- PLAY IN TIME. Period. The sign of a good drummer is not how many fills he can play in time, it is the fact that he can play in time. Buy a metronome that you can hear over your playing and practice with it every time you play. Be able to be as steady as a metronome. Use your metronome during practice and worship services as well.
- Learn to control your volume, especially if you use an acoustic kit. If you have a hard time controlling your volume, ask if the church will buy you a drum shield, or buy yourself some brushes or hotrods (rute/tala).
- Vary your fills and play them skillfully. It’s very difficult for a band to get back on track if a drummer’s fill ends a beat too late or half a beat too early. Be able to nail your fills every time. If you can’t, simplify your fills until you can.
- Learn different patterns. Four on the floor doesn’t work with every song. The country “train” beat won’t work with every song. Hint: A waltz beat won’t necessarily work with a driving 6/8 song as much as you might think 6/8 is the same as 3/4.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
Do any of you have any back to basics tips for percussion (bongos, congas, shakers, djembe, etc?)? While I do play percussion I haven’t had much experience with it in corporate worship settings and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Bass
- Understand and apply music theory. This is the most important part of being a bass player. You could get by with just knowing how to play the root note of each chord, but in order to create bass lines that help lead the music where it needs to go, you need to understand how theory works.
- That said, learn these theory basics first: The root, fourth and fifth notes of each chord. These notes are foundational in bass lines, especially the root and fifth.
- Learn to create basic fills that lead from chord to chord. These could be as basic as one extra note. For instance, when moving from a G chord to a C chord, play the B of the G chord right before you move to C. The B still fits in the G chord, but it is also the note right before C, leading you perfectly into the C chord.
- Learn scales. Major, minor, blues, pentatonic, five-note, any kind of scale you can. This will help you more easily create fills between chords.
- Learn to enjoy whole notes. The bass does not need to play complicated bass lines all the time. Often, the simpler the better.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
Acoustic Guitar:
- Keep your guitar in tune. Keep your strings fresh and buy a tuner and regularly tune your guitar during the song set between songs or when you aren’t playing. I learned this the hard way, but that’s another story for another time.
- Learn different strumming patterns. It’s easy to fall into the trap of getting comfortable with what you’re familiar with. Stretch yourself and challenge yourself to learn knew patterns. Hint: A 3/4 waltz pattern doesn’t really work in a driving 6/8 song.
- Know when to simplify your strumming pattern. Especially if you have a drummer, your strumming pattern should become much simpler as the drummer will carry the intricate rhythmic parts.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
Electric Guitar:
- Keep your guitar in tune. See above.
- Learn scales. Major, minor, blues, pentatonic, five-note, any kind of scale you can. This will help you more easily create lead lines.
- Play in the cracks. Read yesterday’s post for the piano players on this one.
- Be comfortable with playing a lot less. You’d be surprised how little professional electric guitar players play sometimes. Learn how to use your guitar to color the music, not dominate it.
- Moderate your patches. There is a time for super-overdrive-fuzz in the church, but it’s rare. Very rare. Use discretion and discernment in what sounds you use.
- Listen to recordings and learn the original guitar parts. There are literally thousands of rockin’ lead lines that have already been written by great guitar players that go with many of our worship songs. Train your ear to learn them and then practice them so they become a part of your playing.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
The most common thing I encounter when working with piano players in a church is that they are usually classically trained. This is a good thing and classical training on the piano should never be lost. However, in learning how to play modern worship music styles, piano players need to shift from being a piano player to a keyboard player. For more detailed information on this, visit this post and this post, but for now, what are some basics of being a keyboardist on a modern worship team?
- Learn to play chords and learn how to play inversions of those chords. You’ll not only create much more pleasing sounds, but you’ll save yourself from jumping all over the keyboard to get to your next chord.
- Listen and learn to play in the cracks. Listen to where there are gaps in the melody of the song and learn to add short and simple fills in that time. Don’t play fills over the melody. Listen to the other players in the band and communicate who will be adding a fill where. Don’t play over each other.
- Apply classical teaching to create fills. Remember all of that Mozart and Beethoven you learned? Much of classical music is made up of melodies that use notes that pass from one key note to another, called “passing tones.” Learn to apply these concepts to creating fills. Get away from just breaking up the three notes of a chord and use some passing tones to create more interest.
- Listen some more and learn what register to play in. If the guitarist is playing in a middle register, play up high. If the guitarist is playing in a high register…you guessed it…play down low. If you an electric guitar playing high and an acoustic guitar playing in the middle, sit out and only play fills in the cracks of the melody.
- Know when to sit out. Piano players tend to be the ones that play the most often. Learn when to play out and when to hold back. If you’re unsure, ask your worship leader.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
One of my main goals for this blog was to always provide training for worship leaders and worship teams that is practical and easily usable. So next week, we’re going to dive back into some training. We’re going to take a look at some basic, foundational things to know and apply with each instrument in the worship team and then take a look at how to put it all together. Often times in church worship teams we have a lot of people who are excited to serve but might not even know the basics about playing their instrument within a group. So, next week will look like this:
- Mon - Back to Basics: Piano & Keyboard
- Tues - Back to Basics: Acoustic & Electric Guitar
- Wed - Back to Basics: Bass Guitar
- Thurs - Back to Basics: Drums & Percussion
- Fri - Back to Basics: Putting it all Together