Registers: Giving Each Part Its Place
This lesson shows you where to put each part of your track in pitch, from the sub up to the highs, so everything can be heard: when to double at the octave, how to avoid chords that turn muddy, and how to leave room for the vocal or the lead.
You can write correct chords, a solid bass, a well-built melody and an elegant arpeggio, and still end up with a cluttered loop where nothing stands out. Very often, the culprit isn't the mix or the choice of sounds but the writing: several parts are playing in the same pitch zone and masking one another. The fix starts in the piano roll, before you reach for any EQ.
The same chord, three heights
Listen to the A minor chord in close position, its three notes packed together, played in three octaves: very low, low, then in the midrange.
In the midrange, the chord sounds clear, and you can make out its three notes. The lower it goes, the duller and muddier it gets, until it sounds like a single low mass. You came across this in the lesson on consonance and dissonance: in the low end, close intervals like thirds clash much more than up high, because their frequencies are very close together and their harmonics get in each other's way.
Who plays where
Every part of a track has a pitch zone where it feels at home. The following table gives guidelines, not rules: a lead can go down, a bass can go up. But if you start from these zones, most conflicts disappear before they even show up.
| Part | Usual zone | Fundamentals, roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Sub and 808 | E1 to E2 | 40 to 80 Hz |
| Bass | E1 to E3 | 40 to 165 Hz |
| Chords and pads | C3 to C5 | 130 to 520 Hz |
| Lead and melody | C4 to C6 | 260 to 1,050 Hz |
| Sung vocal | A2 to C6, depending on the voice | 110 to 1,050 Hz |
| Hi-hats, cymbals, brightness | above the notes | mostly above 5 kHz |
Two remarks about this table. First, the zones overlap, and that's normal: what matters is that at any given moment, two important parts aren't playing the same notes in the same zone. Second, every sound has harmonics well above its fundamental, and a saturated bass also takes up space in the midrange. So the register of the notes doesn't tell the whole story, but it's the first lever you can pull, and it costs nothing.
Open chords in the low end
Let's get back to chords. Here's a practical rule arrangers have known for a long time: the lower you go, the more spread out the notes should be. Below about C3, it's best to keep just the root, or the root with its fifth or its octave, and to put the third and the other notes higher, in the midrange. This is also how the harmonics of a sound are naturally laid out: wide in the low end, closer and closer together toward the top.
Listen to it: it sounds bigger and wider than the close version, and yet it contains only the same three notes, A, C and E. The gaps are wide at the bottom and narrow toward the top, and the third, C, only appears from C4 up, in the midrange.
| Note | Role | Interval | Semitones |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Root | starting point | 0 |
| C | Third | minor third | 3 |
| E | Fifth | perfect fifth | 7 |
| G | Seventh | minor seventh | 10 |
In root position, the root is the lowest note: the most stable form of the chord.
As you try these out, you'll hear that the same chord can sound heavy, clear, wide or narrow, just depending on where its notes sit. This choice of layout is part of the writing, just as much as the choice of chords.
Doubling at the octave
To strengthen a part without touching the harmony, the safest way is to double it at the octave: you copy the same line twelve semitones higher or lower, often with a different sound. A lead doubled an octave up gains brightness; doubled an octave down, it gains body. Since the octave is the same note, the line stays perfectly clear.
The bass is very often doubled too, in the other direction. A low layer, close to a sine wave, holds the sub, and a second layer an octave higher, richer in harmonics, carries the note into the upper bass so it can be heard on every system. It's the same idea as distorting the 808, achieved here through the writing.
Leaving room for the vocal or the lead
The main part of a track, the vocal or the lead, is the one the listener follows. It needs a clear space, and that happens in two dimensions. The first is pitch: if your chords play in the same octave as the melody, they mask it. Move them lower, by an octave if necessary, or thin them out by removing a doubled note.
The second is time: when the vocal is singing, the other melodic parts are better off going quiet or simplifying; when it takes a breath, they can answer it in the gaps. This call and response between the vocal and an instrument is one of the most natural ways to fill a loop without cluttering it.
Here's a badly organized loop. The bass plays A2. Just above it, the A minor chord is packed together in the low end, on C3, E3 and A3, and the melody moves around C4, right next to it. The figure shows the chord and the melody. Rearrange the layout so each part has its own place, without changing the name of any note. In your DAW: move whole tracks by an octave before touching individual notes.
Each part now has its place in pitch. What's left is to organize them in time, section after section: that's the subject of the last lesson in this part, on arrangement.