I can sing Brown Eyed Girl and play guitar. I can't for the life of me sing Satisfaction and play the guitar. The main riff bungles me up bad.
As an update here, I've been grinding along with this. And I do mean grinding. This is terribly unnatural for me, but damn it feels good when I pull it off. I've had more success with the band, maybe the beer loosens me up.
This weekend my wife asked if I could sing for her... I kind of froze up, it's really tough for me to even play well in front of my wife for some reason. I guess I just want to impress her that I end up locking up. Anyway, I tried to just focus on my guitar and did the whole Sublime: Badfish song on acoustic, including a cool little improv solo. Towards the middle I really started getting into it, putting my own twist on the lyrics and rasping my voice up a little. It was actually a lot of fun, but now I feel like a more complete musical person. The song is pretty easy, but playing with the band, the syncopated rhythm will skip me up and focusing on getting the rhythm right while singing has caused me to collapse a few times.
Otherwise, the band is happy I can do this now, they've wanted me to sing for some time. The coolest thing about being able to sing and play is being able to take an acoustic anywhere and really make complete music. I need to learn more songs though.
Next song to learn to sing is an easy and a hard:
1. Sublime: What I got
2. RHCP: Dani California (loving my new distortion pedal with this song)
It seems to get much easier the more I do it, but Dani california is very difficult for me right now.
I can sing Brown Eyed Girl and play guitar. I can't for the life of me sing Satisfaction and play the guitar. The main riff bungles me up bad.
Glacies, I'm thinking that your main problem might be self-conscientiousness. Your comments about beer and about playing for your wife pointed in that direction. I don't have any specific advice, except to relax and don't worry so much about screwing up. Oh, and drink more beer......
You're right Book, but it is also pretty difficult for me to keep a rhythm while doing both at the same time.
Last night I managed to sing What I Got by Sublime on Acoustic in front of my wife. I fell apart at the solo because I lost the rhythm but am encouraged at my progress. We'll see what I can do this weekend with the band.
Two things.
First, practice the guitar part until you can play it without thinking about it at all, then add the vocals so you can focus on that. It is ALWAYS more important to sing a song well than it is to play it well so your attention really needs to be on the voice.
Second, simplify your guitar part. While you are singing,the listemer's ear and attention are on your singing anyway. You'll be amazed how much you can dumb-down the guitar part before anyone notices what you have done.
Hope that helps.
Awwww shucks. Thanks Brian!