Singing and playing at the same time.

[mando_pete]

Hello,

Topic says it all. Singing and playing at the same time for me is like patting my head and rubbing my tummy ( which, incidentally, I just figured out I can do just fine) so it's a bad analogy. But you get the picture. I've always been able to sing, and I've been playing for about 4 years, but until tonight I never tried doing both at the same time. What a disaster. I just can't seem to play rhythm and sing melody at the same time.

How did you all learn to do it? Or did it come naturally?

What started all this is that I figured out the chord progression to Iz Kamakawiwo 'ole 's version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the mandolin to a tee, and when I try to "woo woo" or sing lyrics to it, it all falls apart.

I even tried going real slow, no luck.

Suggestions appreciated.

-- Pete

[edawg]

play the rhythm as simple as u can.
listen to recordings..know what words are on the exact beat.

its tough, ive been having the hardest time singing dear prudence and playing.


anyways, how do you guys play your chords and sing (solo). i guess i been playing like a guitar, one two and three and four and (or so). any tips??

[Tim]

There's an interesting story about John Duffey learning to do this. #It is towards the bottom of the article at this link: #Guitar Man (http://www.snopes.com/music/media/guitar.asp)

[Jim Hilburn]

It depends on if you are just going to play rhythm to the singing or something fancy.
In my band, when it's time to sing I just play the rhythm and try to do some fills at the end of lines, but if you haven't practiced it, your brain may not be ready for the next line, at least my brain. It's the mental equivalent of a old 386 processor.
We've just learned a song that has an intro that's an instrumental harmony with the guitar player and myself on mandolin. However, at the end of the first singing line we have to do that harmony again. The last word of the song ends with the first notes of the fill. Now the brain has to do double duty.
I used to buy quite a few instructional video's even though I never really learned all that much from them. One was a Steve Morse electric guitar video. I got it more for the entertainment value because his band plays several tunes on there. But one part of the study section that has stuck with me is about identifying the trouble spots in a passage and instead of just doing the whole song over and over, just repeat the hard line until your fingers just do it automatically. That's what I'm doing with this particularly tough line in our song,playing the line while holding that vocal note.

[musical mama]

I realize this is a little late for you, Mando_Pete, but anyone else just beginning to learn mando who sings may find this helpful. I've always been told to sing along as you're first learning to play; if you wait till after you've mastered the instrument, then it's hard to sing along. It has worked in the past for me with other instruments, so now I'm incorporating it with the mandolin. I've been playing for about one month, and last night our group performed a concert at a local church. It was my debut night for the mandolin, and I sang alto while playing. This church had heard us before, and were thrilled that we'd added a mandolin. I only played three songs, but it added to the service!

So sing as you learn!

[mandocrucian]

There's 3 things going here:
1) Singing the song
2) Playing the backup
3) Doing them both simultaneously

"well, duh" #I can hear the wiseguys saying. But sometimes there's a whole lot more to what may intially sound so simplistic and obvious.

How much RAM does your brain have? How complex a "program" can it run and still enough have processing memory left over to run another program?

Let's say your brain has 10x discretional program capability. When you are learning a song, maybe that's eating up 9x of capacity. As you get the lyrics and melody down better and it starts to run on autopilot, maybe it drops to 7x, 5x, or 4x.

Same thing with the playing of backup. If it is a complicated part it may be 10x to start. Or if it is something simple, rhythmically mechanical, it only uses up 5x. Again as it becomes more automatic the amount of conscious attention decreases.

Putting the two together. Obviously 6x + 5x exceeeds the processing capacity. Slowing things down changes the ratio of time-unit/info-to-be-processed. So if you slow things down to half speed, the result is 3x + 2.5x to run the programs. (That's why computers run slow when there are too many programs running).

But that's not the whole story; there's a brain service charge for operating 2 programs at once..let's say... 2x. So, you have to get each thing more ingrained to allow for the dual-processing expenses. #Or, you can dumb down one of the parts (vocal or instrumental) to meet budgetary requirements.

However....since the brain has the plasticity of rewiring itself, by rerouting neural connections, it can become more efficient and upgrade its own capacities....10x to 15x to 20x....

The more one runs 2 (or more) independent programs simultaneously, the more adept the mind becomes at doing so. This builds up processing ability. And it doesn't have to be the same combination of tasks (vocal/backup). #Foot percussion and vocals, foot percussion and instrumental. Make the percussion a syncopated one which is less a boom-chuck-boom-chuck menchanical physical motion - it gets more difficult.

Or draw a triangle with one hand and a square or circle with the other at the same time. Has nothing to do with playing music, but it exercises the dual processing "muscles". #Anything that boosts your capabilities for multiple processing carries over to making it easier to sing and play at the same time.

Yeah, it may make you feel a little odd or scrambly when you've put in a session of brain-stretching, but you'll get used to it. (You can think of it as the equivalent of the "burn" of physically working out.) #One of the tip-offs, in my experience, to brain-expansion is heightened awareness of your peripheral vision - your field of vision seems to widen out considerably. Why?...my theory is that the "stretch" in mental procssing capabilites doesn't turn off when you put the instrument down, but is transferred over to the visual processing and your mind registers more of visual info coming in. Makes things more... "cinematic".

I might add that I've spent time learning to kick bass-lines on organ pedals (LF) as well as my own 5-piece (one foot (RF) powered) drum kit, and playing mando and doing vocals at the same time. #Sometimes after just messing with James Brown ultra syncopated grooves on just the bass pedals and drumkit, I might try some rhythm-mando + vocal on a hard-to-execute song (i.e. "Rock N Roll Hoochie Koo") and find it much easier to keep it together. The brain stretch from the funk bass/drums carries over.

So..
Practice each "part" separately. #Get comforatble with singing the song. Get your backup part rehearsed. #Now you have a better chance of keeping it together when you try to do both. Start real slow, if you have to, so the mind can grasp the associations of what the hands need to do in relation to where the voice is.

Nobody says it is going to be "easy".

Niles Hokkanen
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Niles - CGOW interview (http://www.mandozine.com/resources/CGOW/niles.php)</span>

[mrbook]

It takes practice, like everything else. I wasn't a singer, but started singing when I first began to learn guitar, so the guitar (or rhythm mandolin) playing was accompaniment to my voice. As I learned mandolin, I sang and played chords along with it. You should get the melody, tempo, and timing from your singing, and you put it all together. After time, you add runs and fills between the chords, and it all fits together more easily than doing each separately and trying to combine them - or so it seems to me.

I had a lot harder time learning to sing and play the banjo, and would still prefer to play while someone else sings. However, since no one else in the band will learn the words to some of the songs I wanted to play, I've kept at it until I learned to do it a bit better.

[mando bandage]

FWIW, just keep trying. It's a bit like riding a bike for me. I long thought I would never be able to do it. However, my jammates refused to learn lyrics of songs they didn't know just to keep me happy. Their take was "sing it yourself, or we'll just play something else." Necessity being the mother of invention, I can now do a creditable job of playing rhythm and singing (although not well) in 4/4, 3/4, 6/8. And, like riding a bike, there was a moment when I just intuitively knew how the vocal melody line fit with the chords. There are some songs I aspire to sing with odd and/or shifting time signatures (Little Feat's "The Fan" comes to mind) which are still in Niles's brain-stretching mode. As BB King would say..."someday, baby."

R

[mandolidaho]

try humming along with the chords first, before singing, sometimes this is helpful
Chris

[mando_pete]

Thanks for the replies. I was afraid that this was something that should come easy. Knowing that others had to work at it is a relief.

My alarm was caused by the fact that the rhythm part in this song is constant. It's actually "1 rest and 3 and" over and over again. When the words fall on the rest my right hand starts to follow the words instead of the rhythm.

I'll keep working at it and see what happens.

Thanks,

-- pete

-- pete

[F5G WIZ]

You have to get to the point where you don't have to think about the playing part. I can sing and play but I can't play lead and sing at the same time because I have to think about what I'm playing to much.

[jackofall]

In the past, when I mostly played guitar I could never sing and play at the same time.

Over the last few weeks I've organised a kind of acoustic jam/singalong session at our local pub with some guitar, concertina, whistle and banjo players as well as singers. I do my best on mando - mostly just rhythm as nothing else would be heard over the concertina and 5-string banjo! It's the first time I've played along with other musicians for about 18 years! It's great - even if my playing isn't...

I have found that I have had to sing a bit in order to demonstrate the melodies to those who don't know the tunes. Oddly enough, it seems to be coming much more easily than before. Odd, huh?

I guess it's a case of keeping the rhythm simple until the multi-tasking knack develops, and then just practicing.

[Kate D.]

Mando Pete- I'd offer a terrific virtual latte with extra foam if you'd share the chord progression on that version of "somewhere over the rainbow". I just love that, and though I've caught some of the chords, I don't have them all yet.

[PhilGE]

Pete, try this out:

Learn to sing and play the melody in unison at the same time. Try something really simple like "Row, row, row your boat..." After you've learned that, try really simplifying it by dropping out every second note (Row...Row...Gently...Stream...). Once you can do that, try substituting chords for the melody on mandolin while you keep singing words. Then add all the words back in while you keep playing only the rhythm. Keep trying this sort of thing with other songs you know and are simple. Then build up to more difficult songs.

Just my 2 cents...

[mandolooter]

well put as always Niles...I had a hard time doing both til I knew both the words and the chords perfectly then it just kinda happened!

[Jonathan Reinhardt]

And then there are the times where there are no mics, 100 or so noisy people out there and you must project your vocal to the max. That's the test.

rasa
Jonathan Reinhardt

[RobP]

I learned to sing and play with guitar years ago. What got me on mandolin was trying to sing lead and chop the offbeat at the same time! Just lots of practice got it.. now it's second nature just like singing with guitar

Rob

[billkilpatrick]

concentrate on the singing - the instrumental "fill-ins" will happen as they can.

vintage 60's wisdom:

"it's the singer, not the song ..." - rollingstones

and this from manfred mann (paul jones singing):

"...they didn't come for the music
they didn't come for the beat
the people of the town
just came to stand around
and see the singer looking sweet."

- bill

[MDW]

One of the more mind boggling things I've experienced was seeing Tim O'Brien last year. He was able to cross pick the melody on the mandolin while still singing the lead part. I've also heard him do an amazing solo version of Workin On A Building while harmonizing the lead vocal with the fiddle. He clearly has the capacity to multitask at an advanced level.

[mrbook]

Mike Seeger (rarely mentioned here, although a good mandolin player) does a version of "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down" with his singing accompanied by fiddle and rack harmonica, playing both instruments together. I saw him do it live in the 1970s, but it is also on a video somewhere. The singing has only his own fiddle accompaniment.

[otterly2k]

I find it pretty easy to play rhythm and sing... the rhythm goes on autopilot (like when you tap your foot to the beat). What is harder for me is to sing one melodic line and play a different one. Then, I find, the slowing down and letting the coordination sync up really helps. That and having the part learned so well that my hands can remember it without my head.

[AmosMoses]

Your analogy of rubbing your stomach and patting your head (or vice-versa) is pretty accurate. This is true of all instruments. Drums and bass come to mind. The problem stems from the timing of the lyrics vs. Picking patterns that could incorporate syncopated picking, triplets, runs, etc.

Just as you said, you discovered that you can pat your head and rub your stomach. Seems easy now doesn't it. Singing and playing can be learned as well. Don't give up!

I remember seeing Phil Collins (sorry no mando), playing drums and singing 'In the Air Tonight' on television and was impressed by his timing. Have a listen and you'll see what I mean. Practice, Practice, yeah well you know.

[Michael H Geimer]

It's David Rawlings who amazes me in this respect. Not only is he playing these intricate, tasty, fills and double-stops ... but he's singing some really tight, difficult harmonies behind Gillian Welch.

He's doing what I'd like to be doing ... difference is, he can do it and I can't.

Took me about two years of work before I could play and sing while keeping a steady beat going. I've got aong way to go before I'll be able play something tricky behind my singing.

[Strange1]

Practice, Practice, Practice. That worked for me. I didn't really have a hard time playing rhythm and singing but playing
syncopated notes while playing bass can be a hair raisin prob sometimes. I can now play a little lead on the mando while singing, also.

Jack

[chn]

I'd also love to see your chord progressions for Iz's Over the rainbow