Guitar/Singing and Playing

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There are some people who are blessed with a perfect singing voice and excellent coordination, and they sing and play the guitar like breathing. For other people, attempting to sing a single note causes them to immediately lose the rhythm.

This section is intended to help people who already play the guitar and gives advice on how to incorporate vocals into their performance .

[edit] General Tips

Just keep singing. The worst thing you can do is stop, because stopping teaches you to stop, and only singing teaches you to sing.

[edit] Other Artist's Songs

First learn to play the song really well. Listen and sing along with the song, over and over again. After you have a good handle on both the singing and guitar part, try putting them together.

Practice playing and singing the song without reference to the original, and when you are sure that you have memorised the lyrics and chord changes, practice along to the original version. Sometimes doing this will help you master the harder sections.

Keep a copy of the words nearby while you are learning, in case you forget a line or two. It is better to stumble through a few lines and keep the song going rather than stopping in mid verse trying to remember something.

[edit] Your Own Songs

After writing the first few lines of a song and with an idea of how you'd like the song to be (having the basic chords and lyrics ), the next step is to explore the possibilities. The idea is to try different tones and melodies. When singing we can stretch words to fill up some space. change any words and chords, or if creating a version of a known tune, add a chord (or word), later you can decide which one sounds better. Sometimes we subconciously create music that is a copy of our favourite artist; there's nothing wrong with this. After all, some of the greatest names in music founded their early careers with covers of the music of their heroes. After some progress show it to your friends and ask them for some opinions. Sometimes we may also forget the melody or chords, so a good tip is to record it. You don't need a professional studio, just a normal microphone and a computer will suffice. With regards to lyrics during songwriting, if a word doesn't sit well, look for a synonym. Most of the time, it's the best solution.