I love to sing, but it's hard to play and sing...

I overcame singing and keeping fairly simple strumming patterns pretty quickly but complex patterns and fingerstyle takes so much more effort.
I am proud to say I can now sing and play "Fields of Gold" (David Hodge's lesson on this website)
What it boiled down to was learn the guitar part first and get it to a point that I could play with little thought to what I was doing.
Then start adding vocals.
The vocals were the same as learning the guitar part itself. Take it a few bars at a time.

I am proud to say I can now sing and play "Fields of Gold" (David Hodge's lesson on this website)

Great job mate. Congratulations (and a big dash of envy...). I'd love to be able to sing and play that song - so I must go and look out the lesson.

I naively thought I'd just be able to sing along when I felt like it, but of course it didn't work out that way.
What it boiled down to was learn the guitar part first and get it to a point that I could play with little thought to what I was doing.
Then start adding vocals.
The vocals were the same as learning the guitar part itself. Take it a few bars at a time.

That nails it! The voice is as complex an instrument as the guitar (in fact I've seen it described as the most versatile and powerful instrument of all) so I must have been pretty optimistic (or dumb?) to imagine that I'd be able to just automatically play two instruments at once without ever having bothered to learn how to "play" one of them properly! :wink:

So now I do a little work each day on both instruments to learn how to get the skills I need.

Just to add that the comment about the quality of mic making a big difference is spot on, well said.

Matt

"Fields of Gold" is a really hard song to play and sing, especially if you're fingerpicking, so well done for nailing that....

The song I have most trouble with is Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done"....I can pick the chords, I can approximate the vocal, but there is NO WAY!!! I can put the two together.....

That's the "unplugged" version btw...

:D :D :D

Vic

Vic

Yeah i can second that. I can play it all the way through now, no problem.

I can sing it along to the CD no problem.

But doing both - man it sucks!

I seem to recall that even Neil Young struggles to play it "properly" and sing it - he strums some of it instead of doing the picking, then returns to the picking for the instumental bit.

Great, great song.

Matt

"Fields of Gold" is a really hard song to play and sing, especially if you're fingerpicking, so well done for nailing that....

The song I have most trouble with is Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done"....I can pick the chords, I can approximate the vocal, but there is NO WAY!!! I can put the two together.....

That's the "unplugged" version btw...

:D :D :D

Vic

Vic try strumming when your doing the vocals rather than fingerpicking.

The last line of the verse killed me.

I recently sung country roads by john denver in my college's freshers day.And i think it sounded pretty well 8)

I think what I need to figure out is the timing of laying the vocals over the guitar. For instance I can play "Let her cry" by hootie pretty much in my sleep, but my singing insn't alway in time or place with the chord changes, and that happens with other songs I've tried...

john

Maybe it would help if you wrote it all out bar by bar and then got the metronome out and ran through the song a few times with no guitar, just voice?

I recently tried recording a track and then attempting to record a second track just doing the singing (with the first track playing as I sang). It was my own song, so it shouldn't have been that hard - or so I thought. :?

I thought it would be pretty easy. So I was surprised to find that it was an absolute disaster and I was all over the place.

I've stopped expecting a quick answer for this. Now I'm starting to take singing more seriously as something that I need to learn and practice in a similar way to guitar. A quick fix would be nice, but I feel that putting more effort in on the basics will pay off in the long run. It's also proving to be enjoyable, and not a chore. :)

Cheers, Chris.

I've always sung along as long as I've played the guitar (six years now, yaaay). The reason I sang in the start was I could control my voice enough to hear how good the chords fit the song (there -are- a lot of rubbish tabs out there) as well as keep some rhythm, even though rhythm has always been easy for me as far as strumming goes.

I think missilemans idea to learn the guitar part first then add on vocals as it goes. I still struggle as soon as there is fingerpicking involved, but you'll never make it if you don't try... and try.. and try... and try... (could go on for a long time here :wink: )

Let me just say I enjoy singing, it comes out somewhere like pearl jam, 7 mary 3, or staind. But my problem is playing complex rhythm strumming patterns and singing together.
If you are learning from a tab, that isn't on the internet and is actually on paper in front of you, it is really helpful to mark where each line comes in and if you like, where it should end - some songs aren't as rigid and this isn't as important. I was learning how to play and sing some Robert Johnson stuff which for me has some complicated rhythms and he likes to come in singing on the third note of a triplet anyway - I wrote out the first word of each line on the music and I also marked the words that I have trouble matching up with the music and that greatly helped. Well, that, and lots of practice. Don't be afriad to mark up the music with added helpful notes - I 'll even mark all the downbeats if need be.
"Fields of Gold" is a really hard song to play and sing, especially if you're fingerpicking, so well done for nailing that....

The song I have most trouble with is Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done"....I can pick the chords, I can approximate the vocal, but there is NO WAY!!! I can put the two together.....

That's the "unplugged" version btw...

Vic
Thanks for the ego boost, Vic. I can play, fingerpick, Fields of Gold (D. Hodge's version) and sing and I can play and sing the Needle and the Damage Done but the recorded version which is only singing over strummed chords - don't know the unplugged version. If it makes you feel better, I have lots of trouble with using a plectrum - no matter how much I seem to practice :(