@KaseboyAdvanceNB

8 years ago

As a novice black drummer from a pretty religious family and a very spiritual and musical black church, I just wanna spread some wisdom shared with me by the serveral drummers we have at the church. (We have two drummers at the church, in case one is absent and two drummers for each of our adult choirs.) For gospel drumming you want to start quiet. The beginning of the song should be on cross-stick and should transition to quiet hits on the snare before the first chorus, and around the last chorus (and if your church is as enthusiastic as mine is, there probably will be a repeat of the chorus/encore) you wanna switch to ride. I say this because a lot of my church member are members of the older crowd and they would prefer if things got gradually and appropriately loud. Knowledge of Jazz, Swing, Funk, Boogie-Woogie, Rock n Roll and Caribbean drumming is pretty important due to the variation amongst Gospel and Spiritual music. (We have an international day at my church annually, so the instrumentatation must be able to preform ethnically diverse genres) CCM tends to be more similar to Rock, Country, Pop and Folk, so listening to these genres is pretty important. Playing Gospel is like playing in a band or group in that you must pay attention to the rest of the musicians and the singers as well as the situation you're playing in. However, this is Gospel. In the Gospel Genre, the religious message is much more important than the music at times. Also, I didn't know that there was a perception that Gospel drumming was about having amazing chops, I always thought that it was about sounding good and appropriate. My church's drummer's only demonstrate their chops during fills and during the end of the song's "fermata" of sorts. I hope this was informative, feel free to correct me on anything I said wrong, mispoke on or didn't say.

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