more than one inch off the surface of the drum heads. It is very hard to establish a groove without being able to ‘get into’ it. We are not asking for permission to play our brains out at our personal taste volume levels, but we do need some head room. Worship Leading Solutions: smaller sticks, plexiglas drum shields, electronic drums, better worship space designed for electronic music

2. Musicians that rush tempos. We know that drummers rush tempos better and more often than anyone in the band; however, we feel that it is everyone's task to not rush...including singers.

3. The assumption that we cannot play musically. We actually listen to what is happening throughout the entire band and vocals to react with subtle dynamic changes and fill set-ups.

4. Bad or broken equipment. We are grateful that churches often times provide drumsets for us to play, however, we need help from the church to replace broken high-hat clutches, drum thrones, and cymbal stands. We know that it can be hard to control damage to a drumset when it is shared with the junior high band, but if we tell you what needs to be fixed, or are even willing to fix it, can we be reimbursed?