Principle #1 - Play According to the Room Size

We cannot play our instruments in a small room the way we play at a huge stadium.

We do not wack the drums or power-chords the guitar in a small church hall as if we are in a huge stadium.

Lots of beautiful music have been drown by one selfish musician who plays way too loud.

Usually, its the drummer or the guitarist who plays too loud.

Remember - a worship band is not a one man self-glorifying ego-trip performance but a humble team of musicians who serve.

Eventually, band members would not want to play with a musician who consistently drowns their music.

Bear in mind that powerful sound waves from low frequency instruments like the drums & bass can be re-amplified a few times over by reverberations in an unacoustically-treated church hall.

Thus, the drums and bass can sound very very loud and muddy.

Loud beautiful music = noise.

Musical dynamics - the term for playing soft and loud - is the hardest to master for any musician.

Church bands should learn and practice to play from the softest to the loudest and vice-versa.

Bands should have their playing sessions recorded and analyze to determine which instruments are unnecessarily loud and corrections needed to be made. Most of the time , those who played loud do not know that they are excessively loud.

There is one saying - If you can't hear what your other musicians are playing, it means you are playing way too loud !

if you visit a hotel lounge where the live band is playing , you will notice how balanced the music is. The drummer is playing gently but with lots of finesse. That is how a professional band plays. Not with excessive noise but with finesse.

How to play the drums expressively and yet not to drown others ?

Multirod drumsticks would do the trick.

Multirods are drumsticks that consist of smaller rods tied together. These flexible smaller rods would absorb much of the energy , thus reducing the drumbeat volume.

For drummers who thinks drumming is like doing construction work.. read this.

http://www.ehow.com/how_15103_play-drums-you.html