Lauren Bateman breaks down why singing and playing guitar at the same time is hard: your brain can't handle both tasks unless one goes automatic. She walks through practice steps including isolating a strumming pattern, talking over it until it's muscle memory, then humming before adding lyrics. About 90-95% of students can hum and strum together once they get there.
Lauren, why is singing and strumming so difficult to do at the same time? Very, very common question that I get asked by students all the time. And the simple answer is it's a coordination thing. I tell students it's like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time, which I can do. So I'll rub my guitar and I'll pat my head. Okay. I'm very coordinated like that. But I've practiced doing it so many times that it's like second nature to me. And that's what singing and playing the guitar every the same time is. It is a coordination thing. So how do we work on the coordination so that you can be able to sing and play the guitar at the same time? That's what we're going to be going over in this video right here.
So let's start off with the mechanics. Okay, so we've got two different things. We've got the mechanical part of it, which is the strumming, and we have the verbal part of it, which is the lyrics. Right. We're going to be singing a melody. We're going to be singing some songs. And that's the tricky part, is because these are two different parts of our brain. And unfortunately, our brain is not made for multitasking. I know we think we're great multitaskers, but unfortunately, the human brain is not meant for multitasking. So it means that one of these things has to go on autopilot, and unfortunately, it's the guitar. Okay. I don't know why, but it seems like the verbal process in the brain seems to take a little bit more bandwidth. So the thing that needs to go on autopilot is. Is the strumming. It's why sometimes, if you've ever watched some of my song lessons, especially ones with more intricate strumming, I'll say I'm going to try and do this strumming pattern that I've showed you as best as possible. But once I start singing, my hand goes on autopilot. It starts doing whatever it wants. Okay. Because of this concept of when I start singing, I can't pay attention to what my strumming hand is doing. So what's the first step in working towards singing and playing at the same time? First is take a strumming pattern that you know very well and maybe you don't know it well. All right. You want to play that over and over and over again. And don't worry about chord changes. Step one is just a strumming pattern. So I'm Going to play a G chord and I'm going to do a strumming pattern. I'm just going to do 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and 1, 2 and 3 and 4and down, down, up, down, up, down, up. Okay, so that's this strumming pattern.
Hey, Very, very common strumming pattern. Alright, so what would I do if I was learning this strumming pattern? I would just sit there and I would go, okay, I got this strumming pattern.
And I'm probably counting it in my head.
But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go from just one chord to moving it to a chord progression.
Okay? And if that feels great, great. Good. Now what you're going to do is we're just going to go back to the G chord and then we're going to have a conversation. This is very hard. It's harder than you think. Especially. Well, this is the test to see if your hand is on autopilot or if you're still thinking about the strumming pattern. Because if I know the strumming pattern.
1, 2 and 3 and 4. And if I know the strumming pattern, I should be able to have a conversation with you just like this. And I might miss a strum here and there, but I'm not having to give too much brain power to my strumming hand right now and thinking about it just very slightly because I'm trying to keep that strumming pattern going. But in general, I'm able to have a conversation with you and just talk over the strumming pattern, which is very much like singing and playing at the same time. I think singing is a little easier because you got melody to go along with the chords and the chord movement. But that's step one. So if you know a strumming pattern, you're like, I got this, I'm ready for a song. Just take the strumming pattern, single chord, and just start talking. Okay, so how's the weather?
That's great. It's really warm outside here. What are you doing today?
Okay, so if you were trying to respond to my questions and all of a sudden the strumming went, all of a sudden it just fell apart. It's just. That's an indication to you that you don't know this strumming pattern as well as you think you do and you just might need a few more repetitions. One of my favorite quotes, it's a Bruce Lee quote. I am more afraid of the person who knows one kick and has practiced it 10,000 times versus the person who knows 10,000 kicks. And they practice them all once. And it just highlights the amount of repetition. You need to make something second nature. Okay, so you might have to do this strumming pattern 10,000 times. Maybe it's 5,000 times. It's different for everyone. But you're going to have to put enough reps in that your brain can now focus on speech instead of the mechanics of doing downs and up strums. Now, if you're having trouble with this, a tip that I tell students is go very, very slow. Okay? You might have to slow this thing way down. I tell people, think of a Walkman. Okay? So when I was growing up, Walkmans were really big and we'd have batteries in the Walkman. And when the battery would start dying, it would stop turning the cassette tape as quickly, and.
People would sound like that, right? Because the whole thing would slow down. So that's how slow you might need. You might need to get your strumming pattern.
Okay, I am doing well today.
You might have to go really slow.
Okay? So see, I didn't just go. I am doing. I didn't spread the speech out. I slowed the speed speech down to match that. Okay? So you might need to slow your song way down, painfully slow to really work on it. So say it's something like Brown Eyed Girl.
Hey, where do we go?
Okay. Or is it gc? It's gc, G, G, C, G, D. But just to give you an example, you know.
Hey, where did we go?
You know, and you might have to go that slow to give your brain enough bandwidth to do the strumming pattern and the singing at the same time. And then eventually you can pick up the speed to. It's again, it's. It's the tapping, you know, rubbing the stomach, tapping the head. You have to give your brain enough bandwidth to learn how to do these things separately. The final test. And then I'm going to give you one more tip if you're finding all this very difficult. This last tip I'm going to share with you. Works for a lot of my students. But the final test is to actually stand up and walk around while playing this drumming pattern. I used to do this in my studio with students. I had a really long studio. And I'd say, okay, great. You think you got it? Awesome. Let's stand up and. And let's just go walk around the room. And you would think people forgot how to walk or it was their first time walking. So it's that same thing. It's really trying to understand, do we know this strumming pattern inside and out? Because if I do, then and only then can I sing over that strumming pattern. Now, if you're having difficulty with this, okay, the number one thing I tell students to do, hum. Okay. If you can't sing and strum a song at the same time, I find that 90 to 95% of my students can hum a song and hum the melody of a song and strum it at the same time. So if you're having difficulty with the talking exercise or the walking exercise, just try humming. Go back to the walking talking exercises and just keep going back and forth and working on that. And don't forget to go slow. Now, if you are a fan of Van Morrison and you're interested in learning that song Brown Eyed Girl, go check this lesson video right over there. Super fun song. And hopefully you'll be able to play and sing it at the same time.
