Arise, My Soul, Arise - Indelible Grace (live)

Cover Notes:
1. Setting
2. Stick choice
a.) Peter Erskine Signature Stick
b.) Playing quietly
3. My musical interpretations

1. The setting is Christ Community Church in Sioux Center, IA where my wife and I regularly attend and often play on the music team. This video comes from the church service on 11/07/10. The song is "Arise, My Soul, Arise" by Indelible Grace. Their rendition is a remake of the classic hymn (of the same title) by Charles Wesley. Short of the lyrics being the same, there is not much similarity between the two songs.

2a.) The stick I have been using for medium-sized church sanctuaries is Peter Erskine's "Signature Stick" - nylon tip. Though I prefer the sound of the wood tip, the nylon tip lasts longer and doesn't get that annoying divot or groove in the tip if it's used for a while. The divot in the stick's head sounds bad on cymbals and makes the stick more prone to denting drum heads. The stick is mildly expensive ($9.29 on musiciansfriend.com) and I don't like replacing often.

b.) Al Berven of Sioux Falls Music challenged me to use sticks instead of hotrods or brushes for the majority of my playing. The reason for this is to develop a very soft touch with sticks. Many young drummers do not know how to do this. Being able to play softly with sticks is a great skill because it focuses on creating a great sound while maintaining musicianship and volume balance with the group. If you're known as "that one drummer that plays really loud"... take a break from performing and challenge yourself to practicing quietly. Play your favorite songs through headphones/speakers but put the volume at 10% of what you're used to. If you "can't hear," rush, or get lost... play quieter. I dare you. It works.

3. This song is a good energetic song. My interpretation of it is that the verses need a simple clear beat, medium volume. The choruses needed a distinct beat that is similar to the verse groove but more intense. The drum break at the end needed a beat with clear 2 and 4 (gotta help people that want to clap during a cappella parts of rock songs!).
More specifically, I dropped the volume on the 4th verse of this song, but kept the intensity (quarter note cross stick). Halfway through, I used a simple technique to build intensity with straight 8th notes with SD, HH, and BD. I break the HH and SD away from the 8th note hits and hit just a few hits, but the BD keeps going to maintain intensity into the chorus.
A common fill pattern I used was: crash, SD SD, crash. I'll use () for crash hits. Broken down beatwise, it lines up like this: (1) a2 (&). For a longer fill, double the crash, SD SD crash pattern to create this: (1) a2 (&) e& (4).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• indelible
• grace
• arise
• my
• soul
• drum
• cover
• titus
• landegent
• midastitus
• drummr
• drums
• drumming
• drummer
• le
• mars
• iowa
• peter
• erskine
• signature
• stick
• evans
• zildjian
• sioux
• center
• christ
• community
• evangelical
• free
• church
• charles
• wesley

[infection72]

i counted 7 mistakes and your crash symble in the quiet section was about f when ur other instroments were playing about mp. so get good!

[MidasTitus]

@infection72 thanks for the constructive criticism! I know my drumming is far from perfect. Because many young drummers don't have good examples of small-room church drumming, I feel there's a need for me to put out my examples. Send another message and let me know more about what you consider mistakes... it may help me get some new ideas! Thanks.

[INFLAMESROCKER]

under a bloodred sky, we shall arise!!

[tagdale]

Good going, great notes.

As the worship leader that plays with Titus often, I really appreciate how he's paying attention rather than "just playing." He's paying attention to interp, balance, audience need, less/more, and volume.

thanks Ti.