Aside from the drummers and bass players who can sing while playing their instrument; something I have always admired in them because often what they play and what they sing are completely different rhythms and these are the people responsible for keeping the rest of the band in step, when it comes to playing an instrument and singing, I’ve never given it a second thought. Of course people play guitar and sing or play piano and sing. It never seemed like a feat of particular note. It certainly didn’t seem to me to be the equivalent of trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Until now.
Even for myself, it never seemed a big deal because I was just singing along with my own playing and it didn’t matter that much if my playing was a little off from my vocal. Most of the time I was singing and playing things that were matched up pretty good so I never really noticed if the vocal phrasing was different from the rhythm of the guitar. And if I did, I just chalked it up to it being a with a song with a wicked hard or odd rhythm part. It never occurred to me it might be the combination of the two, the rhythm and the vocal phrasing. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever paid much attention to vocal phrasing. Again, until now.
Then again, I also never really thought about how I cheat at it, patting my head and rubbing my stomach. I can pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time, just like I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I cheat. I pat my head in the same circular
pattern and timing that I rub my stomach. If I’m walking and chewing gum they are in the same cadence. Not completely different timings or completely different activities. I manage to pull a bit of one into the other. A habit that is not especially helpful when it comes to learning songs where the vocal phrasing is so different from the rhythm of the rest of the song.
Ready to go Jam
My first encounter with dealing with vocal phrasing as something completely different from my playing was when I decided to tackle ‘Merry Christmas Baby’. Though I didn’t realize that was what was going on. That song took some work to learn to play and sing and since I haven’t been practicing it since I sang it in December, it may take some work again when I decide it’s seasonally appropriate. That was also the first time I really tried to sing with the band at a Blues Jam. There’s a whole story that goes with how it came about that I did. I’ll save that for another time. Let’s just say, fortunately I had been practicing singing it as I was learning the rhythm guitar bit. Not that there is much rhythm guitar bit. It’s a 12-bar blues with a quick change so a lot of room to work within. Still, the vocal doesn’t just settle into the groove, it really sits on top of it at it’s own pace.
The December song went so well I decided to try again. I finally picked out ‘Angel From Montgomery’. I didn’t think the vocal was quite that far off from the guitar, but it’s still a little tricky to get that guitar and that vocal matched up. I started on it nice and early so I had time to get it down pretty good. Then I tried singing it last month at the Blues Jam. Here’s the thing about the Blues Jam. You don’t always get to play with people who know the songs you want to do, and you don’t always get to play with people who you’ve played with before. Often times we just figure it all out there on the spot. With this song, I had been trying to get it slow enough when I was practicing and hadn’t really got that down well so as I was trying to give the drummer a demo tempo close to what I wanted, he just picked it up and we went with it. As a result, we ended up playing it about 10 to 15 percent too fast. I still managed to get the vocal in and it went well. Afterwards, I was discussing it with someone and he mentioned the speed and the fact that I had done well because the vocal phrasing on that isn’t exactly easy. Oh.
Jamming away.
I would like to note that, I think of myself as a guitar player first. I like to sing but I sing to accompany my playing more than I play to accompany my singing. So for the next round of learn something new for the next Jam, I chose to work on guitar parts. Until, I found that I might be able to sing ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’. Someone had suggested it as a good one for me so I listened to it. My first listen of it was Etta James and Dr. John. Right. My thought after that was something a long the lines of ‘there is no way I can do that one’. And then I heard someone else sing it in a little different vocal style that I thought I might be able to match better so I decided to give it a try.
It was two weeks before the next Jam. Of course. That seems to be about when I decide on something to try to sing. Not a lot of practice and perfecting time there. Still the version I was learning is only two chords. How hard could it be? Well, if I try to play those strums as triplets, like the fancy version I heard, and sing it, it’s extremely hard. So I worked on just a straight four beat bar with just a small transitional flourish. And it turns out, it’s still pretty hard to get it right. I knew I was getting a beat off at one point but I thought I had it worked out by the time I tried to sing it at the Blues Jam. Turns out, not completely. It was still a problem. Though, to be fair, when I sing and play it at home to practice, I don’t have to deal with my legs shaking in a completely different rhythm from my guitar playing and my singing.
Singing ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ and playing my first lead. No pressure.
I have to admit that until recently I never really thought about how singing while playing an instrument, really playing it, is very much like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach. For some people it comes very naturally. For others not so much. Either way, the people that do it make it look so very easy and yet, when it comes to doing it well. It isn’t. There is a lot of work and practice that goes into learning to do that for any given song and every song has it’s own unique traits. So just learning to sing and play one song that has different phrasing doesn’t mean the next one with different phrasing will be any easier to learn. Though I’m hoping that, with practice, maybe it will be.
I’ve included some pictures from the Blues Jam this weekend where I sang ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’. And a few other songs. I’ve still got some work to do on them. Particularly ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’. But it’s promising and will stay in the rotation, which is good because I like it and like singing it. I do have video of many of the numbers I sang and or played on. Yes, I was asked to just sing on one song. A first for me and another short story for another time. I’ve had a request or suggestion to put some of the videos up on my YouTube site so I will work on that and let you know when it goes live. For now enjoy the pictures and pop over to FaceBook to see some of the video when I get it loaded to the Charlotte Blues Jam Meetup Group.