Choosing the Right Drums for your Worship Service

 Occasionally I get the random email from worship leader friends of mine asking what kind of drums and cymbals they should buy for their church. Even though I’ve covered this subject a bit in my book Worship Drums Guide. It’s a question worth answering to the public since it seems that I have never been able to give a simple unilateral answer. And from years of giving worship leaders advice on what kind, type, and brand of drum kits to buy. I’ve found that there are not only variables at play in what kind of drums/cymbals to buy that fit your particular church service. But there are also many drums and cymbals for your specific budget.

So where to begin? Well, let’s start by asking what kind of church sanctuary you have before you buy your churches first drum kit. You can save you and your pastor some grief in his email inbox by simply being practical. For Instance, there are many shapes, sizes, and floor surfaces of church sanctuaries that I’ve played in over the years that require the appropriate types of drums and cymbals to keep your sound guy happy. So you have to be real honest with yourself and ask “Do I just want to Rock out?” or “Do I want to buy the right drums that would be the most beneficial for church worship?” So this comes to beg the obvious question. Would the age makeup, design of your sanctuary, size of your soundboard, and size of your church benefit more from real drums? Or from electric drums?

An Electric drum kit is usually the first place a more traditional church goes when they go to a contemporary service. The electric kit is a very practical solution for easing an older crowd into drums in the sanctuary and the volume level is also easily controlled. The only downside of electric kits have been the sounds at times (In my opinion). It’s not that all the drum sounds are the worst and that you or I can’t live with them. It’s the cymbals that have always been the hard bargain for me. But with more and more drum sample libraries entering the music software market. We are really starting to hear some incredible drum samples. The only problem is that the electronic kits that are out there on the market do not have these quality of samples… yet. I believe they will in the future with more research and development in how to incorporate high fidelity samples in an electronic kit. There is a way to incorporate these drum sample libraries into your electronic kit if you also might feel the same way. I have already covered the basics on how you can incorporate these sample libraries into any electric kit in my book. If you choose to go that route then you can see in illustrations how you can make it happen for a reasonable price. But in contrast, I also feel that a lot of churches and people will not know the difference. And the stock samples that you acquire in your electric kit should do the job.

The biggest benefits that electric drums will be for your church is containment, minimal input usage, and volume control. If you’re just using the stock sounds out of your electric kit’s brain; Then all you have to do is use 2 inputs for your whole drum mix. That certainly makes things easy on the sound man especially if you’re a smaller church with a smaller soundboard. The electronic kits are also easy to move and live on a smaller stage. They don’t really take up a lot of space and you don’t have to put a lot of stuff around them to tone down the volume (like a drum shield). A lot of churches will benefit from these factors in their old sanctuaries that can’t really make a real drum kit work.

There’s only one electronic kit that I really recommend and it’s any of the Roland electric kits from the TD-KV series and all the lines that go up in price from it. They will range from $1500 to $7500 – The reason I like the Roland kits is because of the real swivel of the cymbals when you hit them and the mesh heads of the drums. I also think their sounds are great and the integration of any outside midi sounds is easy to patch in. But for me, the feel of the Roland kits has historically been the best. You can also add the Roland SPD-30 pad and trigger loops or more auxiliary sounds. But whatever your budget for an electronic kit may be. The Roland electric kits are the top in the market and second to none.

I’ve played real drums in every shape and size of sanctuary for every age group with and without drum shields. Even if I played with brushes or hot rods, it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I’ve even been asked to play with brushes or hot rods inside of a drum house with a roof. It seems that every one of these scenarios were dependent on how loud I played no matter what kind of stick I used. So you might have to experiment with trial and error to see if real drums work for your room and congregation. Then you might want to either start with a drum shield or add it later if your drums are just too loud no matter how hard your drummer is playing. A drum shield will take getting use to for your drummer and worship team and requires its own set of rules that I won’t go into in this article. But I have played drums with no drum shields in small rooms and it’s worked just fine. It seems that there are age groups and church rooms that can handle it. Of course this approach takes some major restraint on a drummer’s part to not overplay and hold back in volume. Drum shields make sense in the older sanctuaries because they were churches built for choirs, organs, and to largely amplify unplugged sound from the stage. So drums are naturally going to be boomy and overpowering in an older church. Whatever your church may be comprised of; Just be aware of all these angles that I’ve encountered and be practical. You may or may not spend a lot of money to make real drums fit your church needs. I’ve always told my worship leader friends to just go ahead and buy the drum shield whether you’ll really need it or not. Sometimes you might end up using it to keep the drums contained if you have a lot of mics on stage. Consult and work with your sound man on this. This should be an issue that he or she will understand quite well.

This is easy from my perspective because I prefer to play Real drums over Electric drums any day of the week. I also see the difference in energy from the stage in how everyone plays when real drums are on stage. It’s easy to understand why this is, even if your whole band is on In-Ear Monitors, because the drums are live, loud, and on stage. The drummer controls the dynamics and therefore it requires a mature enough drummer to realize if he or she should be louder than everyone on stage (Which almost always a drummer is). I also think that real drums can sound the best. It takes a great sound man to know the room, right equipment, and right mics in order to pull off a great live drum sound. But I do think it sounds the best when correctly processed and played. And then you’re going to also need good sounding drums and a good drummer to round out the benefits of using real drums in your service.

Craviotto – Range between $7k – 9k (Boutique cream of the crop Drums and can only be bought at select drum shops or some online – These are my dream drums and I love the way they sound but they are very pricey. If you want to pay for them then you love the tone. They are very loud though and are perfect for big stages and churches )

C&C – Range between $2k – 4k (Great sounding top of the line drums for the price. Can only be found at select drum shops or online – I’ve never heard a bad sounding C&C kit and they’re gaining popularity beyond the Boutique drum community)

DW – Range between $1.5k – 7k (DW Drums have been a very popular and solid drum kit for a long time now. I personally always ask for them when I have to do fly dates with artists and I need to rent a kit. They sound great and have a distinct sound. They do tend to detune in the lug system at times but seriously that’s about the only thing I’ve ever had a problem with. Plus you can find them at about every Guitar Center, Drum Shop, or Online store for affordable prices)

Gretsch – Range between $1k – 5k (Gretsch are great drums for the range of price. I once set up a Gretsch Renown kit for Vinnie Colaiuta and sat behind him while he played it. Needless to say it sounded amazing (Vinnie can make anything sound good) but I was hooked on Gretsch after that. They are solid high end drums for the price.

Ludwig – Range between $1k – 4k (Ludwig has really stepped up their game in the last 5 years with their higher end drums and they look and sound great. Ludwig was one of the first drum kits manufactured and have been around a long time. Some of the greatest drummers that have lived and are still alive choose Ludwig. I am asked if I have any vintage Ludwig drums for session work all the time and usually rent them for studio work because of their coveted antique sound. If you don’t want to pay for the new one then you can surely find the vintage Ludwig kits on Craigslist or Ebay. The vintage Ludwig kits are high in demand today and sound great. It’s up to you how retro you want to look and sound for your church service. But Ludwig kits are a great way to go if you’re going that direction)

Yamaha – Range between $500 – 5k (Yamaha makes the entry level Stage Custom all the way to high end Maple Customs – Yamaha is known for that tight and punchy sound and have been the choice of many drummers for many years – I think Yamaha is great and they have their own distinct sound – You can also find Yamaha Drums about everywhere )

Pacific PDP – Range between $300 – 1.5k (DW makes Pacific PDP drums and I think that they are the best midlevel drums for the price and Quality. I recommend them to a lot of worship leaders looking to not spend a lot of money but still get some quality drums for their church service. Guitar Center usually carries a Pacific PDP kit and they’re easy to find.)

Mapex – Range between $300 – 3k (I have to give Mapex recognition because they were the first drums that I ever owned. They have always made great kits and I believe that there are some great drummers out there like Gregg Bissonette and Russ Miller that swear by them. And like the other Drum kits in this category you can usually find them at a Guitar Center or music store.)

The one thing you really can’t do is go too awfully cheap on cymbal quality. The cheaper or lower line cymbal you buy will usually give you that “trash can” effect. Lower line cymbals are usually heavy and not hammered at all. The hammering done by the manufacturer takes more time and thus creates the tone of the cymbal. The different cymbal makers in the drum community also create cymbals from Bright to Dark to Trashy to Splashy. It’s important to understand the qualities of each cymbal line and not just pick any cymbal before knowing what will sound best in your church. Cymbals are the loudest and can be the hardest thing to control on your kit even behind a drum shield. Over the years it seems the darker cymbals versus the brighter cymbals have always worked better in a church environment. They aren’t as shimmery and reflective as a bright sounding cymbal. The cymbal line that has usually been the most successful in this regard has been the Zildjian K line. The Zildjian K’s are made to be a Darker overtone and have recently released the Hybrid Zildjian K’s to blend the bright with the dark.

I personally have always used Paiste Signature and Traditionals for years. The Paiste Signature line are beautiful and bright. They are very loud and I started using them for Studio work to have cymbals that cut through a Rock N Roll mix. Drummers like John Bonham and Alex Van Halen are some of the most famous Paiste users using the 2002 and Signature lines for Rock N Roll. The Paiste Traditional and Dark Energy lines are the opposite of the Signature and 2002s in that they are definitely darker and a little softer. They are a great answer to bright and loud. I will go ahead and tell you that most churches benefit going to the darker lines of cymbal before using a Zildjian A or Paiste Signature line which are brighter and loud. You want a cymbal that doesn’t take over the stage and be a hassle for your sound man. Most cymbals bleed right into vocal mics and make a sound man have to use gates on overheads and vocal mics just to control the bleed. So usually darker has been, in my experience, better. The frequency and natural softness are easier to maintain in a church setting and you’ll probably save your sound man a lot of headaches.

Paiste – Traditional, Signature Dark Energy

Zildjian – K, K Custom, Constantinople

Bosphorus – Any

Istanbul – Any

Meinl – Byzance Traditional, Byzance Dark