Singing and playing simultaneously?

Hi,

Anybody knows if there are any lessons related to singing and playing guitar simultaneously? I find it really difficult. [br][br]

Regards,

Magnus

Hi Magnus and welcome,

I don't know of any but this is a very good question and a problem I have had since I began writing songs a few months back. Below is how I need to tackle it, and I will say it is becoming easier, but it is still a challenge for me to coordinate the voice with the hands. I think like everything else guitar, lots of patience and practice will be required.

Best of luck

https://youtu.be/bjaWmSf__kg

Hi Magnus,

I agree with the comment from William and it is very tough yep. I have been playing a bit over 18 months now and am having my own nightmares with certain things but am doing my best to overcome these.

The singing and playing can seem almost impossible and the way I found around it (after reading and watching a lot of youtube) was to break each line or couple of lines down. You have to be able to more or less play the song without thinking about it and also know the lyrics which I believe you should do separately so you don't have to concentrate on lots of stuff at once.

So, at the moment I'm writing a song and the first two lines are:[br][br]

Look at the shooting stars shooting overheard,

Watch as the angel dust trails in the moonlight...

(not even sure what key (uses E, A, C, B) it's in but it sounds ok to my ear when played a certain way and anyway, whose to say that you need to stick to a key!)

So I take those first two lines and make sure I can play them very easily and seperately I make sure i know the words without worry. Then, as William says, very slowly work on them together. And so on....

I'm also using this method to learn Scarborough Fair and although my voice sounds like a cat with a sort throat that is being dragged through a prickly bush, at least I'm getting to the stage where I'm getting the hang of it. I did once read that it can take a couple of years to get the hang of it but around 10 before it sounds good (!) but I hope that is not the complete truth.

Just keep going and I hope you make it and wish you the best of luck!

theMolster

If you already don't have them, get a decent recording device and a good microphone. Start recording yourself playing and singing. There is no better way to see exactly what you have to work on.

First of all, I find my recorded voice sounds very diffrent from what I hear in my head. That is a big adjustment. When the tone can ring in your skull, what you hear is not what your audience hears. So get used to that, because it is what your listeners hear that you need to craft.

Once you make that passage, you can start to objectivly evaluate...what to focus on keeping and what to work on improving. Once again, what you experience when you are working to play chords and remember the words and keep the rthyum and the pitch and the tone and still not trip over the gum you are chewing... All that... has nothing to do with what what your audience experiences. So now you can start to objectivly work on HOW YOU REALLY SOUND.

Recording also allows you to record the guitar part. You can practice the singing, without playing the guitar. This allows you to really focus on THE SINGING. You can put them together when you have the both firing on all cylinders. Much easier to master the use of your vocal cords when the guitar part isn't distracting you. Vocal performance is all about attention to small, vocal details. Recording makes it possible to break the process down to managable parts.

I find that vocals are the hardest part of peforming a song. If I have to sing, it is imperitive that my mind is completly engaged with the singing. I promise you that people will notice your voice going flat before they notice that your B string is flat. (Even if all you can think of is that damn b string.) In the final annalysis, you have to get the vocals right if you want to ever have an audience.

At least this was my experience and I have seen if work for friends who were developing those skills as well. Recording and reviewing, in a very real way, was where we all found our voices. It is not an easy thing to do, but that brutal reality is the direct route to what you seek to master. Just remember that the traveling of that journey, I[u]S THE GOAL[/u].... not some imaginary, preconcived, point in time and space.