Playing And Singing At The Same Time...

[Vlady]

Sometimes I really hate myself for writing that song. That breakdown is impossible to play and sing at the same time.

[media=]http://soundcloud.com/misterpercy/shadow

How do you learn your songs (playing and singing at the same time)? Methods? Share them with me please

Edited September 26, 2012 by Vlady

[john]

Hey Vlady

There's no real mystery Vlady. Practice.

Take it in 3 parts:

• Guitar piece practice
  
• Vocal practice
  
• Vocal and guitar practice
  

You need to practice each separately until they are second nature, until you are at the stage you can at leat play/sing them without mistakes. If you can't do that you will never be able to play the combination of the two.

As far as the vocal goes try practicing 2 ways:

• singing a cappella (voice only)
  
• singing along with a backing track
  

Guitar I practice in 3 ways also:

• Slower than usual with attention to detail, aim for no mistakes with all the nuance you want in it. This helps your motor memory (your brain's ability to remember body position, including finger movement).
  
• Faster than usual. This helps get your fingers used to moving through the piece making it harder than normal
  
• At the correct pace. For obvious reasons this is where most of your practice time is.
  

A good tip for accelerating this is to build in practicing both your vocals exercises and guitar exercises with your eyes closed at least some of the time. You will find that this is particularly beneficial during slow practice. This allows you to get it into your brain faster, and with a better attention to nuance. The theory is simple: cut out the input from your eyes and your brain naturally pays more attention to the other senses.

Think of it like learning to drive a car with a stick shift. To begin with we break it down, we learn to do it thinking about every movement. With practice changing gear becomes second nature, so that awareness wise we simply think "change gear" and the rest happens without having to think of all those separate movements needed to accomplish the gear change. We spend our time thinking about what is going on around us: the other cars, the shape of the road, the direction we want to go in etc. We don't have time to be thinking about all those separate movements.

The reason is that all that slow practice "programmed" our lower brain that deals with movements, leaving the upper brain to deal with other things. This is the essence of something becoming "second nature".

I hope this helps.

Cheers

John

[Rudi]

Sorry, never experienced a major problem with this.

As John said, practice will sort it out.

[Prometheus]

I'm not good at that either. I've found getting someone else to sing the track works wonders.

[Vlady]

Took a lot of time to learn that... About 5-6 hours of practice for a 20-second part.

[JohnMurati]

Keep practicing. You know the saying...

[Vlady]

Of course, but it became a thoroughly different song though

Edited March 3, 2013 by Vlady

[TapperMike]

I'm with the rest how you practice makes all the difference.  

One of the most challenging things I've ever done musically was two part jazz walking bassline and melody at the same time.

 

The same thing holds true to singing and playing at the same time.  Break it down beat per beat. Learn to think vertically. not horizontally.  It will be tough for awhile but if you stick with the program it will get easier.