The Gift Of Confidence


There's a difference in my playing when I give myself permission to "be the drummer." That probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. What I mean is allowing myself to be the guy who knows what he's doing back there. The guy that knows how to best play his parts. The guy who practiced with the band. The guy who knows where the song is going before it goes there. What is that? It's confidence and authority. I like to call it "being the drummer." So back to what I'm trying to say. There's a difference in my playing when I give myself permission to "be the drummer." I say "permission" because only I have the power to grant that permission to myself.


Well why wouldn't I grant myself that permission? Isn't that an obvious thing to do? Well, I'll tell you why that doesn't happen sometimes. If I didn't learn my parts, I don't have my own permission to play like I confidently know them. If I don't know where the song is going, I don't have permission to confidently communicate that in my playing. This confidence is HUGE. It separates the men from the boys.


I had a private teacher who explained to me what he thinks it means to "play music." It's not reading the notes. It's not executing the right notes either. It's knowing the notes so well that you can manipulate them to do whatever it is you want to do or express them however you mean to. That's "playing music." That can't happen if you don't know your part or how the song goes.


I've played with plenty of musicians that think they don't need to learn their parts. They think they can do it on the fly. Or they think that whatever they come up with sounds a million times better than the original part that was written. They get up there and just play whatever they want however they want. If this is you, ask yourself, "Is this serving anybody? Does this serve the song? Does this serve the band/worship leader? Does this serve the church?" I'm arguing the answer is "no" on all accounts. How do you expect to lead a group of people in a song if you don't even know what song we're doing or how it goes?


Steve Goold, one of my favorite drummers, talks about excellence as a gift: 

"The excellence that you craft for yourself is a gift that you give to the people you play with and the people you play for...I'm not sure skill is a gift at all. It's developed. You kind of earn it. Skillfulness is not something that is bestowed upon you; it's something that you develop for yourself. It takes hard work. It takes dedication. It takes a lot of practice time...Passion. Maybe that's the gift part. Not everyone cares about music..."

Excellence is a gift you give. Wow. So what exactly do you think your gift is that you're giving when you don't come prepared? By learning the songs, you give yourself permission to be confident, which takes your playing to the next level, and you're giving a gift of excellence to the people that will hear you. 



If you want to know how I approach learning songs, you can read about it in this post: Super Strong Starting Song Stages

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