Sing & Play A Cover Tune.
If you are an aspiring lead vocalist who also plays an instrument it can often be difficult to learn cover tunes. Particularly since you have to not only sing but play your instrument at the same time. It becomes even more difficult if the original artist didn’t play and sing at the same time. So, the song may be very dynamic between where the vocal sits with your instrument.
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.
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