Teaching myself to sing and play...

[Kuhnfyoozed]

I have been forced into a position in my band where I must sing and play frequently. May not sound like a hard task for many of our experienced songwriters here, but I am not a confident singer and can't seem to get the hand of playing and singing simultaneously. My issue is that I try and sing and play the same rhythm, and with the majority of my songs, I can't do that. I will lose focus on one or the other and make stupid mistakes, and ultimately I have to decide between one or the other at practice.

 

How can I practice doing both at once? I need to build some confidence in my singing abilities.

[Comic_God]

You need to start simple

 

Try strummin a chord once and singing a line over the chord as it rings out. Then switch chords and sing another line. Or you could start by holding one note while you strum a few chords..

 

Either way its a start.

 

Remember to SLOW things down when they are tough to play. Lots of people forget to do this and they try everything at regular speed and never master it. And when I say SLOW I mean at least 75% slower than normal speed!

 

That will help you remember what parts to sing when your playing each part on the guitar. Some people just need to quite thinking of playing and singing as doing 2 things at once.. Instead try to get in the mind set of "when I strum down on the G I need to sing Blah and when I strum up and down on the C I sing blah..." etc etc

 

Hope that helps

 

Ryan

[blue2blue]

It may also help to go through the song and figure out what syllable the downbeats actually fall on. I've often found that I'm all cockeyed about that until I sit down with a guitar in my lap and, with a straightforward, simple strum (as much so as is appropriate to the song, anyhow) I just make sure I know where the downbeats fall -- then I mark them down in the lyric sheet as accent marks over the syllables they correspond to -- and I find that helps me in the working-it-out stage.

 

But I also find that it tends to be fluid... as I work out the delivery of one part of a line, sometimes it changes another part is sung... so I try to not lock myself in and expect some mutation.

 

Another thing... even if you're the guitarist in a three piece, when you're singing, you really don't necessarily have to be very busy on guitar. Leaving a hole for yourself as singer can be important, so you're not fighting yourself -- either for space in the mix or for CPU-space in your brain.

[Kuhnfyoozed]

Thanks for the help.

 

We're a four-piece, but the fourth piece (the "real" singer and rhythm guitarist) is in Paris right now, and frequently has issues coming to band practice (blame his parents, hes not driving yet).

[Floophead3]

I strongly agree with keeping the guitar parts simplistic while you're singing. Simple chords or repeated riffs. Things you can memorize and play in your sleep, therefore freeing your mind to work on singing, which in my opinion is impossible to make automatic like guitar playing can be. Also, if you want really busy parts while singing, you can always "cheat" with looping devices