Look Who it Was Random video

How Do You Play Guitar and Sing at the Same Time? Part 2

3,585 views · Published 6 November 2015 · 6:07 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: New Secret Guitar Teacher · 2015 · Music

Watch on YouTube

If you would like to gain full access to all our Guitar Teaching Materials please visit the Secret Guitar Teacher Site and take a free tour: http://www.secretguitarteacher.com/youtube/ssb.php?lp_id=625

Here's the video script:
In the last Sound Bite, using John Denver's song 'Country Roads' as an example, I advised you to not even begin to think about singing over your guitar playing until you had thoroughly practiced strumming through the chord sequence.

And I emphasized the importance of understanding the basic underlying rhythmic feel of the song and playing this steadily through the changes until you could do so with such automaticity that you freed up your conscious attention sufficiently to tell me what you had had for breakfast this morning whilst continuing to play the rhythm part for the song.

So, you have had a week to work up to passing the breakfast test. I am going to assume that you have more or less got your strumming up to that level and are ready to start singing.

Now I appreciate that there will be many of you who are very naturally good singers and may not need to work through the following steps. 

However, I am going to ask you to humour me and follow the lesson anyway - if only because I think it may help you better understand the relationship between the two tasks - playing guitar and singing over what you are playing at the same time.

For the next step, you'll need to listen to a recording of the song and it may help to have a copy of the lyrics to hand. What we need to do is write the lyrics out against the rhythm chart so that we take good note of which syllables fall on the main beats. Here's my working of this for the first couple of lines of the song as an example.

So a couple of points come out immediately from this exercise. Notice that the singing doesn't start at the same time as the guitar playing. The first word - 'almost' is timed so that the second syllable - 'most' coincides with the second main beat of the first bar.
 
To help you really time the placement of syllables it may help to sing along to a metronome or just your hand beating time on the guitar two to the bar like this. Once you feel comfortable with that try the same thing along to the chord changes, but at this stage simplify the strumming to just two down strokes per bar like this.

The time it takes to master this step will vary from a couple of passes for experienced singers and players to several hours repeated practice for those with less experience.

But, to be honest, there is nothing to be gained by trying to miss this step or rushing through it and doing it less than thoroughly.

Once you do feel confident that you have this nailed, simply allow the rest of the strumming pattern to fall into place...and keep practicing. Little by little, as you practice, your audio memory will take over and you will be able to relax and get more into the feel of the song.

This is an important point. This focusing of the attention on the placement of sung words against the main beats has to be seen as a transitional exercise and should be done only as long as it takes to be able to transfer the process to the feeling centre of your brain

So in this little lesson we have focused on timing - in the next lesson we'll deal with the common problem of melodic phrasing.

More from this channel