Singing and playing - how?!!

[tauzero]

I sing one song with the current band, the same song I sang with another band a while back - Make Me Smile (Come up and see me). It's fairly easy, I have to concentrate so much on the lyrics that I have no time to think about the bassline, that just comes automatically (and I still get the words wrong at times). And I sing it because I'm the worst singer in the band and it's the backing vocals that are important to be in tune.

[Grahambythesea]

I’ve always sung backing and some lead. I think the secret is not try and play too complicated a bass line. Sting was a good example. With time it becomes more natural and your bass lines will become more technical.

[DJ-MTD]

Just wanted to echo what others have said. Practice is the only way... 

 

However, HOW you practice can help a lot. I joined a band where I have to really sing for the first time a year ago and I found that singing my parts while doing other tasks made them a lot more routine. So singing while driving (easy), singing while doing the dishes (medium), singing while running (not as hard as you'd think!) - do something with your hands that's not quite as hard as playing bass while you're learning the vocal parts and you'll be more than halfway there when you strap it on. 

 

The other half is knowing the bass parts cold. You don't wanna be thinking about anything but the two tasks at hand so until you're really cooking on stage in this situation, play the lines exactly the same way note for note every single time. 

[D.I. Joe]

In addition to all of the aforementioned…

 

Try not to concentrate too much on the mechanics of what you’re doing but instead try to listen, as if you are listening to someone else playing. It’s hard to explain, but I find that if I “take a step back” mentally and listen to the whole, rather than concentrating on what I’m doing, then everything seems to come together more naturally and it’s easier to relax, which itself is important.

[fleabag]

When our band kicked off a couple of years ago, the premise was that every member ( 5 of us ) had to sing lead vocals on various tracks, mainly because we didnt have a front man.

 

Only  3 members had sung lead before. I wasnt one of then, so i had to get stuck in.  Not easy so i found out,  and it depended on what bass line i was paying at the time.

 

But it worked out ok cos i kept at it, and had around 5 tracks to sing lead on.  Just practice ,  there's no magic.

[Russ]

For years, I coud sing, or I could play bass. I could do these things individually quite well, but putting them together was a different story. 

 

For me, it's all about subdividing rhythms. Learning which beats the vocal parts and the bass fall on. If you're just plugging straight eighths on a simple progression, you should have no problem since there's a bass note on every beat, but, once you start making it a bit more rhythmically complex, with gaps and different length notes, you have to start thinking about where the bass part and vocal intersect and diverge, and you practice the hell out of those bits. 

 

Just to get the basics down, play ham-fisted, thumb around the neck, and use a pick since it's a bit easier to keep the rhythm. Then refine from there - put your fretting hand into the proper position, drop the pick (unless you don't want to), and start putting the gaps in, while keeping the vocal part consistent. Don't be afraid to look at the neck, but not all the time as your head won't be in a good position to sing (chin up, loosen that jaw!). 

 

I'm not there yet, and I'm still far from Geddy territory, but I'm much better at it than I used to be, and this is what's helped for me. 

[Dom in Dorset]

The more you do it the easier it gets.

Same goes for learning lyrics. I can do 2x45 minute sets without and crib sheets , tablets etc but can't remember my own kids birthdays.

[Inga]

literally just play the bassline so much that it becomes completely muscle memory, playing it whilst watching a television show or something like that and with the vocal you can try to remember what syllables or section of words land on certain parts of the bassline, and go from there helps me a lot to break it down like that

[DaytonaRik]

For me the trick was to know both parts inside out, back to front and upside so that you never had to stop thinking about one to concentrate on the other.

 

This was especially true when playing in a Thin Lizzy tribute band - not because the bass parts were particularly difficult but more because Lynott had a way of singing just behind the beat live that I wanted to replicate.

 

As others have said - muscle memory for the bass lines, committing the lyrics to memory and then working out what aligns.

 

Practice, practice, practice. 

[Japhet]

This is a pretty good starting point;

 

 

[fretmeister]

I find it much easier on guitar than on bass. Probably because the guitar parts tend to follow the rhythmic structure of the vocal more closely than the bass does.

And for many things, being a bit more avant-garde on guitar is fine and doesn't ruin the pulse of the tune.

 

I started singing and playing at pretty much the same time - when I was introduced to James Hetfield in 1986/7 when a mate shared some TDK cassettes! I wanted to do that.

 

So very frustratingly I can play fast metal on guitar and sing at the same time and have great trouble playing simple bass and singing at the same time!

But generally, it's all about spotting things that line up with strums and vocal beats and using them as anchor points with flexibility in between.