singing and playing

[BigKahuna855]

my school is having a talent show and i wanted to enter it and play a song that i wrote. only problem is, i cant sing and play at the same time. does anybody have any tips on how to overcome this proverbial roadblock?

[Tom Capasso]

It's proverbial because there has been much written about it. Search and ye shall find recent discussions. These will point to older tip-laden threads.

 

I'll give you the bottom line. Practice each individually to death. Then practice together for a long long time. Lots of practice.

 

Good luck, and I hope you do well !!!

Tom

[Mike R.]

Play your bass lines so much and practice them so you dont have to think about them anymore. then sing over them. thats what I do sometimes if the bass line isn't too overly complicated.

[No, I Wont Just Play Root]

I had to do this for years in a weddings/covers band...

 

You need to know the song, pretty much inside out.

 

I would start by learning to sing the song. When you know how to sing the song backwards, pick up your bass, and play enough to get you along whilst singing (roots: more if you can manage it): for me, this was an important intermediary step when i was starting out doing this.

 

After this, spend some time learning the bass-line inside-out, without the vocals.

 

Then, go back to playing both. Keep the bass simple, and build it up, adding more and more each time until you can play them together with no problems.

 

It's the old mantra: it's just practice, practice practice. The more songs you do this with, the more you'll find your mouth and hands can work independently, and it'll become a much easier process each time, until you can just about learn both at the same time.

 

Hope this helps: keep us updated!

[73 P Bass]

When I write a song I come up with the lyrics first. Then I sit down with the bass or a guitar and sing the song while I try and figure out what chords go best with the melody in my head. I start working on the two from an early stage together so when I have the parts worked out, playing them together is second nature.

Best advise I can give you is hit the woodshed singin' and a pluckin' until you are performing your song to your satisfaction.

[ibescotty]

Memorize the song inside and out best you can.

 

Also make yourself some music sheets that allow you to read the lyrics and know what notes you are going to play while you sing. Helps you keep track until you play the song enough to get it down.

 

Then hit that search engine. This has been talked about a bunch here. Lots of good advice.

[bubba upright]

Make sure the bass you're playing while singing has frets ....

[kad]

You may find that even after employing all of the helpful suggestions above, the tune STILL falls apart when you try to put the two independent parts together. If so, stop thinking of the bass and vocal part as separate parts. Instead, mentally merge them into a single complex but unified action. The singular constant that unifies the two actions is TIME!

As the tune progresses, time elapses. As time elapses, vocal phrases and bass notes happen at very specific points along the song's time "axis". Make a mental note of exactly what goes where - very slowly at first. Mentally place every word and every bass note in its predetermined location within the time axis. Gradually (VERY gradually) pick up the tempo until it is "correct". As you get better at this, you will be able to take more liberties with one or both of the parts. After lots of hard work, the process will start to become very natural....

 

Kirk

[ClarkW]

I feel your pain, BigKahuna855. My band will be covering Africa in the near future. I'm the second or third-best singer in the band, so I'll be covering the verse harmonies and definitely be doing chorus harmonies.

 

While the harmonies are plentiful, each individual part is not terribly complex. After two or three vocal run-throughs, I could sing the whole thing in my sleep.

 

The bass line, while beautiful, is not terribly complex either. 1 uh-2, 3 uh-4. Repeat. Got it down pat after one or two run-throughs.

 

Then I tried doing both together. SCREEEEEEECH! Absolute train wreck. The rhythms are woefully disparate. I'm gonna need to do both of them individually for a few DOZEN runs more, and then put them together and just figure out where each word hits up with my bass line, and how the two interact. Over and over.

 

There is no magic potion. There are no tricks. The only solution is practice and practice and practice and some talent.

[g.]

Harmonies usually aren't nearly as hard to sing while playing a disparate bass line; you have the other people singing to kind of provide an autopilot rhythmic template.

[...]

Originally posted by ClarkW:

There is no magic potion. There are no tricks. The only solution is practice and practice and practice and some talent.

There aren't? That means I have to actually practice to get any good? Boy, that sucks.

[Yogi]

Originally posted by Bumpcity:

He LIVES!!!

 

[Yogi]

Originally posted by kad:

The singular constant that unifies the two actions is TIME!

This is a great breakdown of what's going on when music is being played, and I guess I thought I'd pitch in the obvious conclusion that might be drawn from Kad's explanation: notation is your roadmap of this timeline. I highly recommend writing out both your bass part and vocal part in notation either by hand, or using Finale or something similar. It's always been very helpful for me to see a graphical representation of what notes hit where, and which overlap in relation to each other. Although I've now got enough practice with singing/playing in that now in almost all cases I can just sit and work it out. It'll come with time, but you've got to work at it.

[matt_dup4]

best advice i could give ya and you not being here for me to show ya is tap your foot. your vocal line will stray from the bass line but the foot tapping is for your bass playing. you'll notice most notes will fall on one of the taps or in between. you have to practice the inbetween ones till you get it right... you must detach your brain from your bass playing to sing the right words and melody line, cause if the note on bass jumps in (inbetween foot tap) or right on the note (right on foot tap), you'll know your playing it right by where it falls compared to your foot tap...practice slowly at first, then bring it up to speed. eventually you won't need to tap as much, but sometimes it still helps depending on the song. let me know if this helps... this takes alot of practice! but it works for me.

[...]

Originally posted by Yogi:

Originally posted by kad:

The singular constant that unifies the two actions is TIME!

This is a great breakdown of what's going on when music is being played, and I guess I thought I'd pitch in the obvious conclusion that might be drawn from Kad's explanation: notation is your roadmap of this timeline. I highly recommend writing out both your bass part and vocal part in notation either by hand, or using Finale or something similar. It's always been very helpful for me to see a graphical representation of what notes hit where, and which overlap in relation to each other. Although I've now got enough practice with singing/playing in that now in almost all cases I can just sit and work it out. It'll come with time, but you've got to work at it.

Word. The man knows what he's talking about. It's helped me figure out some difficult things in the past and it has also humbled me in the sense that I have found that I simply cannot play and sing some things. Seeing on paper where things line up can lead to wonderful things. I highly suggest checking this method out.

[73 P Bass]

Originally posted by Bumpcity:

Originally posted by ClarkW:

There is no magic potion. There are no tricks. The only solution is practice and practice and practice and some talent.

There aren't? That means I have to actually practice to get any good? Boy, that sucks.

[g.]

Seeing on paper where things line up can lead to wonderful things. I highly suggest checking this method out.

Yep. I mentioned this one before in one or both of the two big threads we had here not so long ago. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who has at times solved problems this way.

 

And again, enjoyed the Y&HZ DVD, youze!

[Fred TBP]

To add to the above:

 

Practive VISUALIZATION. You don't need your bass to do this, just take a shower, sing while stuck in traffic, sing a little every day and visualize yourself singing the song. Try to memorize as much as possible so it becomes second nature. Play the part if you can as long as you don't drop the soap.

 

You'll probably mess it up the first few times, but the ONLY way you'll fail at this is if you give up trying or don't even attempt to try it.

 

Here's one of the big universal truths: If you can visualize yourself doing it, you CAN do it.

[g.]

There too, having a handle on notation helps. That increases the systems available to visualize with.

 

<--   ---<<<<      two visualization posts in a row, and counting

[Rick Hoffman]

Well, now I've posted on every singing and playing thread.. OCD, anyone?

[Phil W]

Do the search, read the threads. There are some great threads on this. I even printed out a Real Book-thick wad of them to study.

 

In the end I found out that it wasn't singing and playing I was having trouble with but 'singing' full-stop. My wife says I sound like a sick cow. Next I have to learn to sing, I know it will benefit my ear and playing!