But who here sings/ really work on their singing?
I've been really singing for 2 years, and singing out in public for 6 months.
I probably work on it more than I do my guitar.
bet then again, I want to be a musician, not a guitarist
Now, I know we are are Guitarist.
« » Page 1 2-
- Rated: 3 ↑
May 9, 2008 1:25 a.m. HillbillyWolf:
-
- Rated: 23 ↑
May 9, 2008 2:17 a.m. bobbyrivera:
I'm pretty happy being "just" a guitar player and musical instrument player:)
I've worked on my "singing" over the past couple of years and have gotten better. I can pull off vocals in the studio. I still can't sing and play guitar (beyond chunking chords) at the same time. I'm always amazed at folks who can play cool, tasty lead stuff on guitar while they are singing (especially in a trio setting).
I play lots of different instruments (and have done so in several groups) but singing was one I could just never get a good handle on.
As far as public singing for me? I prefer not to drive the audience out of the club...
-
- Rated: 3 ↑
May 9, 2008 2:54 a.m. HillbillyWolf:
haha thats how I felt the first time, but I had stumbled into a club I knew, and sooner than i could say anything i was whisked to the stage, and The guitarist (whom i knew) handed me his guitar, told me to sing something.
I think I did a version of Wynonie Harris's song "Loving Machine". which is weird to do a guitar version of. people really dug it, and I liked it.
But i sing alot of Rockabilly and some Western Swing stuff usually.
-
- Rated: 23 ↑
May 9, 2008 3:21 a.m. bobbyrivera:
The first time I sang on stage, I was playing a benefit and did a bunch of Merle Travis tunes- John Henry, Sixteen Tons, That's All, and made a lame attempt at "Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette" (which i think was written by Tex Willaims, not Merle Travis, but Merle played guitar on it). The musicians from the previous band were supposed to back me up. They never showed so I had to do the Travis pickin' and sing at the same time. Not good for me, but there weren't too many people there anyways. One guy that was there though, was the former mayor of Milwaukee. Fortunately he was like 80 some years old, and bad hearing. He was also a huge Merle Travis Fan so he recognized the tunes. Fortunately for me, the sound on the PA for the vocal was so bad I think he (and the rest of the crowd) only heard the fingerpicking.
The last singing gig I did: I had to play Jack Scott- The way I walk Tarheel Slim's- #9 Train, and Jack Earls- Crawdad Hole-
It was pretty bad, and fairly Rumpleminz influenced...
It was then I realized that I have no business being a singer (at least live anyways). I choke every time at live shows (forget lyrics, etc,). I can sing OK at home and in the studio, but I just can't seem to dial it in with a crowd. When I'm just the guitar guy or even band leader, I have no problems being a front man. Kinda weird! Bobby
-
- Rated: 3 ↑
May 9, 2008 3:53 a.m. HillbillyWolf:
haha that is a little bizaare.
I used to forget lines and just improvize alot.
At least you don't have to get shocked by the Mic every week!
right on the lips,too
-
- Rated: 23 ↑
May 9, 2008 4:20 a.m. bobbyrivera:
HillbillyWolf- I've been shocked on the lips/ mouth many times by the old wiring and lack of grounds at many venues!
While I don't always sing, i still have to talk into the mic-and hold my guitar...and get zapped
Your best defense against that is to bring your own grounded (three prong) power strips to each gig. Put each piece of sound gear (I.e. amps, keyboards, PA) into a separate elect. outlet in the club (so bring some extension cords also). Also, make sure that the "ground switch" in your tube amp (if so equipped) is set properly.
Google "PA Ground Problems" and there are some good solutions to these issues. That "spark" you feel is you being temporally grounded to the building (venue) electrical system, and yeah, its rather uncomfortable.
I'm sure some guys on here could give you a better explanation on how it relates to your amp, grounds, etc.
-
- Rated: 3 ↑
May 9, 2008 4:49 a.m. HillbillyWolf:
ah well, you'll have to throw in old mics and old PA systems, I don't mind it too much so to do anything about it. it makes me remember i'm still alive!
-
- Rated: 37 ↑
May 9, 2008 5:09 a.m. Tsar Nicholas :
I sing in my band, I don't mind it too much. I'm not a great singer but I'm not a bad singer..
-
- Rated: 9 ↑
May 9, 2008 7:12 a.m. MarkW:
Interesting topic. My son started playing guitar when he was 9 (now 17) and never sang anything anytime until 18 months ago. When he first started, my wife and I would grimace and wonder where that sound came from. He is slowly getting better and can actually carry some tunes off quite nicely, but it took a lot of work and practice.
He is a very good guitarist and his band sounds great. But they really need a lead singer. Anyone can pull it off with effects or harmonies but the vocal cord is an instrument just like a guitar.
-
- Rated: 16 ↑
May 9, 2008 7:34 a.m. gretschiam:
I've been singing in my band for 37 years. And I suck and I know it. I refer to sing harmony- I'm pretty accurate, just don't have a pleasant sounding voice. I got into lead singing in the beginning to spell the main singers when we'd do 5 or 6 hours a night and because I could do the falsetto parts on the Eagles or the Beach Boys. Except for our drummer (for the last 15 years), everyone in the band sings and we do a lot of harmony.
I never thought I say this, but the last 10 years or so I've gotten squeezed out more and more simply because our main tree singers are SO good they don't usually need me. I still practice all the time, though. Bad singing requires as much practice as bad guitar playing. I've mastered both of those.
-
- Rated: 3 ↑
May 9, 2008 7:41 a.m. Tin Roof Rusted:
I consider myself a songwriter first, then singer then guitar player. TRR
-
- Rated: 41 ↑
May 9, 2008 8:21 a.m. otterbean:
I was a singer before I was a guitarist. I recorded a few albums with an a capella choral group back in the early eighties. I picked up the guitar shortly thereafter. The guitar quickly took over.
Combining the two skills was very difficult for me. Each discipline suffered due to the split concentration. I practice regularly with my simultaneous singing and playing. I like to think I am getting better at it, but I'm not going out in public to do both at the same time any time soon. I do sing and play concurrently when I am at home , hanging out with friends, or playing in a small setting like a coffee house.
-
- Rated: 38 ↑
May 9, 2008 8:49 a.m. The Norm:
which i think was written by Tex Willaims, not Merle Travis..."
The story on that song was Tex Williams stopped by Travis' house and grumbled that he had to come up with some kind of song to get radio exposure. The story goes to say that Travis was painting a fence at the time. He put down the brush, cleaned up a little bit and they spent the afternoon writing the song and Williams performed it that night and of course it took off.
Travis had a 'method' for writing songs and it apparently worked. Just how the song grew, meaning what triggered the idea I have no idea unless it was the obvious that one or both men smoked and 'had to have another cigarette'
The Travis songwriting 'method'? I believe it was to write the last line first.
-
- Rated: 74 ↑
May 9, 2008 9:28 a.m. Mark Synchro:
When I first started playing out I hated the idea of singing. I wanted to play Jazz guitar and have quiet, appreciative audiences applaud politely when I took my solos. Then reality struck and I realized that if I wished not to live in a dumpster I would have to broaden my horizons a bit and vocals were a part of that.
I used to say that I was the least-worst singer in our band and that was true. I was pretty bad and the other guys were even worse than I. Somehow, I was deft enough at dodging flying fruit to survive until I learned how. In retrospect, most of it was a matter of gaining confidence and putting my best foot forward.
Still, at least for me, it involved a lot of practice. For years and years I sang along with everything that came on the radio. If the song wasn't in my key I'd sing harmony. In some ways it was harder than learning to play.
-
- Rated: 167 ↑
May 9, 2008 9:42 a.m. Proteus:
This is a topic which cuts deep for me, though I only think about it when I'm forced to.
Gretschiam pretty much nails my situation as well.
I started singing before I started playing guitar, actually, in church. There was no question but that I was going to be church choir, Wednesday night practices and Sunday services, and that started when I was 6 or so, and lasted through high school.
I sang in the high school choir as well, and my piano teacher (from the age of 7), the inevitable indomitable and influential Bee Orr (who was also the church choir director and elementary school music teacher) gave me some "voice lessons" at some point and sent me to Solo and Ensemble Contest at least once, where I wobbled light-headed above mountains of stomachic butterflies and gastrointestinal quease and pathetically croaked ... either "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" or "Shenandoah," I don't recall which.
By that time (I must've been 15 or 16), I was playing guitar and writing and singing songs. Actually, I'd written my first at about 10 "in midair" (without benefit of instrumental support), though I didn't start writing stuff (and singing it) regularly for a couple years after that, when I started playing guitar.
The upshot, if not natural result, of all this "training" and experience was, and is, that I have no trouble carrying a tune, finding and holding harmonies, or even reading vocal parts (when required).
That doesn't mean it SOUNDS good. My voice is a middling baritone, neither booming big in the bottom nor soaring rock castrati on top, and tonally it's some unfortunate combination of mahogany, gravel, forboding, and comic nasal twang, with a dynamic range from ƒ to ƒƒ.
It's a raw, unsubtle monotone yawp in the vein of Springsteen, Dylan, or Neil Young – or shoot, maybe Kate Smith – but without the distinctive qualities (or starpower) of any of those. When I'm compared to any other singer, it's Frank Zappa - who, as a singer, is a fine guitarist. A magazine review said I was from the "kabuki school of singing," whatever that is.
This has made me an ideal harmony singer, great for texture and color. I sang a great deal in high school with a friend, and without giving it much thought we worked out interesting, intertwining, non-parallel harmonies probably unconsciously conditioned by Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, Everlies, and the like. His was a much prettier voice, the harmonic motion drew attention, and the result was not unpleasing.
From then on, I was NEVER the lead singer in bands. I was guitar or guitar&keyboards, and always sang harmony. I was always given a few novelty belters to bellow to relieve the other singers (and flatter whatever notion I had that I was An Entertainer). "Suzie Q," "Pink Cadillac," "Kansas City," "JB Goode," "Elvira," "Gimme 3 Steps," that's the kind of stuff I'd throw away. You wouldn't trust me with a ballad, though somehow I sang pre-BuckNicksFleetwoodMac's "Sentimental Lady" and, wait for it, Andy Gibb's "I Just Wanna Be Yer Everything" (complete with falsetto). I know I shouldn't admit to THIS in a public forum, but I seem to remember I also sang "The Piña Colada Song," and I'm apologizing here and now.
But for harmonies, I was unqualifiédly useful, just as sweet a partial EagleBeatleByrd as you could want.
And so it went till my current band(s), starting about 9 years ago, which are based on my original material. It's not that I sound any better singing my stuff than I sound on anyone else's - it's that I write lyrics no one else WILL sing, and that the other non-singers in the band have been even worse than I am.
So in that period I've had much singin-and-playin experience, and, as Gretschiam puts it, I'm very practiced, and have gotten very good at being bad. I know I've gotten stronger and more sure, with better phrasing and expression, but the general megaphonic voice quality hasn't abated. And when I try to go all breathy and sensitive, it just sounds like a parody of someone missing by a mile. (Imagine Zappa singing a sweet ballad...)
Still, though I know no one mistakes for A Singer, I can tell from general audience response that I'm getting the songs across. (I've learned to distinguish between those who applaud because the song is over and those who applaud because they like it. The second group sticks around for the next song.)
I've done a lot of singing in the studio, leads and layered harmonies, and have either gotten used to what to expect and so give myself a pass, or manage to produce studio vocals which don't embarrass me. But there's no doubt the guitar-playing suffers when I sing, and the singing suffers when I play, and I'm almost always doing both at the same time.
When I hear recordings of live gigs, I hear a constant tremulous vibrato in my voice that isn't there in the studio. It's curious at first, and then cumulatively VERY annoying. I think it may result from the various motions and vibrations of playing guitar and having the thing bouncing around on my diaphragm. (I consider the guitar a high cumberbund, not a bowtie nor a jockstrap.)
I'm trying to fix THAT, which is the most unpleasant aspect of my vocals I think I have any chance of moderating at my advanced age. More breath support, I tell myself while singing. Problem is, I'm also reminding myself how to play guitar at the same time, trying to push the song along, and reading the lyrics (which I STILL haven't memorized). Too much to do at once.
So it's like this. As a singer, I'm a pretty good guitarist. As a guitarist, I'm not a bad songwriter. As a songwriter, I should find a singer. With the package of all three functions, I almost justify my self-indulgent musical ambitions.
At long last, we've recently added an actual singer to the band, a young good-looking, charismatic guy who's learning 15 - 20 of my songs and singing lead. We're harmonizing well (though it's not seamless yet), and he's a natural at utility guitar and keyboard as well, fattening up the trio-plus-harponica format.
I'm always amazed how different the songs sound when a real singer delivers them.
-
- Rated: 16 ↑
May 9, 2008 9:58 a.m. senojnad:
I've sung (in my view....) most of my life. I grew up in a musical family and we did a lot of singing at various gatherings. Started playing the uke at around 5-6 years old, then guitar at around 8+ years. School choirs, etc., and sang backup and harmony with various bands over the years.
My most "terrifying" (in terms of stage fright) performance was playing (accoustic) and singing (just me) "The Wedding Song" at my oldest daughter's wedding.
-
- Rated: 27 ↑
May 9, 2008 10:25 a.m. MR TROUBLE:
There's not a lot of people out there who can handle vocals, songwriting, and guitar playing. Usually you find people who are good at ONE thing and kinda just "get-by" on the rest. Not that you have to be a "triple-threat". I have always strived to be a good singer, writer, and musician as opposed to just a really great guitarist.
-
- Rated: 74 ↑
May 9, 2008 10:33 a.m. Mark Synchro:
The biggest problem for me is that when I sing my playing suffers. It's been a long-term dilemma, whether to keep my mouth shut and concentrate on guitar or sing and let my playing feel the negative effects. Most of the people that have met me seem to opine that I should keep my mouth shut, even if they've never heard me sing. (As I write this I am preparing to address a crowd of roughly 100 people, work related. If it all goes well I might break loose with a chorus of "There's No Business Like Show Business".)
-
- Rated: 9 ↑
May 9, 2008 2:05 p.m. GhostRadio:
I've never been much of a singer - solo or when playing. I only recently started singing after my "band" (Rock Band on the Xbox) needed a singer. I started having so much fun with there, that for the last few months, my practice routines have been pretty heavy on trying to sing while playing.
For me, it all boils down to learning a guitar part well enough that I can just turn the guitar part of my brain off when it comes to playing, so it can focus on the singing. I don't have the greatest voice, and I have a range of about one octave, but I've started to have a lot more fun now that I can actually multi-task while playing.
-
- Rated: 15 ↑
May 9, 2008 2:50 p.m. cielski:
It's not that I can't sing, or shouldn't; it's just that I can't remember the words.
«
»
Page
1
2
