Getting away from the hi-hat

rogue_drummer

Gold Member
I play in my church's praise and worship band and 95% of the songs we play are contemporary christian songs with the standard 4/4 rock beat on the hi hats, per the recordings. Real boring stuff

I'm given pretty much free reign over what I play and I am really trying to make it not so "boring". So I'm migrating from hats to my 20" Paiste crash / ride cymbal for most of my patterns, just to add some spice to the songs. That makes it really easy to accent certain gooves or parts of a song with slight crashes on the ride. Anything wrong with experimenting this way?

I know Keith Moon pretty much completely ditched the hi-hats that were normally used in rock back then and watching vids of Buddy Rich in action he rarely uses the hats except for specifc parts of a song or solo.

Also by doing this I can give cues a lot easier this way by emphasizing slight crashes and pings on the bell.

Any thoughts? I've to got push it and experiment or else I'm gonna die from bordom. :)
 
You could do whatever you want, but in reality, you getting bored is not something of anyone's concern. Your job is to help the music come alive the way the church wants to hear it. If they don't care how you do it, go right ahead. But if they want it a certain way, then they want it a certain way. Be a pro and give it to them that way.

There aren't too many drummers who can get away with what Keith Moon did, and Buddy's music didn't involve rock 'n roll hi-hat-ing. You do what the music requires.
 
I play in church too, and it all it depends on the song! I try and switch it up 50/50 throughout the service. Maybe 50/50 per song, even. Nothing wrong with experimenting, but I suggest figuring that all out during practice. Some songs I do different nearly every time we play, others I have down to where it's the same every time because I found something that I really like. I make up most of my drum parts, but others I'll stay true to the original recording.

When playing in church, just do whatever you can get away with. ;)
 
You could do whatever you want, but in reality, you getting bored is not something of anyone's concern. Your job is to help the music come alive the way the church wants to hear it. If they don't care how you do it, go right ahead. But if they want it a certain way, then they want it a certain way. Be a pro and give it to them that way.

There aren't too many drummers who can get away with what Keith Moon did, and Buddy's music didn't involve rock 'n roll hi-hat-ing. You do what the music requires.

I echo everything said here

.....and add that Buddy would start more than half his tunes playing "55" on the hats
 
You'd get bored if you only played the ride too. Just mix it up.
 
The thing that concerns me the most is the getting bored part. That's toxic thinking. It's a known pitfall. Are you bored or do you think you sound boring? Two different things kind of. You just have to trust that you do not sound boring when you are keeping time, because you don't sound boring. You could be bored but you don't sound boring. I don't agree with going to the ride to prevent boredom, especially when a vocalist is on mic. What difference in regards to boredom would that make anyway? Sometimes keeping straight time just sounds so good, it's all you need to do. Why complicate things? Everything isn't supposed to be really hard all the time. I'd say use the time you would normally be bored and catch peoples eye, practice smiling, do something to give yourself a new challenge, but don't change the drum part (unless it's an improvement) trying to combat same-ness. I'd also go out on a limb a little here and say that if you're bored...you're not grooving as deep as you could be. When you're grooving it's hard to be bored. Perhaps you should work on deepening the groove when you feel bored. I find it hard to believe that your groove is as deep as you can get it and you're still bored.
 
You could do whatever you want, but in reality, you getting bored is not something of anyone's concern. Your job is to help the music come alive the way the church wants to hear it. If they don't care how you do it, go right ahead. But if they want it a certain way, then they want it a certain way. Be a pro and give it to them that way.

There aren't too many drummers who can get away with what Keith Moon did, and Buddy's music didn't involve rock 'n roll hi-hat-ing. You do what the music requires.

This sums it up for me exactly.

But I get what you're experiencing and I can only tell you what works for me: Seek musical situations that call for more variety from the drums. I find that having an outlet for my creative side is essential. It satisfies my need to express myself and makes it easy to stay focused when playing a gig that demands less flair from the drums.
 
There were certain songs I used to not get much joy from...Suzie Q comes to mind, just a straight beat most of the song. It was all in my own attitude. Now, during those songs, I changed my entire attitude about them and now I use my reserve brainpower to look around, notice things, and enjoy what I do. I smell the roses so to speak.

It's all in your head. Time to change the tape in your head from the one that says "Ho hum" to the one that says, Rouge, you've got the deepest groove of anyone withing a hundred mile radius, and you're just killin it now.
 
Play what you think sounds good for the songs, but I'm going to echo Larry in post #7 "You could be bored, but you don't sound boring" as something to consider.
Hi Hats can be a pretty dang expressive instrument on the kit, easily as much as a ride IMO.

The audience (congregation in this case) isn't going to care, or be more into it (or whatever) if you are playing the ride instead of the hi hats.
If there's life in the music, that's what they are going to respond to. You're playing in a praise and worship band that's supposed to inspire the listeners. I'm assuming you want to be playing in this situation, so if you put what you have into what you're doing, it will be a better experience for everyone.

Best of luck with it!!
 
I'd just point out that choirs often rely on the hats as a metronome, because they will always cut through anything else going on. They might not like it if you take that away.
 
I also mostly play the safe and boring four four on my four by four.

When I think of myself as a drummer, I am never happy with my lack of flash.

When I think of myself as a musician, I am quite content with my contribution to the song, no matter how sparse my playing.

Barry
 
There were certain songs I used to not get much joy from...Suzie Q comes to mind, just a straight beat most of the song. It was all in my own attitude. Now, during those songs, I changed my entire attitude about them and now I use my reserve brainpower to look around, notice things, and enjoy what I do. I smell the roses so to speak.

It's all in your head. Time to change the tape in your head from the one that says "Ho hum" to the one that says, Rouge, you've got the deepest groove of anyone withing a hundred mile radius, and you're just killin it now.

The thing that concerns me the most is the getting bored part. That's toxic thinking. It's a known pitfall. Are you bored or do you think you sound boring? Two different things kind of. You just have to trust that you do not sound boring when you are keeping time, because you don't sound boring. You could be bored but you don't sound boring. I don't agree with going to the ride to prevent boredom, especially when a vocalist is on mic. What difference in regards to boredom would that make anyway? Sometimes keeping straight time just sounds so good, it's all you need to do. Why complicate things? Everything isn't supposed to be really hard all the time. I'd say use the time you would normally be bored and catch peoples eye, practice smiling, do something to give yourself a new challenge, but don't change the drum part (unless it's an improvement) trying to combat same-ness. I'd also go out on a limb a little here and say that if you're bored...you're not grooving as deep as you could be. When you're grooving it's hard to be bored. Perhaps you should work on deepening the groove when you feel bored. I find it hard to believe that your groove is as deep as you can get it and you're still bored.

Those are great comments. Playing any music well requires you to be engaged and focused, which makes it hard to get bored. I don't think just hitting more junk is the solution here.
 
I currently play in a praise team with at most three backing singers, no choir. How much I use the ride versus the hats depends on which iteration of the team is on stage at any given point. Our primary worship leader can keep everyone spot-on with tempo and has great song sense. I tend to play a lot more on the ride when he leads because I don't have to enforce timekeeping as much, and the wash of the ride creates a nice, almost melodic pad for some of the more "ethereal" sounding tunes.

On the other hand, for our monthly Sunday evening contemplative worship services, we have a husband-wife team who split the tempo pretty evenly - he (guitar) always rushes, she (vocals/keys) always drags. The piano player is our regular keyboard player and her time is tentative. In this case, I'm working whatever I can use to keep the tempo. In soft passages this may be ticking out quarters or eighths on the hat; this may be emphasizing the two and four on the bell of the ride, very softly. In both scenarios, I try to get a groove going, to help the band feel the pulse so that I can step away from having to sheepdog everyone into the tempo.

To echo what others have said - serve the service and the song. If the leader has a particular sound in his or her head, be prepared to do it; but if you have not been given that direction, and you get to a point in a song where, were it a pop song, you would switch to ride - switch to ride. You can experiment a bit, but not to the point where the band gets lost. A lot of this will depend on the experience, both individually and as a group, of your worship team. Good players, or a group of players who have been together a while, can adapt to this. On the other hand, some players will flounder if they hear anything at all that they aren't expecting.
 
Great advice here.

I think it's more my attitude towards continually playing the same ol' same ol' and not having new material to practice and perform, which is driving me nuts, so I'm switching to the ride a lot to mix it up a bit and seeing if a new ride groove works or sucks.

I'm finding about the only times I get excited is playing a new song or if we play something in 6/8 or 3/4 or 9/8, which isn't often enough.

I'm told we have some new material, we're just waiting for the "right" time to introduce it.
I completely agree with playing for the song though.

We preform some songs perfect for the hats and I stay on them, either keeping a tight groove or doing the Stewart Copeland thing and laying down a groove using just the hats open and closed. So far nobody has said one way or the other, so I'm playing around some.

I've even thought about canvasing the youth or young adults to see if maybe we have a student drummer or someone else who may want to join the band. Maybe we can take turns with the drumming duties by swtiching off every week? With approve from the leader of course.

We have a set of good congas we never use, so maybe we could spice things up using those some? Add a latin feel.

I think it's more of my attitude than anything else.

Thanks guys, this helps!
 
Being bored with your playing means that is what you are listening to most of the time.

Consider the whole song every time you play.

Not only will you alleviate your boredom but you will improve the quality of the song in general.
 
There's always places to go if you want to play the song deeper. I guess that's what you are doing by going to the ride, but you call it being bored. I think what you really are looking for is to feel the song deeper.

Maybe you need that other drummer to spice things up. The first time he plays the song that you're bored with...do you think he would be bored too?
 
I think the other drummer will be just as excited or more so than his or her first prom date. LOL

Ya, it's my attitiude and not having any new material in months. Tine to rethink things.
 
Why not maybe mixing it up with a tambourine or maybe even a Chopper? My parent's church's drummer does that.
 
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