Friday, August 9, 2013

How To Sing And Play Guitar At The Same Time Tips


The quickest way to impress your friends and buddies is to learn how to sing while you are playing guitar. It might seem impossible when you first try it but it's a hugely valuable skill to have. When starting a band, the singer is usually the most difficult player to find.  If you happen to both sing and play guitar, you'll be more likely to get the gigs in bands as so many guitarists will have skipped learning to sing.

Start with a very simple song. It can even be happy birthday. Figure out the chord changes that best fit the song and play through it once or twice to really get the chord changes into your head. Doing this not only develops your mind to memorize the changes but it also creates what is referred to as muscle memory. Muscle memory is basically the muscles being trained to feel out each chord and how it feels in your hand so you can confidently change to the proper chords without having to look down at the neck.

The next thing to do would be to learn the lyrics of the song and their relationship to the chord changes and variations in the vocals.

The first couple times you sing the song, you won't be doing any guitar playing. You'll simply sing along and get the vocal part down as well as you can.  You want to go over the tune enough times so that your vocal inflections closely match those of the singer.

Now we can begin to put this all together. While playing the chord changes, we have to shift the chords to our minds subconscious to make sure that you could play the track without focusing on it. Next, just start singing at the appropriate part of the song and stumble through it.  Each time you attempt the song, you will make less singing or guitar blunders and the track will certainly start to sound better and better. It's recommended to stick with one song until you are able, with confidence, to play and sing it.  When you are able to perform it well in front of a live audience, you are ready to go on and learn the next track.

You will have to stick with it to train your brain to share its resources between your hands for playing and your mouth for singing. Soon you will be able to play more intricate guitar parts while singing as well as singing more interesting vocal lines while playing guitar.

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Friday, July 5, 2013

Learn To Play Guitar

learn guitar
If you are wanting to learn to play guitar, the most important thing that you need to do is practice. The extreme versatility of the guitar enables one to play a variety of types of music. Learning how to play guitar takes practice, study and a dedicated approach. The fact is that you will not learn to play overnight, but with a dedicated practice schedule and the proper study, you will get results.  

Start by learning simple chords and scales. Many books are available that show basic chords and scales with finger position, most have the finger positions numbered for ease. In addition, there are many online guitar courses that a very good and can help to get you started. Once you begin to learn a few chords, start to practice moving from one chord to the next, transitions, on the fingerboard.

It’s a good idea to write down your goals of why you are learning guitar, how much time are you willing to invest, and where you want to go with this.

Try to devote a period of time each day for practicing the guitar. Try starting out with a basic chord transition or guitar scale and work on this for a month. You will be surprised at how well your fingers begin to work and remember this dedicated task after only a month.

When you have mastered a few chords, you will probably want to learn some songs. Keep it interesting and enjoyable by learning songs that you enjoy hearing. This can be really inspiring as you begin to actually play one of your favorite songs. An important tip for learning a song is to not just learn a part of the song, but learn the whole song. By learning the complete song, you will begin to understand song structure and help you to improve your playing ability faster.

Another important tip is to always use a metronome. The metronome will help you to concentrate on your timing and this will be beneficial as you progress. Start by setting the metronome to a fairly slow setting and begin practicing at this speed. When you are playing your scale or riff perfectly, slightly increase the speed of the metronome, and continue. This routine may seem tedious, but stick with it, as the benefits will pay off for you.

Learning to play guitar has everything to do with a dedicated approach, routine practice and a lot of patience. If you keep it interesting and stick with it, you will be successful.