I play in a 4 piece band. The other guitarist is also our singer, and - although our guitar skills are similar - he usually asks me to do the more complicated rythym parts and most solos. I hadn't thought much about it, but I was recently making a demo of a song I'd written and discovered that I can't sing and play guitar at the same time (well, anything more complicated than simple chords). Many singer/guitarists (including people like Clapton and John Mayer) seem quite capable of playing very complicated guitar while singing.
Is this a normal afflication? Does it get better with practice?
Comments
My band, Red For Dissent
Can anyone talk while playing? For some reason I find that exponentially more difficult.
From the beginning I was singing along with my guitar playing, so it's a skill that I've developed as I learned the basics of playing guitar to the point that I don't even think about it. But it's perfectly doable, you just need to work at it. If you can co-ordinate one hand picking strings and another one fretting them, there's no reason you can't also add singing to that. My advice would be not to think of it as doing two different things at the same time. It's one whole-body task, practice it as such.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Start slowly and build up, like anything else, I guess, but yeah it's just down to practice, alas.
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
Some songs are fun to play and sing and as long as it's purely rhythm guitar then i'll enjoy it and not worry. Anything that's complex or playing lead and forget it, i'll fuck both up. I'm happy enough playing lead and singing if i can not play at all while singing and play lead in between but i can't do it at the same time.
Weirdly though, the few songs i can fingerpick, i can sing quite happily along to and that doesn't seem to bother me too much.
I'm happiest singing backing vocals or just not singing and focusing purely on the guitar.
This is something I've been working on over the past few months, and it's just down to practise.
You have to be able to play the guitar with minimal thought, and learn how the lyrics align with the playing.
The best way to think of about it, is if playing the guitar is taking 90% of your concentration, then that only leaves 10% to deal with the lyrics/singing. Now for me, the lyrics/singing take far more than 10% of my concentration, so I can only manage singing and playing to songs that I can play without much thought, and songs I know well.
My most recent major improvement has been learning Hurt by Johnny Cash, as it's the first song where I've been able to create the disconnect between the picking/strumming pattern, and the lyrics. Everything I've done before has involved lyrics that were tightly aligned to the strumming pattern. As a result, I've managed to get a few lines into songs that up until now I just had no chance of getting the lyric/strumming timing anywhere near right.
PS by singing, I personally mean making some form of noise that may or may not be anywhere near the correct pitch!
That's one i can do and i know what you mean about disconnecting from the strumming pattern.
Hurt is one of my all time favourite songs.
Lol, I do Parklife and talking the verse while playing the verse riff was tricky at first
Singing and playing drums took a bit of work but look at how effortless Andy Sturmer from Jellyfish made it look.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Boom-tish.
Seriously, there's nothing worse than arriving at the second verse with a split second to go and realising you've got no idea what the words are. You end up mumbling the first few syllables and hoping it'll come to you, which it always does, in some mangled fashion.
As as mentioned above, there's only so much brainpower available for conscious thought. So as much as possible needs to be locked into muscle memory in rehearsal. And then remembering to remember becomes a thing!
Don't get too carried away with that wanky solo that you can't remember the words, basically.
"The Curse of the second verse".
From that day on i have always messed up the second verse in some way because every time verse 2 approaches, i hear him saying that and it completely takes over my conscious mind.
Wedge shaped monitors hide a multitude of ineptitude and written reminders for me.