The Stage Positions of the various instruments

Strategically, we should place our instruments in a way that benefits the worship leader, musicians and the congregation.

It is not advisable to have all the band members position themselves close together. This would cause them to be unable to hear their own individual instrument clearly.

The rhythm section

• The center of it all is the drums.
• The rhythm guitarist stands on the left of the drums. He strums his guitar in-sync with the drum's hi-hat.
  
• The bass guitarist stands on the right of the drums. He plays the bass in-sync with the bass(kick) drum.
  
• The percussionists stands in front of the drums. He compliments the drums.
  

Others

• The pianists stands on the left of the worship leader, facing him to observe his gestures.
  
• The synthesizer player stands on the right also facing the worship leader and the pianist.
• The brass , wind and strings sections are placed behind the bass-drums-guitar because of their enormous volume.
• The backup singers should stand behind the worship leader so that they could also see the his hand signals . They could stand either on his left or right.

For a normal 5-piece band.

But for an orchestra.

The general principle is the louder the instrument/section is , the further it is placed away from the audience.

Notice in the picture below, the loudest section are the percussions i.e the timpani, cymbals, gongs and drums. The second loudest are the brass instruments. The softest instruments - the strings and woodwinds are the closest to the audience.