Can't sing and Play

dazedgatsby · Sep 14, 2012

Practice.

Ever tryed to play lead and sing?

... Holy shit, try doing that.

rjhangover · Sep 16, 2012

dazedgatsby said:

Practice.

Ever tryed to play lead and sing?

... Holy shit, try doing that.
Click to expand...

Once you can play lead without looking at the guitar, it's not that hard. It's the same with beginners learning to play chords without looking at where they place their fingers.

ILoveLaura · Sep 17, 2012

jamgrassphan said:

First of all, despite what some people say, you won't suddenly just magically be able to do this one day, and anyone who tells you that they sprung forth from the womb being able to do this is a liar.

What you describe with regard to simplifying a strumming pattern when you sing - I've seen world reknown musicians do essentially the same thing to some extent. Luckily you play piano, apparently, so I'm going to explain this using a piano metaphor.

Think of your strumming as the left hand playing rhythmic chords and bass lines on the piano, and your voice as the right hand playing the treble cleff melody lines. I'm betting that when you first started to play piano, it was pretty damned difficult to play the bass part and the melody part at the same time, right? Well, when you're accompanying your own voice on a strummed, picked, hammered or bowed instrument, it's the same thing. (but in my experience, it's actually much easier than accompanying your own voice on piano, because in the case of the piano, you're actually performing three different parts simultaneously on a keyed instrument: bass clef, treble clef and vocal melody.

You say "strumming" in your post, so I'm going to assume that you are playing an instrument of the guitar family. There's no shame in simplifiying your strumming pattern when you're learning to play and sing at the same time. I'd suggest that you literally boil down the strumming pattern to its most basic form - if that means 4 count strums, measure by measure at first, then so be it. Get that down to the point that you can sing and play, keep time and maintain tempo through the entire progression/song. It may sound really stupid at first - but don't worry, it will get better and in this case, you really have to learn to crawl before you walk - which is a hard thing to force yourself to do, when you've already become really good at playing complicated strumming patterns. In fact it may frustrate you, but don't think of it as playing below your level, you'll actually be doing yourself a huge favor, because this will hone your ability to maintain tempo to a razor sharp edge.

Do you practice with a metronome? if not, start doing it now. I've played with some pretty talented musicians, but one thing I've learned, it doesn't matter how skilled you are with your instrument, if you can't maintain tempo, you'll sound like absolute shit playing with anyone else, and it's very unpleasant to jam with someone who drifts all over the fucking place tempo wise, because you find yourself adjusting constantly to their timing just to keep the damn song from flying off the rails.

So, when you get it down and can make it though the song consistently, singing at the level of quality you are capable of, then add a little more sophistication to your strumming pattern, until you're where you want to be. You may have to do this to some extent, for every new song you learn/write, but over time, you'll become very quick and efficient at it - this is what I think some people mean, when they say, "just keep practicing and one day, you'll just be able to do it" - It's easy to forget how many hours of practice went into achieving that perceived moment of "epiphany".

Bottom line - If you can play a bass clef and treble clef at the same time on a keyboard, you can learn to sing and play at the same time, because it's essentially the same thing.
Click to expand...

Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLFJARmnBvg&feature=related

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Can't sing and Play

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Can't sing and Play

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