Chance came into Beyond Words with a lot of the song already worked out. He had lyrics, GarageBand demos, written scores, scratch vocals, alternate melodies, and notes about how nearly every section should feel.
There was plenty to sort through, but the vision itself was clear.
He wanted the song to feel like worship, with the energy of a strong praise team and the vocal weight of a choir. At the same time, he wanted room for jazz colors, restrained instrumentation, and moments where the voices could carry the song almost on their own.
The arrangement needed to move between two extremes. The verses would begin quietly, almost hushed. Then the choruses needed to open up with bigger drums, stronger vocals, and a much wider sound.
Building the Dynamics Around the Vocals
The vocal arrangement was really the center of this production.
Chance referenced the thick, doubled sound of groups like Brownstone. Even when the singers were in unison, he wanted it to feel like a wall of voices rather than one clean vocal line.
We recorded our studio vocalists in layers to create that sound. Some sections were kept controlled and blended, while others needed more freedom. Chance specifically wanted runs, moans, and vocal movement that could stretch beyond the established chords because the praise itself was supposed to feel beyond words.
That idea shaped the instrumental production too.
I programmed the drums rather than using a live drummer, but I spent time building the dynamics so they would not feel static. The drums had to stay underneath the quieter verses, then grow with the vocals as the song moved toward the larger sections.
The guitar parts were created using a detailed acoustic-guitar library. Later in the production, we added live horn parts from Ryan Classe, which gave the arrangement another human element and helped bring out some of the jazz influence Chance wanted.
The song also included a breakdown built around How Great Thou Art and What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Chance did not want it to sound like two hymns had simply been dropped into the middle of another song. He imagined the voices entering with an echoing, almost gang-vocal feel before building back into the main message.
That section became one of the places where the worship direction was clearest. The music pulls back enough to let the familiar hymn lines speak, then the arrangement begins swelling again underneath the voices.
Letting the Ending Keep Growing
Chance had a detailed picture of the ending from the beginning.
The instruments needed to become massive, but there also had to be a moment when they dropped away and allowed the voices to soar. The final vocal section could become freer, with variations, runs, and harmonies moving outside the expected pattern before everything returned to a strong resolution.
It took several versions to get there.
We worked through at least five main production revisions, with additional changes made between them. That was not because the direction was missing. It was because Chance had thought deeply about the song, and the details mattered to him.
There were a lot of moving parts, but they all pointed toward the same idea. Start with something intimate, keep widening the sound, and eventually reach a place where the praise feels too large to be contained by the original melody.
That is what made Beyond Words an interesting project for me. It was not built around one production trick or one featured instrument. The song depended on the full movement of the arrangement, from the quiet opening through the hymns, layered vocals, instrumental swells, and final release.
Chance had already imagined most of that journey. My role was to take all the files, references, melodies, and notes he had gathered and turn them into one production that felt connected from beginning to end.