Singing and playing

markdavies1981

Hi all, I am new to the forum,
I have been learning now for 6 months and can strum basic patterns and play most open chords, albeit still with looking at the chord change hand.

The one thing i cannot do is sing and play, as soon as i start to sing then my strum hand just stops or i end up singing robotic and line my words up with every strum.

How long does this take and what the best thing to do to practice.
After all it surely is the end game to guitar playing.

I am getting lessons and my tutor is great, however he says he has never been able to do it and he is a professional musician of 30  years.... scary is so!

Thnaks

Mark

Funkfingers

The strumming and chord changes need to become sufficiently automatic that you no longer have to devote the majority of your attention to them. 

Then, your brain can concentrate on hanging the vocal melody and lyrics over the accompaniment. 

I can holler over strummed guitar, some riffs and double guitar and vocal melody. For whatever reasons, I have never been able to vocalise whilst playing bass guitar. 

Guitarlarky

Funkfingers said:

The strumming and chord changes need to become sufficiently automatic that you no longer have to devote the majority of your attention to them. 

Then, your brain can concentrate on hanging the vocal melody and lyrics over the accompaniment. 

This.  It takes a lot of practice.  My suggestion would be to start with a song that has a simple guitar part and a singing part that you know very well.  It requires a kind of mental separation of the playing and singing while still doing both together....keep at it and it will come together.  Once you can do it with one song the others will come more easily.  Hope this helps.

TheBigDipper

It's just practice. If your teacher can't do it, it's just because he hasn't tried to develop the skill and focused on other things. It's definitely not because it's too hard. It's just too hard if you don't practice it! 

sev112

I got instantly better when I stopped strumming with just down strokes, and learned to pick and strum with “down up” strums all the time, and just leaving out the rests to suit the rhythm but to keep strumming down then up on all the half or quarter beats .  That meant for the most part I didn’t need to think about strum patters, and could concentrate on singing more

BahHumbug

Basically, like with learning to play guitar, you need to give yourself exercises that your un-practiced brain can cope with - this means simplifying what you're trying to achieve.

You can simplify the singing by just humming or la-la-ing the melody, rather than trying to sing the lyrics.

From the guitar playing point of view, as funkfingers has said, if you can get that bit so that it is automatic, then that frees up brain space for the singing.  If not, then you need to think about simplifying the guitar playing.  Here are some ideas:

1.  Only strum the chords at the point of the chord changes - so literally one strum per chord.  You will doing a lot of singing, but not a lot of strumming.
2.  Slightly less simple - Only strum on the first beat of every bar.  You'll probably have to do a bit of pre-work on this if you haven't really worried about bars before, but basically you are going to be counting to yourself:  strum - 2 - 3 - 4, strum - 2 - 3 - 4 etc.  Try to sing along with that.
3.  If you have success with that, then you can increase the rate of strumming, but keep it simple, eg you can strum twice in each bar:  strum -2- strum - 4- strum - 2- strum - 4, or you can go for  strumming on each beat, but just really simple un-rhythmic downstrums on each beat.

Another tip is to think about the rhythm of the singing.  Most of us sing quite naturally without ever thinking about what we are doing.  Its only when you try to put the rhythm of the singing against your guitar playing that it all gets rather difficult.  So think a bout the singing line and try to identify which syllables lie on a beat.  That way you know which syllables should go with a down-strum.

I've seen a few people who are beginner guitar players, who find singing with guitar quite natural, but its not everybody.  I really struggled and what you've described is very familiar to me.  It does come though, how soon is up to the individual.

grappagreen

TheBigDipper said:

It's just practice. If your teacher can't do it, it's just because he hasn't tried to develop the skill and focused on other things. It's definitely not because it's too hard. It's just too hard if you don't practice it! 

This ^^^

I think the later you start doing it, the harder it seems to be but with practice it improves. Just don't expect miracles (it takes time), take baby steps (simple stuff) and don't get too frustrated that your pitching is out at the start (you can only focus on one thing at a time (in small slices)

Alexlotl

What made the difference for me was getting a ukulele years ago. Simple open chords, nice easy strumming with no pick to think about, lets the instrument get out of the way so you can start singing along more quickly. That ability (and/or confidence) then transferred back to the guitar and bass no bother.

rocktron

A good friend of mine has got back into guitar playing, and is trying to sing along to some simple songs.

Fortunately, his girlfriend doesn't laugh at his attempts and would join him in singing.

Singing and playing guitar isn't easy, and that's why so few musicians manage it successfully.

This is a song he started out on - Stand By Me by Ben E. King:-

simonhpieman

I have always taken singing for granted a bit but I'm going to assume you can sing along to a song in tune and in time without the guitar.

Then practice your strumming BIG TIME! Make sure you can strum quavers (8th notes / one and two and three and four and / down up down up down up down up) without a second thought. Do it on one chord if you have to but get it bang on and strong. Try and watch tv while doing it. Attempt to have a conversation. All your arm is really doing is going up and down. Do it with the guitar on a strap while stood up. Think about walking. You don't, do you? Just move that arm up and down. Get that movement locked in.

Chords can come later. Your teacher will be able to help you with making time to change chords when strumming a faster rhythm.

Anyway, now you can strum without thinking, try muting the strings by holding your left hand gently across all of them (so you get the clicky sound) and strumming the 8th notes as before. Then try and sing twinkle twinkle or something you know well.

From there, you'll then need your teacher to help you with your left hand. If the right hand keeps strumming, you can lift off, mute and change rhythms using your left hand much easier than disrupting your right hand. Look at Nile Rodgers - his right hand is going the whole time but his left hand is creating the rhythms by muting chords and different strings... Maybe too much infor at this point...!

The basis of it, for me at least, is having that constant up and down. If you get up and down right, it's very hard to go wrong.

Singing along to lead is harder as you can't just strum up and down the whole time and the rhythms can be much more complex. It's not impossible but it takes a LOT of practice. Even the pros need will need to practice on a song by song basis if expected to play lead and sing simultaneously (though it's not often they are!).

Davemcguitar

This usually is a problem when your strumming hand isnt moving in a continuous pendulum motion. Most beginners play strumming patterns like they hear, but they don't keep the motion going in the gaps. It's the things you can't hear that are important.

If your hand moves irregular it will be impossible to sing over.
If your hand constantly moves you can switch off from it.

If you hit an up or a down drum by mistake, because it's continuous it will sound good still. 

This will make your timing solid

Dave

WiresDreamDisasters

One thing I do is learn the guitar part, and then sync up the rhythm in the sung phrases with specific notes in the guitar part. So I have these sorta waypoints or milestones that I'm aiming for, and my vocal is allowed to be a little bit loose around them. It takes practice, and at first you literally do need to go through it note by note. But you'll get there.

thegummy

Impossible to give a time scale - there are some 10 year olds who are already virtuosos and learned the basics in a week and there are some people who have been trying to play an instrument for 30 years but sound like they've been playing a week.

Have to admit I'm surprised someone could be good enough to be a guitar teacher but still can't sing and play at the same time after 30 years. Then again, I'm a big believer that there are two camps - pure musicians who just have a natural ability to feel and understand music so can play any instrument they decide to learn the basics of; then there are those who learn it in the way a student learns to pass a history exam (learning by memorising rather than by feeling).

A good example is someone who can sit down at a piano with sheet music and play a complex Chopin piece perfectly but couldn't improvise even the most basic tune.

To cut a tangent short, I think which of the two camps one falls in largely determines how quickly they can learn to do this.

There are different levels as well - I've been able to sing and strum rhythm guitar at the same time since I was about 12 but when I see John Mayer playing some of the most amazing guitar I've ever heard while singing at the same time it blows my mind.

Then there's Geddy Lee who sings, plays bass and plays the synth with his feet all at the same time.

As a word of encouragement - I think your teacher's case is a rarity. Just look at all the buskers and how many people take a shot of a guitar at parties to sing and play Oasis songs - I think it's far far more likely that you'll manage to sing and play at the same time than it is that you'll struggle for any considerable length of time.

P.S. I don't agree with the singing and playing together as being "the end game to guitar playing" by any means but that's another tangent!

scrumhalf

I can't sing and plsy guitar at the same, mainly because I can't sing. Even trying to whistle the vocals whilst playing descends into chaos.

thegummy

Incidentally I find it a lot harder to play bass and sing than play rhythm guitar.

When I was in a band I sang and played bass and had to simplify my bass playing. When I'm not singing a lot of my bass playing has little leading notes, triplet fills and things like that which can be quite hard to concentrate on while singing whereas with strumming guitar the rhythms fall more sympathetically with the singing.

I find, at least.

thecolourbox

Also bear in mind your teacher probably actually means he can't do it well enough to his standards, not necessarily that he can't do it at all. Or it could be that he just can't sing, full stop. Give yourself time, practice, and simplifying things until you can do them as muscle memory, which will free your brain up to do the other bit

crunchman

It's funny.  Sometimes I play better when I sing.  I've been doing some recording recently, and when I do acoustic parts I find my timing is better when I sing at the same time.  I think the strumming just becomes automatic and I don't think about it too much. 

thegummy

crunchman said:

It's funny.  Sometimes I play better when I sing.  I've been doing some recording recently, and when I do acoustic parts I find my timing is better when I sing at the same time.  I think the strumming just becomes automatic and I don't think about it too much. 

Oh without question man - the timing is so much easier when recording both together.

If I'm recording doubled guitars though, I find it a lot more difficult to match the original take if it was recorded while singing - I'm much more likely to improvise with the strumming pattern while singing rather than stick rigidly to a pattern.

roberty

I play some fairly complex riffs and rhythms while singing. Sometimes I have to learn specific lines or parts of a line as a routine, so slow the whole thing down and coordinate the singing and playing together as one sequence. Hope that makes sense

Dan_Halen

I used to struggle when I started. Ended up being the singer in one of my bands as well as guitarist so forced myself to learn. Used to do the following which really helped -

1. Learn the song so you can play it without thinking about it.
2. Learn the words so you can sing them without reading them.
3. Write the lyrics out in sort of a song format i.e. individual lines that make up the verse and mark stuff like the chords and the beginning of bars so you have cues i.e. when you change to this chord you sing this word, or this word falls on the 1st beat of the bar.

Obviously, once you get it under your fingers you can loosen up because it will sound pretty damn stiff.... but that's a whole lot easier once you can play and sing it at all. The trick is, once you get the hang of it, your guitar and voice work in tandem - kind of like left and right hands playing the piano. You'll reach a point where it's effortless and it's a really fun and rewarding thing to be able to do. Stick at it.

For example, something like this (from a well known ditty). Should be self explanatory but if not just yell -

G   /    D    /      |Em   /   /   / 
    If I leave here to-morrow
F    /        C       /       | D  /  /  /
    Would you still re-member   me?

simonhpieman

Dan_Halen said:

I used to struggle when I started. Ended up being the singer in one of my bands as well as guitarist so forced myself to learn. Used to do the following which really helped -

1. Learn the song so you can play it without thinking about it.
2. Learn the words so you can sing them without reading them.

Above anything else, this.

Learn how the song goes before you start worrying about technique etc.!