Worship Percussion Training – Live Example & Talk Through

  Speaker 1 In this video, I’m going to share with you some advanced techniques for how to arrange and structure a song as a percussionist in worship. Now, if you want to see how I built this setup, I have a different video, and I will link it below. If you want the sounds that you’re about to hear on this drum pad, I will also link those below. But in this video, you’re going to hear me and the band play a fast song and a slow song. You’re going to hear how the percussion parts fit, how I’m building a song, how I’m climax a song, and I’m going to break all that down for you in this video. Okay, so the first tip that I I want to mention before we even start playing is I adjusted my mix like crazy. Whoever was using the percussion set up before had a very washy mix. There was a lot of reverb. They had a lot of the singers up. I turned all the singers way down. I turned off all the reverb. I turned the click up and the drums up. I only really want to hear the click, the drums, and enough of the singers to know where we’re at in the song.

Speaker 1 Obviously, you want a little bit of the other instruments, but definitely adjust your mix to be tight. You want to be super on the beat. That’s the point as a percussionist. So make sure your mix sounds good for playing, not for listening. All right, so let’s go ahead and start, and you’ll hear me starting with a little bit of a cymbal swell.

Speaker 2 Entro, two, three, four.

Speaker 1 So the first thing is I want to tell my percussionist this at my church, if you’re watching this, I like you to use the texture of the symbol. I want you to use it whenever the pads are in, in between songs, or when I’m talking, you can just lightly keep a little bit of texture. Imagine it like a pad, like a backing pad. You can keep it going during those softer moments. You don’t have to not play. You can use this basically anytime it’s quiet. While the worship leader was talking, I was doing this. Then when we started the song, I swelled in. One little thing about swells is you want to swell one, two, three, four, and then take it off before the one again because your drummer is going to hit the one count on his crash cymbal. And so what you want is to blossom this cymbal before your drummer hits the one count and let the one count be for the drummer. You can swell this, and you’ll see it a few times in this set that you’re going to watch. You’ll see a few times where I swell, and then I come off, and you let the sound blossom, and then the downbeat happens.

Speaker 1 So blossom your sound with your cymbal. Here we go. Just a small strategy is I like to hit the tambourine with my stick because then I don’t have to pick up my stick later to hit all of these different elements on the drum pad. I like that. Do that. Don’t put the stick down and use your hand. Use the stick. If you really want to use your hand, you can still keep the stick in your hand and just hit your palm.

Speaker 2 Verse 2, 3, 4.

Speaker 1 Now I’m using my palm, you see? And also the downlifter, I use that anytime we’re exiting a large sounding segment. So we were in that intro, it was louder, and we’re going to down into the verse. I’m going to do a downlifter to bring the energy down. That’s what I hit at the end of that introduction. There’s also a The background tambourine. You can hear it in the background. That was some lady in the front row who had no rhythm, and of course, she had to sit in the front row. But just ignore the in between taps if you hear it. I’m looking at my guy like, Do you hear that? I’m so confused. What is that extra sound? You always want to be super tight with the click. You have to be so tight with the click. When you subdivide, you’ll hear it with the shaker later as well. Chorus, two, three, four. Sometimes just to add texture, instead of just hitting the tambourina, I’ll add that reverb snare underneath the real drummer’s snare just on the four counts. So he gets the snare on the two, and then he gets the snare with my added snare underneath his snare on the four count, just to add texture and variety to the songs.

Speaker 1 You don’t want to hit every one of these elements, every single two, four, two, four, because it gets annoying.

Speaker 2 Entro, two, three, four. Verse, two, three, four. ♪ It’s been all day, so, so, and I remember that time, my sun and dark. ♪ There’s been no glory, there’s been no glory, ♪ Oh, rough andation, it’s just fantastic. ♪ And like the sun, all of your face, then. ♪ There’s been no glory, makes me now bother. ♪ It’s been Chorus, two, three, four.

Speaker 1 That was an uplifter. I like to hit that about four counts before. It doesn’t actually have an actual BPM to it, so you have to guess. But I like to hit it around four counts before as the band is building. It’s lifting the frequencies while the band builds into a chorus or into a big bridge. You’ll hear that later in the slower songs as well. I actually combined. I combined the uplifter with the cymbal swell, and then I got ready to start shaking my tambourine for the chorus.

Speaker 3 I’m editing the video and I’m interrupting myself because I noticed one last thing I forgot to point out, which is during those uplifters, as I’m getting ready to go into the chorus, you can start to shake your tambourine early. While the uplifter builds and the symbol swell happens, you can start to more and more shake your tambourine. You start a little further away from the mic and you shake a little bit narrower, and then you get harder and harder and closer to the mic. And then when you get to the one count, then you’re in the full swing, full heavy velocity intensity of the tambourine shakes. But it’s another way to build the intensity. So you have the uplifter, the symbol as well, and then some light tambourine shakes that lead into the full tambourine shakes on the one beat.

Speaker 1 That’s just one thing I thought was worth highlighting. The other thing is you notice as I was coming out of that chorus and going into a quieter part, I stopped hitting the tambourine like and I started to just fade away into the distance, just so that your ending doesn’t super-abruptly end at the end of the chorus. You just start to fade it into the background. You shake it more gently, and you move it away from the microphone. Also, another note was I was extremely close to the microphone, both for my tambourine and my shaker, which you’ll see in the next song. But you want to be close enough so that the sound guy is picking up your your actual instrument and not just the sound all around you.

Speaker 2 Bridge. Two, three, four.

Speaker 1 And I always encourage my musicians to sing when they’re able. So here I’m trying to demonstrate that singing as I’m also doing my craft here.

Speaker 1 Bridge, two, three, four. Corus, two, three, four.

Speaker 2 Outro 2, 3, 4. Ending, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

Speaker 1 Okay, a couple of things about the ending. Whenever there’s a really big ending, I like to… You heard me swelling into it, and then I hit the impact, which is like, boom, this big, really boom sound. Then I went back to the cymbal and I swelled. You know how they do a trashcan ending? The band is trashcanning out. Well, you want a trashcan with them with your little trash can here, your little cymbal, and you want to play decrescendo, but keep the texture. You noticed I kept the texture between the songs. Then as the new song counted in, then I grabbed my shaker, I put my tambourine down, and I grabbed my shaker and I kept the cymbal swelling. I’m using the wrong hand, but I kept my cymbal swelling. Then I… Two, three, four. Always in between songs, decrescendo, but keep the symbol there a little bit, and then recrescendo in to make the transition smooth. Hopefully, the drummer is also doing that, but you want to be that extra layer and texture. And those in between moments when you’re swelling, that’s when you can switch your Shaker and your tambourine. Okay, I’m going to skip to What A Beautiful Name.

Speaker 1 And this is a more nuanced song where I have Shaker and tambourine and different patterns for my reverb tambourine here. So I’m going to walk you through how I’m building that song now.

Speaker 2 One, two, three, four.

Speaker 1 So I’m just keeping time with the cymbal. Sometimes I’ll do counter rhythms, so it’ll be like… Actually, I want to call that out a little bit more. In this video, I’m only doing eighth notes, but sometimes you can do cool counter rhythms like… Because it’s a soft mallet. It’s not going to really be piny. It’s more just this underbedded Almost like a warm synth with an ARP sound to it. So yeah, try counter rhythms while you’re keeping time. Start to swell. Let me show you that swell again, just to see how I blossom before the one. So it climax before the downbeat. And notice also that I’m slapping only on the four, not the two. I’m not going one, two, three, four. I’m waiting for that. I’ll probably do that in verse two. But with percussion, you don’t have a lot to add. So you have to be slow to add your subdivisions or your accents. And later on, you’ll see that I only hit the reverb tambourine every eight counts, not every four. And then later, I add a fourth. So you’re adding subdivisions as the song progresses, if that makes sense. So don’t give it all the way up front.

Speaker 1 That’s what I’m trying to say. Only every eight am I hitting that tambourine sound. And now I’m going to add it. I’m going to go every four because we’ve gone to the chorus, so I want to add a subdivision. I missed one. So remember the da, da, da, da, da, da, da, See how I’m… You can think of that symbol like a pad, another texture to your band. Start to build the intensity. That was the impact, boom. I always hit that whenever it’s a strong part, like, You have no ride, boom. Impact again. Uplifter. When the band is building and the uplifter is going up, I can switch to my tambourine. So that’s when you switch. You want to switch from Shaker to tambourine when the band is building because it’s not going to be so obvious. People are going to hear other things coming in and intensity growing. That’s when it gives you a moment to switch from shaker to tambourine. And that’s something that you should practise, is get good at you’re putting this down and you’re picking this up while the band builds, and then you’re ready when it gets down to the one beat.

Speaker 1 That’s a little bit of an art that you need to practise. But that’s when you should switch instruments is when the band is building. Again, notice how tight on my timing I am. I’m using the stick to hit so that I can use the mallet for other sounds when I need to.

Speaker 1 That’s the impact. Uplifter. That was a sub drop, the one that makes the subs rumble. That was on the four count. I like to hit those on the very last chorus, usually only one time per set. You don’t want to overuse the sub drop. It’s an overkill. But at that most impactful moment, right before the final chorus of the most climactic song, the sub drop takes it over the top. I tried to hit the impact one last time, but I hit the reverb tambourine. Then at the end, I was swelling and doing a little bit of a jingle. That’s fine, too. You have to remember what you’re hearing is primarily the percussion mix. You’re not hearing the full band, so maybe it sounds a little bit out of context, but I wanted you to hear it clearly so that you would how to approach the percussion layer building that I’d like you to do at your church, and I want my team to do at my church. So hopefully, watching it and hearing it was helpful. And I have three links for you below. I have the How to build this setup link. I have the sound effects for this.

Speaker 1 Drum pad, completely free. You can have them. And then I have the more basic percussion training video that I did previously. So hopefully all these percussion resources helps you develop a percussion position at your church because it’s a great way to get people involved. While you’re down there looking at those links, hit subscribe and like this video, and I’ll see you in the next one. God bless.