Singing Whilst Playing

[cytania]

Think I just might have got 'All Shook Up' working both ways but it's still a balancing act. Hard to get the vocal and playing both punchy. Anyone do this regularly? Any particular songs/styles you find easy to sing whilst playing bass?

[Deep Thought]

Make sure you get the bass line well sussed so it becomes automatic, and you can concentrate on the vocal performance without worrying about it too much. Practice is what it takes. Some songs need a lot of work to get right, some you can do straight off. I often find busier bass lines easier to sing over than slower ones, where timing is more of an issue. Some I just cannot sing and play the same time no matter what. It gets easier the more you do it.

[Oscar South]

Even though its a pretty hard song vocally and bass wise, I found singing/playing Tom Sawyer was quite easy (the bassline and melody are pretty much the same rhythm and/or notes for most of the way through) and helped me develop my singing/playing a lot.

[Bilbo]

A LOT of Rush is like that!

Actually, if you can do it, a great way of getting singing parts and bass parts to work together is to write them out on two separate staves (like a piano part). You can then see how they interact and the process makes more sense.

Oh, and practice, practice, practice.

Edited October 29, 2008 by bilbo230763

[Oscar South]

Yeah the writing it on two staves thing works really well, especially if you play each part to metronome separately and listen to how they interact with the beat.

I think learning to carry out two separate tasks independently is one of the most satisfying things in music, earlier today I was practising a two handed tapping arrangement of 'Mad World' and just for fun instead of playing it the regular way played a walking bass line with my left hand, messed about with the melody a bit and added a swing feel. I've been doing tapping stuff for a while but I always just worked counterpoint stuff out by rote, a bar at a time, I was really pleased with how well and fluently I did it and how good it actually sounded, I think I'm going to play the jazz version instead of the 'direct' arrangement from now on ^_^ .

Edited October 29, 2008 by Oscar South

[alexclaber]

I practice with the bass unplugged so it doesn't distract me from the vocals. When playing with the band I seem to mentally split at neck level - my ears and head gets on with the singing whilst my body feels the bass and my hands react to that. This only became obvious when the rehearsal room bass amp broke and I had to run the bass through a very poxy little PA. Without the feeling of the bottom I found it much harder to groove whilst singing but as soon as I stopped singing (i.e. during instrumental sections) I could lay down the groove as well as I normally do (i.e. like a bad mofo!)

I've messed around on drum kits for many years and can fool non-drummers into believing I am a drummer and I think that the independance I've developed from that has a beneficial effect upon the independance I have between playing and singing.

Also I write my own music and despite it often being quite syncopated I rarely have a problem with playing and singing presumably because it all feels quite natural to me. The one exception is when playing more reggae style - the melodic riffs which run a rhythmic counterpoint to the drums are much more challenging to sing over. I think this is because I'm usually feeling the bass groove like I'm part of the drum kit whilst when playing reggae I'm singing a line against the drum groove. Does that make sense?

Alex