Frequencies

All sound is simply vibrating airwaves — air molecules hitting your eardrum at different rates. Low sounds vibrate slowly with longer wavelengths; high sounds vibrate faster with shorter ones. When you arrange your band and your songs, keeping frequencies in mind lets you use God’s gift of sound to its fullest. The goal: operate across the entire frequency range — lows, mids, and highs.

Every instrument has a sweet spot

Each instrument was designed to cover a certain frequency range and sounds best there:

• Lows: kick drum, bass guitar.
• Highs: cymbals, electric guitar.
• Mids: piano, acoustic guitar, and the human voice.

Yes, you can play an instrument outside its range — a bass way up the fretboard, a piano way up top on the right hand — but it’s not the ideal. As the arranger, understanding each instrument’s sweet spot helps you create the most pleasing arrangements.

Spread instruments across the spectrum

Your job as arranger is to spread your instruments and their parts across the whole spectrum, from lows to highs.

If everybody is crowding into the same frequency range, you’re going to have clashing frequencies, and all of your parts will lack distinction.

If your arrangements sound crowded, it’s probably because everyone is piling into one range. The fix is to spread them out so you can hear the timbre and nuance of each instrument:

• Keep the bass player down low — a quick trip up high is fine, but no noodling in the mid-range where it steps on the piano and vocals.
• If your electric is fretting in the same range as your acoustic, have the electric slide up to the next position, an octave higher, so the two instruments stay distinct.
• Have the pianist move their left hand lower and right hand higher to open up mid-range room.

Reserve the mids for vocals

In a worship context, reserve the mid-range for the voices. That’s the most important element. Leave space in your arrangements so the vocals sit nicely in their pocket, stay clear, and cut through the mix instead of getting buried.

Make a song grow by expanding and contracting

A song journeys from start to finish, and you can make it grow by adding and subtracting frequencies as it progresses:

• Verses pull back toward the mid-range.
• Choruses expand outward, adding higher and lower frequencies.
• The bridge goes even bigger.

In practice: the electric guitar is in for the chorus but out for the verse (or out for half the verse, then adds some top end). The drummer closes the hi-hat for the verse so it isn’t sizzly, then opens it for the chorus to add top-end. For a down chorus, contract even further — pull the bass out completely so you’re left with just piano, acoustic, and voices — then bring the bass back as it builds.

For your final choruses, use the widest range possible: the electric jumps up an octave, you add a tambourine, violin, or a strings pad on the piano. Alex tells his pianists to jump up an octave on the last chorus so it feels different from the rest of the song.

You want to use the widest range of frequencies that God gave you access to in order to make your band arrangements sound rich, full, vivid, and colorful.

Application

• Listen to a recent recording of your band. Are multiple instruments crowding one range? Where does it sound cluttered?
• Assign each player a “lane” for a song and protect the mid-range for vocals. Does the mix open up?
• Plan one song’s dynamic arc by frequency: which instruments drop out for the verse, which return for the chorus, and how do you make the final chorus the widest moment?