Fellow guitar players - Can you sing and play?

I have started this little exersize that should help my situation. I have trouble going from strumming to playing lead lines, so I strum four counts and then play a four count lick using various scales and timing. playing something different each time. Once I can do that without thinking about it too much I should be rockin a bit.

My teacher suggested tuning to an open chord [dropped D] to practice singing and playing. Turns the guitar into pretty much a rhythm instrument and makes it very simple until the coordination comes.
It worked for me; now I can chord,play licks and sing without to much trouble.

Playing bass and singing is a struggle.

Originally posted by Voyager1

Originally posted by subject x
Start learning scales, all kinds. You can't know enough.

This is still a weak point with me. I find learning and practicing scales extremely tedious.

My loss.

One thing I would like to know is how much time per day the best players in the world spend on the guitar.

I heard that Zack Wild praticed 10 hours a day when he was young, devoting that kind of time to any Instrument would make you an exceptional player. If only I had the that much time to spend playing guitar *wish*

I play twice a week in a church band, the bass player can sing while playing but I struggle with it to this day, I've played guitar for about twenty years now and still cannot play and sing at the same time. the first ten years of playing I really wasn't serious about it because I was a lead singer, but now I'm the guitarist in the group and they sometimes want me to sing harmony so now I'm thrust into the position of having to play and sing at the same time. I'm just not that good at it to be honest.

I had given up on trying here lately, untill having read some of the posts in this thread have made me realize that maybe trying a different techique might help thanks.

on a side note: I do believe that some people are a natural at playing and singing at the same time. you know the ones.....they are the same ones who could play any "Eddie Van Halen" song flawlessly, after only two scant years of playing.

back in the day for the greats it was 10-12 hours a day, every day.
zakk said he would sleep at school then come home and play guitar all night.
EVH would do the same thing. 12 hou sessions
steve vai did 12 hour sessions.

totally normal for those guys.

then there are guys like frank that didn't start guitar till 18 and wrote/rehearsed all day. i don't know when he actually practiced and learned what he learned. after all i have read about him. he goes from starts learning at 18 and by 25, he is for lack of a better term, the 'master'.
don't know where he got it.

Originally posted by Voyager1
I imagine that to overcome the problem one has to practice so much that your playing sort of goes on auto pilot and you just play almost without thinking about it.

Singing while playing anything more than simple strumming patterns is pretty challenging for me. I do think a big part of it is practicing the song until it's second nature.

Also, I think, it's a "leap of faith thing"... like, don't think about what you're playing and what you're about to sing. Just disconnect your conscious mind and let it flow. Mith music, the best stuff usually happens that way!

Hey don't feel too bad, I can't pull singin' and playin' off either. Even though I know most of the songs really well where I can play with out thinking of what notes next, or what chord comes, I still can't sing and play, probably never will...

Start with the voice, then add the guitar

When people listen to a song, it's the voice they listen to most. That's just natural; human beings are wired for maximal sensitivity to the human voice.

So when you're singing and playing an instrument, the singing must come first. The instrument is there to support the voice, not the other way round.

Therefore, don't think about it as singing while playing your instrument. To begin with at least, think about it as accompanying your voice with your instrument.

First of all, learn to sing the song as well as you can. Don't even pick up your guitar while doing this. Learn to sing the song a capella (unaccompanied).

Learn it properly. Not just the notes. Find your own relationship with the lyrics and find your own way of expresssing it. Turn your vocal into the best performance you can.

By the time you're halfway through that process, you'll find yourself tapping your feet, clapping your hands, popping your fingers or whatever it is you normally do to keep time while singing.

Pick up your guitar and use that to keep time instead. Keep the guitar part as easy as possible, so that it's more or less automatic as you sing -- just changing chords and strumming.

As you pick up the habit, you'll be able to manage more difficult things -- riffs or little embroidery figures -- aroung the basic chords of the accompaniment. Till then, keep it simple and just play the chords in time to the rhythm.

Eventually, if you keep at it, you'll become like Jack White of the White Stripes -- someone whose singing and playing are integrated into a single whole, so that the voice and guitar weave in and out of each other, passing the melody back and forth between them.

By then, you'll be a master.

But if it doesn't ever happen, console yourself that not all the masters are good at this either. Notoriously, the great BB King could never learn to sing and play at the same time.