Many of our students love to sing and play their favourite songs, but aspiring guitarists often struggle with this, so here are some pointers.

If you’re looking to sing and play songs, there are three distinct parts to the process. The first is pretty obvious – learn to play the guitar part. In your lessons, develop the skills needed to play the guitar part to the song, and learn how to put it all together.

Next, learn to sing the song (again, obvious). Memorise the lyrics and learn the melody (lots of repeated listening and singing along). You may need to play the song in a different key to suit your voice?

The third and final part is where most people become unstuck – putting the guitar part and singing together.

It’s not as simple as just playing guitar on autopilot and singing along! Combining voice and guitar is a whole separate skill which can seem incredibly daunting.

Take small sections and sing/play them slowly – out of time if needed and simplified if that’s the only way you can do it (eg. you might just strum once per bar).

It can help to write out how the vocals and guitar part fit together e.g. maybe the guitar is playing on every beat, but the vocal starts in between beats 1 and 2 and then continues in a particular rhythm to beat 4 – seeing that written down can really help.

Many times, it’s a gradual process, but at a certain point you’ll find the penny drops, and all the hard work that you’ve put in suddenly clicks.

Check out the blog for more detail on this: https://www.aucklandguitarschool.co.nz/blog/singing-and-playing/

As ever, if you’d like help with any of this, just get in touch with us.