Singing & Playing Bass Guitar

[KevB]

Police squad, how did you get on with Demolition Man? I've never tried it but it sounds a bitch to get the singing and bass line timing spot on.

[uk_lefty]

I sometimes alter the rhythm of what I'm playing because I can't keep it going while trying to do a bv. I'm trying to iron this out but it's tough with some rhythms.

[police squad]

[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1488970842' post='3253319']
Police squad, how did you get on with Demolition Man? I've never tried it but it sounds a bitch to get the singing and bass line timing spot on.
[/quote]

I never tried it. It was on the list of stuff to learn but we haven't learned any new stuff (well, new, you know what I mean)

Spirits in the material world was strange too. Sting doesn't come in at the same point for each line of words. I still count myself in for the very first line.

Hole in my life was challenging too!!

[BrunoBass]

I sing backing vocals in my band, the lead guitarist and I share duties so that I do the BVs when he's got a more complicated part to play and vice versa. It's no problem for me to sing when playing root notes, it becomes more difficult as the basslines get more melodic.

[Staggering on]

It's worse if you play upright bass.Check out Jay Leonhart's video "It's impossible to sing and play the bass".And even worse if you are using the bow!

[lowdown]

[quote name='Staggering on' timestamp='1488976391' post='3253379']
It's worse if you play upright bass.Check out Jay Leonhart's video "It's impossible to sing and play the bass".And even worse if you are using the bow!
[/quote]

Haha...
Doing the Facebook rounds at the moment.

[Adrenochrome]

Yes, I love playing and singing. Most songs in my pop/punk/metal/rock sphere are very easy to play on bass (IMO). So I feel it’s the right thing to contribute as much as I can to the band sound include vocal harmonies, occasional lead vox if required, adding bits of keyboard parts etc. As stated earlier, clashes between vocal rhythms and the bass rhythms are often the challenging bits. One song I used to sing lead on I actually played g****r and let the singer play bass because it was much easier that way.

[HMX]

I've started doing backing vocals in my new band. I'm pretty sure I'm terrible but no-one has the heart to tell me so! We do a cover of Bad Religion's Can't Stop It and I struggle getting the descending staccato bassline right when I'm holding a long vocal melody.

[grumpyguts]

How does Mark King do all that stuff and sing at the same time?

[Highfox]

I only started with b/vox about a year ago and can still only do them on certain tunes and rythmns
Takes me a bit of brain power trying to make sure I'm roughly in tune and doing all the other stuff properly.. May hat is off to anyone that can carry the main vocals and bass live, Basschat's very own Police Squad included. (fat Sting) lol.

[Conan]

[quote name='grumpyguts' timestamp='1488986746' post='3253518']
How does Mark King do all that stuff and sing at the same time?
[/quote]

Well, writing the material himself helps of course, but still - amazing coordination and skill.

I think the job is actually harder in a covers band as you have to sing and play bass in a number of differing styles. The songs written by (or sung by) bassists tend to be the easiest!

[Monkey Steve]

I'll regularly do BVs and will sometimes get roped in to do lead.

An old punk covers band of mine uses to regularly do a Christmas gig at a local pub when our singer would be away somewhere with his family, so we just divided the songs between the rest of the band depending on who thought they could cope best with each song. That actually went down really well and was oddly ego-free, certainly in comparison to what follows about another band, we wanted each other to get a fair share of the vocals, and to make sure that we were singing the ones best suited to our voices. Possibly no coincidence that it was by far the easiest band to be in ego-wise, everybody just pleased to be there.

My last band also tried something similar when our coke-addled lead singer was relieved of his duties and we were struggling to find a replacement. That went less well. Mainly because the original idea of "let's all try, see who suits the songs best and divide it up that way" soon got taken over by one of the guitarists insisting (in a very passive/aggressive way) that he would do most of it. We recorded a couple of practices and it became apparent that the said guitarist was very much not up to the task, and he then insisted that we were all equally poor (despite feedback to the contrary from outside parties, it was mostly just him) and should revert back to looking for a new singer (that we didn't ever find).

I tend to agree with Blue that things get better over time with experience and confidence, certainly from my experience. The stuff about conflicting rhythms and melodies applies to a degree, but does get better...although there are some songs where it's a complete brick wall. There was one song in my last band where I could cope with some bits and the guitarist could cope with others, but neither of us could manage the whole song.

But what I do know about myself is that I don't have the personality or the voice to be the lead singer. Good at BVs, but you don't want me trying to carry the band.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Monkey Steve

[blue]

[quote name='Les' timestamp='1488962201' post='3253212']
I seem to manage ok but if need be I will sacrifice the bass line to get the harmony in.[/quote]

Me too, I will simplify the bass line which allows me to sing.

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='grumpyguts' timestamp='1488986746' post='3253518']
How does Mark King do all that stuff and sing at the same time?
[/quote]

I've seen some of Mark's video clips. You might notice he's all over the bass, singing in perfect pitch and he's usually chewing gum.

As far as I can figure, Mark is actually from another planet.

Blue

[Cato]

The trick is not to think about playing.

I can do it easily playing chords and even counter melodies on guitar, but I have real difficulties singing whilst playing even simple root note basslines.

[RhysP]

I definitely find playing guitar & singing easier than playing bass & singing.
I've been singing as long as I've been playing. I've done lead & backing vocals while playing bass for a long time.

My introduction to singing & playing bass live was a bit of a baptism of fire. My old band had their (and my) first ever gig playing at a festival in West Sussex, playing just before China Crisis who were the headline act. A couple of days before the gig our vocalist/rhythm guitarist quit. We were so angry at him doing this to us that we decided we'd do the gig regardless. I ended up taking over lead vocal duties without a rehearsal &, fuelled by a combination of bloodymindedness & adrenalin, got through the gig without any problems.

[bassbiscuits]

I play bass and sing lead vocals in my band but it's taken a good while to get to be fluent at it.

Realistically when learning a new tune I end up focusing on one thing or the other, so the first few times we rehearse putting it all together the cracks are there to see.

For example, the bass line will go a bit astray on a tricky vocal part and vice versa. But it does bed in once the rhythm and feel of the bass part settle into muscle memory a bit, and the sound of the singing becomes a bit more familiar so you have to think less about it.

It takes even longer for me to make the vocal sound really sincere, like I mean it, rather than a bloke trying to sing along to himself playing bass.

And some songs I'll never crack because the vocals and bass are so different.

Stuff like Billy Jean or Rhythm Stick seem almost impossible to sing and play. You'd need two brains I reckon!

[Paultrader]

I joined my current band three years ago, and before that I'd never done backing vocals. I had to go away and learn it, there was no easy way round it. One of my best achievements with this regard is to sing unison vocals to 'I Saw Her Standing There' with the lead singer, although I'm not doing the 'return to the root between notes' bit! Now I do a lot of singing, including harmonies and extensive BVs.

It gets better and there's no alternative to practice. One of the hardest songs, I find, is singing the 'sha la la' bit of Brown Eye Girl while playing the bassline, heaven knows why - I manage it, but it's touch and go. There's a weird clash of rhythms between the bass line and the vocals.

These days I love singing and playing, and yes, I do simplify the basslines to make the vocals work. I think that's the right thing to do; if you fret the right notes, even fewer of them, it'll sound OK, but if you sing out of tune it's pretty obvious! The view we take in our band is that, as a four piece, if we all sing we have eight instruments to our name and that's creditable.

[Cato]

I have wondered if I have some sort of psychological block.

I can play the guitar part and sing 'All Apologies' by Nirvana no problems at all.

If I try to do the same on bass (playing the guitar part), even if I use a pick like I do with guitar I really struggle.

As to playing the actual bassline and singing, even though its much simpler than the guitar part, that gives me real problems.

[spectoremg]

[quote name='police squad' timestamp='1488973995' post='3253349']
I never tried it. It was on the list of stuff to learn but we haven't learned any new stuff (well, new, you know what I mean)

Spirits in the material world was strange too. Sting doesn't come in at the same point for each line of words. I still count myself in for the very first line.

Hole in my life was challenging too!!
[/quote]I'm glad you mentioned Spirits - I've never needed to play it in a band but just noodling's enough to give up with it!

[Deep Thought]

I'm the singer in our band, and I also find that it's easier to sing over faster stuff without too many gaps that need to be timed properly. I'm currently working on Rag and Bone Man's 'Human', and it's a sod. I'll get there, but it's taken several days already. Once I have both words and bass line nailed down so I don't have to think about them, it starts to drop into place. I have never been able to do 'Losing my Religion ' either-thankfully we don't do it. 'End of the World as we know it' would be almost impossible, I fear.

[Barking Spiders]

While I can proficiently play a good number of Level 42 basslines I've tried my hand at singing at the same time and struggle. Bluddy tricky. Mega respect to MK. I guess same goes for Les Claypool

[el borracho]

What I used to do (I don't sing anymore) was slow it right down and study how the vocal melody worked with the bass line and where the changes happened with relation to timing.
Once I understood how the two lines intereacted that often made it easier when back up to normal speed.

Worked for me although it did nowt for my voice or inability to remember the words!

[41.2Hz]

My singing voice is quite good, I can hold a tune etc., but I always used to shy away from singing backing vocals whilst playing bass for all the reasons mentioned above - countermelodies, insufficient brain power, whatever.

I've mostly got around this by trying to learn new songs for my covers band all at once, learning to sing the backing vocal at the same time as getting to grips with the bass pattern. Sometimes this doesn't work, especially if the bass pattern is particularly busy, but the approach certainly got me started singing bv.

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1488997420' post='3253624']
Me too, I will simplify the bass line which allows me to sing.

Blue
[/quote]

Simplify is good, but there are other solutions too.

If you listen to Macca's bass line on All My Loving, it's clear that he starts the descending run from high on the G string and plays almost the entire piece above the 7th fret across all four strings.

If you watch any of the live clips of him playing it in the early 60s (concert footage obviously, but also TV shows in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia are very helpful) he plays the whole thing down by the nut, making it far easier to check his positions by feel without having to think too much about it.