problem with playing chord background music while singing

Brad E · #1 January 8th, 2005

whenever I try to play a song while singing, I can never do the strumming pattern right... I always seem to not play the background rhythm... I just play the chords like their playing lead too.
I just wanted to see if any of you guys can relate and if there is any tricks I can do to stop doing this.
thx

Spyder F16 · #2 January 9th, 2005

To do this to an accurate degree, you'd have to do the vocals so much that you could sing it in your sleep. It does take time and practice to build up to be able to do it.

Kirk Lorange · #3 January 12th, 2005

Yep, you must do it and do it and do it. It's a blur at first, but after a while you can separate the two ... you can keep one part of your awareness on the guitar, the other on the singing. It's hard work.

Spyder F16 · #4 January 13th, 2005

Yep.

I noticed it always helps on the play/sing part if you wrote the diddy you are doing. I notice that if I do covers of other peoples songs with a Sing/Play, my vocals will ALWAYS be off. But If I wrote the song, I can sing/ play it easily without much practice required on my part, even if I had just written the song 5 minutes before. It takes practice, and a second nature instinct on when to move what finger.

matt · #5 January 18th, 2005

It's funny, in a way - I'm at that same point right now. Only, I'm trying to play syncopated rhythms with my right hand (Chet Atkins style). For the life of me, I'm not able to play alternating bass notes with my thumb while I have my other three fingers doing their own thing. I'll get it, but it'll take time.

Last year, I had the same problem as you where it felt like one side of my brain would cancel out when I started to sing while playing. Either my singing would start to get messed up while I kept playing normally, or my guitar playing would get messed up while I sang.

After getting 5 songs under my belt that I could sing along with while playing, new songs after that became much easier. I started off with John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland", btw.

It's tough work, but you'll get it if you keep trying. Sometimes you might want to throw the guitar on the floor - if so, just give it a break for a while and come back to it, screw up, try, try again. It'll *click* for you eventually.

Spyder F16 · #6 January 18th, 2005

Some songs are easier to sing/play than others.

For example, it's alot easier to sing/play with something like Seether's 69Tea, than ShineDown's .45.