Hey, anyone here have any tips on singing lead while playing bass? My band might boot out our current singer (He sucks and he cant write lyrics worth sh*t!) and yours truely will more then likely take the helm as lead singer for most songs. So please help me. Please????

Practice!:) Practice!;) Practice!:D
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:D

Check this thread out:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=11047

Do it the easy way, get another bass player. Alternate between whos singing, and play your guitar when your not singing. Worked for me

yeh practise would be good

If you know the song well nuff on your instrument and can play with out looking where u are and can pick up newhere within the song u prolly can sing over the top no probs

Its like playing piano
Learn own hand then the other
after u can play both very well separately whachk them together
and while ure practising, sing a long with it

Hope this helps

How 'bout a new singer.

I've practiced singing and playing bass a lot and it helps. Although I need serious help with my voice, but that's another thread in itself. Anyway, usually I jam along with CD's a lot and sing along, and after doing that for awhile, it helps a lot. When I sing with my band I may get a little off rhythm for a sec or two. But just keep practicing and it'll help out a lot. Then again, that's just me.

Thanks for you guy's help. Well the singer some how got better, and I'm mainly sticking to back up vocals right now. (We think he has esp, everytime we get P.O.ed from his singing the next practice he is suddenly good, he's been pretty consisten as of the late.)

I can just about play and sing along to "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads....if you know the bass for it you'll understand why!

I was reading an interview with John Entwistle the other day, and he said he always has difficulty singing while playing - if you listen to Who songs where he sings lead, you can see that his playing is usually a lot simpler or based on the melody he's singing than normal. I think that it might be worth trying to simplify what you're playing, and seeing if that helps.

in my covers band I get to sing (rap) the last verse in House Of Pain's "Jump Around", while playing the bassline. (basically because neither of the two singers we use could be bothered to learn that verse/had the full version, only the two verse Limp Bizkit version).
it's a simple bassline, but the rhythm clashes a bit with the vocal, so I found it tricky at first (and sometimes still do, and mess it up a bit:o). I found it works if I concentrate on the vocal, and let the bassline be "automatic", and play itself, if that makes sense...
that's a bit like how Paul McCartney explained his approach in an interview- Sting says he slows down both parts and practises them repeatedly.
it also helps a lot if you don't have to worry about the height of the microphone, the worst case being having the singer hold a mic for you to sing into (and constantly varying the height:mad: ).

My buddy who plas guitar and sings says to play without thinking about, but that didnt help,

I pay attention to what i play and kinda ignore what Im singing, (if i know the lyrics well enuff), and then I'll practise with the CD alot, till i get it, but i dont practise enuff, i'll let someone else take the blame for bad singing.