Singing and Playing Guitar

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Singing and Playing Guitar

Lyrics and Melody

1. Print the lyrics off (even better, write them out by hand) and start singing along with the song. 
Don’t play the song too loud as you want to hear yourself.
Record yourself doing this at least once in your practice. You need to analyse what is and isn’t working.

2. You should get an understanding at this point whether the key of the song is too high or low and which parts will require some extra work (tricky phrasing, hard to reach notes, advanced techniques like trills and vibrato). 

3. If the key of the song feels too high/low or some notes in the song are unreachable changing the key is a good option – it isn’t cheating, a lot of great singers do this. 

4. The same as memorising the chords and the guitar parts (rhythm, arpeggios, etc), you need to have the lyrics memorised.

Singing and Playing the Song

1. At the same time as working on the trickier guitar and vocal parts you should start working on the playing and singing at the same time.

2. Start off by strumming each chord once and humming the melody at the same time.

3. After you can hum the verse in time with your playing, introduce one sentence/phrase at a time, loop this sentence or phrase around until it becomes more comfortable. Piece-by-piece you are putting together the verse then the chorus. The good news is, as you get to the second verse and beyond you will see more repetition.

4. Once you are able to play the whole song strumming each chord once you will want to start recording yourself so you can hear what needs to be worked on with the singing.

5. The final thing to add is more interest from the guitar part. Depending on your level this might be adding a simple strumming pattern, arpeggios, fills between the chord changes. It is important you choose the right song as the more complex guitar parts can be added on in the years to come.

The Good News 
There is a lot of hard work involved in this, but you can do it if you make it part of your daily practice and even part of your lesson. Each time you go through this process when learning to sing and play a song the better and faster you get at learning new songs!