Tips for Singing while playing?

[JimiSaveUs]

I have been playing for 5 years now (age 13-18 ) and I cannot seem to manage to sing and play at the same time. I probably should have started singing long ago, but I have only become interested recently.

Does anyone have any helpful tips by which guitarists may learn to sing and play simultaneously? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Matty Boom]

start by talking while you play, like read a newspaper out loud and that will help you get that dual coordination down

[c_tietze]

Matty Boom's advice is good, you have to learn how to separate the two (your singing and your playing) in a matter of speaking. Try to talk while playing. It's difficult at first, but it comes with practice.

Also, try to play and sing a song you know by heart!!!!

[czech]

i learned by singing out the rhythym i was playing.
example: The la la part just after the nature intro in Billies.
once I could sing along with teh rhythym i started singing songs that are harder.

[martinstud17]

same thing happened to me i found it easy to pick a song where the lyrics fit easy with the chord progression. songs i suggest would be flake, rodeo clowns, by jack johnson. i find it a lot harder to sing covers but quite easy to make up my own things.

[mangold]

play and sing along with the song as it plays. i find that promotes duality

[JimiSaveUs]

Thanks for the advice, and sorry about the repost (shortly after I posted I discovered the "Search" feature)

I have been working on it and it is coming along. But now I have yet another problem. I can only reach a High C singing and I would like to expand my singing ability any tips for reaching higher notes?

[dcanes]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but...

I used to not be able to sing and play at all, now I still can't, but it's much better.

Here's the key for me:

play the guitar part until it's second nature, then think of it as purely mechanical. Don't focus in on the sound of the guitar. That way it's not distracting. It's hard to explain, but split your brain in half so that the guitar is mechanics only, and the singing is pure melody.

my 2c

[mlb1399]

Just found this on guitarnoise.com
I think this might be helpful:
http://guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=282

[guitardmb]

Memorize the guitar part. Then sing along with the cd without playing just singing. Then once you get the rythm down memorize the lyrics and put the music and lyrics together. That way your only doing two things at once instead of 4. Without memorization you have to sing,play,read the tab, and read the lyrics all at once.