Tips for singing and playing guitar?

I just recently started playing in a band and have never had to sing before but I'm the only one who can sing and play at the same time so that makes me the default singer. I think I'm OK, but I want to be great. Too many times you hear a band that sounds decent but the singer is horrible live, I don't want that to be me.

I notice that when I focus on guitar then the singing is a little weak and it's really hard to sing well when I'm not 100% feeling it either (which is about 50% of the time). I have to really get into the music to sing well I feel but that's hard to do every practice.

I find when I try to concentrate on all things (playing, remembering lyrics, singing) it gets pretty hectic in my head. I do practice but practicing singing w/o the full band doesn't really give you the full effect either.

When I listen to practice recordings I find that in spots my singing is a little off key and I really hate it. It's hard to focus on just the singing when I have to recall lyrics and play.

Any tips?

Hi. What I do is I learn each part separately.

a) Practice singing so that you have the lyrics imprinted into your head.

b) Practice playing the guitar until you don't have to look where your fingers are when you're playing.

c) Then, at a slow pace, play them together. When you feel comfortable, play faster.

I know that this is very difficult to do at first, but it gets easier. Just remember to be patient

Don't expect miracles overnight. It has taken me decades to get to where I can do crazy stuff like play and sing Yngwie or Dream Theatre.

But here is my biggest trick: Vocals are ALWAYS more important to the average listener than guitar, so I make sure I can do guitar parts on (mostly) autopilot, and save my focus for vocals. At worst, with a complex song, I might be shifting focus to certain tricky guitar parts as they come, but vocals always get the most of my active brain power.

Good advice above ^^^. I would only add that your desire to be great may prove a hindrance. This is not to say that people shouldn't strive to be as good as they can be at things they are passionate about; but you suggest that you don't want to be like those other singers.... This sounds to me like there's a bit of ego at stake here. Remember that the primary goal is (or ought to be) to serve the song; after that to serve the audience. If you make it about you, you'll load yourself with burdens/expectations that could make things more difficult.

Now I realize that this may be off-base, and perhaps a little obnoxious. My apologies in advance--at least my dime-store psychological analysis is free. .

If singing and guitar is too hard, you can:

a)Slow down the tempo.

b)Simplify the guitar part. Maybe only play a chord at the beginning of each measure.

But yeah, like the other poster said, try to separate things out and slowly put them together.

Also, how good is your ear? Can you sing acapella? If not, learn solfege and practice singing acapella. Acapella helps build more awareness of where you are in the song (independent of what's going on with the other instruments).

To be honest, you shouldn't need the band and guitar to sing the song. If you can sing well WITHOUT accompaniment, singing WITH accompaniment is really easy.

EightString nailed it - the vocals are numero uno importance. That's because everyone knows how to sing and eveyone knows the words so you have to deliver. (well they THINK they can/do lol) When I sing I play pretty straight rhythm - not fancy but it keeps timing and is in key. I'll throw a lead in here and there. :-)

When I wanted to get into music a guy told me if I could sing I would never be out of work...he was pretty much right...

Lessons are great - do yourself a favor and sing songs in your range - your range will grow over time...and if you are in key you won't make people cringe....

Hi. What I do is I learn each part separately. a) Practice singing so that you have the lyrics imprinted into your head. b) Practice playing the guitar until you don't have to look where your fingers are when you're playing. c) Then, at a slow pace, play them together. When you feel comfortable, play faster. I know that this is very difficult to do at first, but it gets easier. Just remember to be patient

Yeah, I would basically say this. As you said, you start to lose the plot when you have to think about what you're playing on guitar, lyrics, vocal melodies, maybe any FX changes and whatnot you have to do with your feet, etc. etc. So basically you want to eliminate as much thinking as you can and run on autopilot. That said, I'm not the singer in our band and I still aim to basically be able to run on autopilot with my guitar playing. But I would say lyrics and guitar playing you want to not have to think about, and then you can just play and worry about getting the singing right.

If you're struggling with any particular parts, maybe with some syncopated parts or whatever, what fireaero said is a good way to go about it. When you have the two parts down separately, put them together slowly. Even if it means going at a ridiculously slow pace, the idea is to getting a feeling for where the two parts are locked in, where they're bouncing off each other, etc. Once you get the feeling for it, IMO it's easy to do it at proper tempo. It's not like practising your picking technique where you have to sit there with the metronome and go up a few BPM at a time. Once you really get a feel for it, in my experience anyway, it just locks in. And the more you work on this stuff and get it right, the more the next stuff that comes along will be natural to do without having to go through this kind of thing.

That makes a lot of sense. I agree with you about the importance of vocals.

I already do take time to learn parts slowly (guitar first then vocals).

What I meant about being great vs everyone else was...A lot of times you'll see guys in the metal/rock genre not really caring all too much about their singing but focus more on guitarwork. I've also heard in person touring bands who have a hard time singing live. I just dont' want the vocals to be the weakest link.