TOP 3 TIPS for Strumming AND Singing at the Same Time

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. In this video, I'm going to be answering a very important question I get asked all the time, which is, Lauren, how do I sing and play the guitar at the same time without tripping over myself? I'm going to go over my top three tips for that in this video.

So this is a super common question. I get asked this one so many times, particularly by beginner guitar players, because for a lot of people, particularly if you're playing acoustic guitar, is you want to be able to not only play the songs you love, you want to be able to like, sing and play them. Because sometimes just playing the guitar by itself isn't entertaining enough. Plus, you know, if you go to someone's house and they have a guitar in the corner, you want to be able to sing and play. So I'm going to go over my top three tips for singing and playing the guitar. And let's start off with tip number one. Now, my first tip is that we want to keep things simple in the beginning. I know a lot of beginners, we want to rush to get to that point. Simply singing and playing the guitar is really more of a late beginner to early intermediate skill. Your strumming really has to be on autopilot. And I'm going to talk about how we can do that in tip number three. But in the beginning, the first thing is just to keep it simple. And I would recommend starting with songs where the chord changes right over the lyric. What do I mean by that? So think of a song like Folsom Prison Blues.

I. I hear the train coming Rollin round the bend I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when the.

Chords are changing right over the lyrics. Another one if we did Knocking on heaven's Door we have Mama take this.

Badge off me.

So you can see.

Because I can't use it anymore.

So the lyrics, the melody is changing directly over the. Over the chords versus a song like Brown Eyed Girl.

Hey, where did we go.

Days when the rains Came.

I think I played the chord progression wrong, but you get the idea. Sometimes the chords are changing a little bit in between the chords. It can be hard to keep track of. And I'm using a syncopated rhythm, so it's very hard to sing that combination together. So my first tip would be pick songs where the words and the chords line up perfectly. There's a lot of songs that do that. You can find a lot of them my website. They're under the beginner guitar songs. So what I would recommend doing Is keeping the strumming pattern super simple in the beginning four down strums. 1, 2, 3, 3, 4. This way we find out where the words are within the timing of the song. So the example I'm going to use here is a Johnny cash song called walk the line. And it's going to be 1, 2, 3.

Keep a close eye on this heart of mine.

See how the word changes right over there.

Keep my eyes wide open all the time.

Time. And I'm going. You know, it's a slower song, but I'm even going slower than the song normally would be Because I really want to feel out where the words hit between each of these beats. All right. And then I would go back. If you felt good about doing that, if you were able to do four down strums without having any issues or trip ups between the words and the strumming patterns, Then you could try maybe adding in an up strum. So let's try for this one.

Let's just try 1, 2, 3, and 4. Okay, so it's gonna be down, down, down, up, down.

Okay, so we got two, three.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.

I keep my eyes wide open all the time.

Now if you did that and you found like it was giving you a little bit of difficulty, you might need to stop, slow it down. I had to do this with a lot of songs where you go super slow.

I keep a close eye on this heart of mine like walkman battery dying slow.

That's how slow you need to go. Because what we're doing is we're trying to work out the muscle memory. Remember, the strumming is mechanical. That's the mechanical part of your brain. And the lyrics and the singing is the vocal part of your brain. So we're trying to get these two sections of the brain to work together. And in the beginning, that can be tricky. So keep the strumming pattern simple in the beginning and go slow. That's where you need to start. And then once you get that down pat, you can head on over to step. And tip number two. Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying this lesson so far. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and turn on the notifications. This way, YouTube will let you know when I release more videos just like this one. So tip number two is that we really need to work on getting these strumming patterns on autopilot. So usually what I tell people to do when you're working on songs, particularly these easier songs, I would pick maybe two or three Strumming patterns that are like your go to strumming patterns. So one I like to use a lot with students was the one I just showed you.

1, 2, 3, and 4.

That's a good one. Or 1, 2, 3, and four. And those are very common strumming patterns. They work for a lot of songs, and you can do a lot of things with them. So what I would tell students to do is we're just. Every song we play, we're going to use one of these two strumming patterns, and we're going to keep playing this drumming pattern over and over again until you can do it in your sleep, which is basically this. So you would close your eyes and you would go, 1, 2, 3, M, 4 M. Okay. And you would just sit there. This is one of the things you could just sit in front of the TV and do. And you just keep playing that strumming pattern over you over and over again. You might need to play it thousands of times. We don't even want to be thinking about the strumming pattern. And you can just sit on one chord to start.

Okay. Just one chord.

3 and 4 and 1, 2.

And then what you can do is add a second chord.

Okay. And I want you to be able to do this without thinking. Now, the next step is really ingraining this into. Is the test of whether you can sing and play at the same time. If you're feeling good and you're like, lauren, I know this strumming pattern inside and out. That's awesome. But we're going to test that. There's two tests that I have, which is step number three to know if you've really ingrained the this strumming pattern into your muscle memory. Because the strumming needs to 100% be on autopilot for you to watch the chords in the lyrics. Because as soon as you take your brain off the strumming, okay, it has to have a mind of its own. And you guys are like, lauren, your strumming hand is so natural. It literally has a mind of its own. I don't pay attention to what's going on here. I'm focusing on the voice. I'm focusing on the singing. So let's test. Let's do the two tests to see if you're ready to sing and play at the same time. So the first test, I guess there's actually three tests. I'm going to show you three, because the first one, most people can usually do the first one. So let's go back to our Walk the line example. So I keep it consistent. So instead of singing the words, I want you to play the strumming pattern and I want you to hum the lyrics. I find a lot of people can hum and play at the same time, even if they can't sing and play at the same time. So that's my first tip. Try humming the lyrics first.

Now, if you think that's good, you're like, great. I'm really getting this down pat. The next thing I want you to do is I want you to take the chord progression and the strumming pattern. So in this case, we're going between an E chord and an A chord. I want you to play the rhythm. Okay? So let's get that rhythm going.

Okay. One, two. Okay. Once you get it going, I want you to do exactly what I'm doing. I want you to have a conversation. I want you to talk to yourself in a mirror. Just pretend you know you can have a fake conversation with your cat, your dog, I don't care, your fish. You should be able to do exactly what I'm doing, which is I can talk to you without.

This all of a sudden happens. So what happens is people try. They'll try and talk, because if you can talk and play, you can definitely sing and play. So that's what happens. That's the trip up. People are like, oh, I got this down pat. And then it's like, okay, we'll have a conversation. And I used to do this in lessons with students. I'd sit there and I'm like, let's just have a conversation. How did your day go today? What did you do at work? And then as soon as they start talking, the strumming pattern would fall apart, which all that's telling you is that your brain, whether you know it or not, your brain is slightly still paying attention to what you're doing on this guitar. Okay. You can't be counting rhythm. You can't be thinking about downs or ups. Your hand just needs to naturally do it, and that just comes from tons and tons of repetition. So the final test in this series, and I'm going to have to move things around here a bit because this is a really cool one. The final test is can you be a rock star? And can you walk around the room with your guitar? All right, so I've removed my stool a little bit lower here, but you should essentially be able to. I'm going to start walking around, but watch what I'm going to do. We're going to take that same strumming pattern.

1, 2, 3, and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And that's all I want you to do.

Can you walk around?

Can you go down? Can you come back up? It's the same strumming pattern, the same chord.

Can you do, like, the Rockette kick? You know, but those are little tests. Can you walk around the room? Because now you're walking and playing two mechanical pieces. And because if you can have a conversation and strum and you can walk around the room in the strum, then you can sing and strum. So those are the things I work on with my students to learn how to sing and play at the same time. Hope you guys enjoyed this lesson. I do have an entire course on strumming, learning how to strum and get more expressive with your rhythm. So if you guys are interested in checking that out, I'll put a link in the description below. YouTube's gonna pop up a couple more videos over there. Go check those out and hope to see you guys in a lesson video real soon.