CLICK HERE to learn the best SINGING EXERCISES

CLICK HERE to Learn Singing Today

But, there is another issue beyond that, that often really hurts a performers vocal tone once they can do both at the same time.

The guitar itself!

The postion of the instrument on the singers body and the effect it has on the singers breath and posture while singing can often hamper the singers voice before the first note is sung.

Here are some things to avoid while playing guitar and singing at the same time:

1. Tucking the chin into the chest so you can look at the fretboard.  This effectively cuts off a good portion of your voice.  The head should be straight up and forward.   Learn to play the part either without looking or with the fretting hand bring the fretboard up to the head more, so you can glance down without dipping the chin.

2. A concave chest and or slouching forward.  The chest/sternum should be up and out and the shoulders relaxed and hanging freely.  This allows the rib cage to expand to take air in and the voice to be supported properly.  If the chest drops the voice is weak and may even break into falsetto.

3. Laying a heavy instrument directly over the abdomen.   Some guitars weigh 15 pounds or more.  Having one of these bricks on your belly is like singing and doing abdominal resistance exercises at the same time.  They can literally suck the breath out of your singing.   This can be especially problematic if you are somewhat round in the mid section.  Try to adopt a stance that puts the instrument body a little to the side of the abdomen not dead center.   For passages where you need a lot of air you can even lift the instrument off your belly a bit as you play.

If you need help learning to sing well the best place to visit is:   www.vocalrelease.com

Here are the steps to take to learn to play and sing a song by another artist.

1. First just learn the instrument.  Learn it to the point you can play it without looking at your hands or fretboard.  learn it to the point that you can talk to someone while you play it and your hands can move off on their own thing.

2. learn the vocals, learn the lyrics.  Know how to sing it easily and find a key that is easy for your voice.  Transpose the song up or down on your insturment if you need to.  Right now you are only singing your instrument shouldn’t be in your hands.

3. Write down the lyrics and map them to the chords or notes in the song.  In otherwords find key words that regularly land on certain chords or notes struck.  This way when you sing and play you can marry the two together.   On some songs this will be very easy and you’ll be able to play and sing from this step.  Other songs will be very dynamic and there will be very few chords or notes that are dead on with a particular work or the rhythm is very different from the melody.  In this case……

4. Let the beat bring it alltogether for you.  If you are not playing with a drummer use a click track or drum machine or at the very least play along with a copy of the original song.  Really get into the beat.   Getting into the beat should enable you to more easily play your instrument without thinking and do it automatically since you should have already practiced it.   Now sing.  With a complicated song the feeling will be that you are not really thinking about playing the instrument and that the vocal is skating on top of the beat and your instument.

If you are looking for singing lessons the best one we can recommend is www.vocalrelease.com  It is the best singing instruction you can get wether you are just starting out or already sing and need to deal with some problems.

The first thing you need is metronome of drum machine to keep your time.   Eventually you can just tap your foot when you’ve developed an internal meter.  But, for the time being it’s important that you learn to do both at the same time to a strict time keeping device.

Now, simply pick one chord or on your guitar or note on your bass guitar.   Make up something rhythmically with just that one chord or note to the beat.   It doesn’t have to be a virtuoso riff, we are going for ease and simplicity here. 

Play that one chord or note over and over to the time until you can repeat it without much thought. 

Now while continuing that start to sing some lyrics off the top of your head.  Make sure to keep them in key and that they make sense rhythmically.

The next post will be building on this exercise.

If you are looking expert vocal instruction that you can use in the comfort of your own home I recommend www.vocalrelease.com    It is simply the best singing instruction that you can get.  It will have you singing like a pro in no time.

When playing and singing at the same time your ultimate goals is to have sort of a split mind happening.  That is you are doing two things that take physical dexterity and doing them at the same time.  When you get good at it it feels more subconscious.  That is, you are aware of your singing and playing but not concentrating very hard on either.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you know your singing parts and guitar parts so well that you don’t have to think about them or look at lyric sheets or any music.

The next thing is to map out how the lyrics fit in the music.  Easier songs will have words that are sung at the same time certain notes are sung, so you know when strumming a certain chord or note that a certain word is being sung.   This step is crucial and will really make singing and playing an instrument at the same time much easier.

The last step is to get into the beat.  If you’ve practice the song with just your instrument and just your voice then when you both at the same time, but with a beat, the beat will often tie it all together and cause you to sing and play at the same time easily, without thinking about it much.

If you are looking for a way to improve your singing voice to it’s best quality or even learning to sing for the first time we recommend www.vocalrease.com    It is the best singing instruction available.