3 Tips To Instantly Improve Your Worship Song Arrangements

Jun 27

Written By Leading Worship Well | Spencer Cormany

3 Tips To Instantly Improve Your Worship Song Arrangements

Focusing on song arrangements is one of the easiest ways to improve your worship team's sound. It doesn't take learning any new musical skill - all you have to do is know how to steward the skills your team DOES have well.

In fact, about 99% of song arranging is knowing when NOT to play. Literally, the act of you doing nothing instead of doing something is the key to making your band sound better.

The truth is that most worship team musicians play and sing way more than they need to. There is little thought put behind the musical parts. You, as the leader, simply communicating that just because someone is up front leading worship doesn't mean that they have to be playing the entire time is half the battle. But, what else can you do to improve your worship song arrangements?

Here are 3 tips to instantly improve your worship song arrangements:

1 | Copy the original arrangement

It's hard to start from zero - so don't. You didn't write songs before you learned how to play your instrument. You learned other people's songs and, in the process, eventually learned how to create your own.

The same is true for song arrangements. Start by learning from people who already know how to do it. When you hear a recording of a song, those musicians didn't just decide to play whenever they wanted to. They hired a producer to arrange each song and pick exactly who would play when.

So, to start, just copy what the original recording sounds like.

2 | Ask: What is going to make this part of the song different from the rest?

When it comes to creating your own song arrangements, the key is to make each part of the song different. There are tons of ways to do that: dynamics, instrumentation, guitar effects, octave jumps, etc. No two parts of the song should sound exactly the same - chorus 1 should be different from chorus 2 and so on.

3 | If you have multiple singers, don't have them all sing the entire song

If you start a song off full blast with everyone singing, you have nowhere to go dynamically. Start with one singer and slowly add more over time. That way, when you hit the bridge and everyone finally comes in, it makes an impact.

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