Any Bassists/Lead Singers out there?

[AHbassist]

I'm trying to learn how 2 sing while playing. Unfortunately it hasen't come very natural to me, so does anyone have any practice tips or techniques that helped them?

[K-Punk]

Practice it slowly.. Then gradually speed it up to the tempo you want.

[Man with an Axe]

what I notice is I try to space out now my fingers fall in relation to my singing. Often times it's simply figuring out how the rhythms interlock. If Geddy did it, we can too!

[justabass]

Yep! Learn the words so well you don't have to think about them. Its helps a ton!

[Deacon_Blues]

+1 to all replies.

First you must learn the lyrics and the bassline so well you don't have to think about those. When you're done with that, you can start figuring out how to do both at the same time. After some practicing you'll get there.

However, IMO doing both at the same time is always a compromise. So keep the basslines simple in the beginning and as you're getting better, move on to more demanding stuff. But be sure you don't lose your groove just because you want to play those more advanced lines. If so, move back a step and practice more.

[hbarcat]

Originally Posted by AHbassist

I'm trying to learn how 2 sing while playing. Unfortunately it hasen't come very natural to me, so does anyone have any practice tips or techniques that helped them?

When your only job is to play bass, this allows you to concentrate on ONLY playing bass. When your only job is to sing, this allows you to concentrate on ONLY singing. The benefits of such narrowly focused concentration are obviously fewer mistakes, more creativity and better precision.

On the other hand, when you need to both play bass and sing at the same time you need to be so well rehearsed in EACH job that all the creativity, precision and lack of mistakes is built-in to your performance because you won't have the luxury of being able to concentrate on both jobs at the same time.

There is only one solution: practice your bass lines without vocals until you can perform them consistently well without concious thought, and then do the same for the vocal parts without the bass. After you've mastered each seperately, then you'll need to practice them both together until you've finally mastered that as well. This is how I've approached it for the past twenty years, and for my current cover band I put in about twelve hours of at-home practice per week about equally divided among: 1) learning bass parts 2) learning singing parts 3) learning bass parts with singing parts.

The bass is a musical instrument. The voice is also a musical instrument. I've always thought of playing the bass and singing at the same time as a completely different musical instrument to be learned and mastered.

[ArmyPunkGuy]

i do both and i can tell ya that it definitly harder than playing guitar and singing and my playing suffers because of it

[Bassicman]

Seems like from what I read there is some good advice to follow. I sing and play all the time. But I knew how to sing way before I started to play bass. I even sang bass as well so I knew all the scales thus is was easy for me to do both, it's like walking and talking at the same time. What has always worked for me is to know the basic bass lines and learn the melody of the vocial track. Put them together slowly in rehearsal, nail the words or have a cheat sheet in front of you and get fancy in time on the bass. But never loose the groove, you have to keep the beat. It's all practice.

[Jeralya]

I think there was a thread like this around previously...

its just practice, practice, practice! Eventually you won't have to compromise one or the other, but you need to practice it religiously.

[Chriso21]

I think this is a major cath 22. Complicated bass lines are almost impossible to play whilstsinging technical vocal lines. The only way to do it properly is to dum down the bass line. I'm into speed metal and if you're playing a tricky song with unusual timing, like lamb of god, or megadeth - it's near impossible to sing or scream the vocal line.
The best solution? Be the bassist for one band, and the vocalist for a another - get both your urges satisfied!

[AlphaMale]

Tapping your feet helps.

[Jezz8me]

i just started dong it the other day and i find if you play simpler its much easier. i have an acoustic mellowish slower indie band and it is easy to sing to my basslines. and try to follow the bassline to an extent, it helps

[phillipmorephil]

+1000 to everything so far!

And, odd though it may be, I find it easier to play with a pick and sing than play with my fingers. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to work. There's less concious thought in it, I guess.

[sergeman]

Hey! First of all, I've yet to play the bass live while singing, but that's coming up shortly But I have been a singer and songwriter for over 15 years, as well as played the bass for about 6 and written with it for about 3 years. Now I'm the bass player in the band I'm putting together to promote our album. The bass parts in all songs on our album were written by me but played by somebody else on the record, with the exception of three in which I did.

There's a couple of things I can tell you and one of them is that if you're actually writing your songs while playing the bass, it becomes much easier (of COURSE). Thing is, when you're actually RECORDING the song, you might tend (like a couple of times I've done) to do something that might be a little bit more advanced than just hitting the string in 8ths while singing. Another thing, Geddy Lee said in an interview in Bass Player (I think it was) that he always came up with bass lines that gave him the opportunity also to sing with them.

Also, if you can get a hold of the studio version of "Spirits in the Material World" as well as the live version, you can see that the studio version has a MUCH more intricate bass pattern. And that's Sting playing it, who's no slouch.

We must remember something very important. Of course playing for OUR sake is important, but as far as the audience is concerned, who are the most important people in a concert, singing will always be the 1st concern. No one sings to a bass line in a concert.
Have the best of both worlds: when singing, play something not so hard to play but that fullfills you as a bass player; when the time comes for guitar solos or long, drawn out jams on stage when there's no singing, then play more intricate patterns. At the end of the concert, you will feel very good. The girls will come to you saying how well you sing, and the musicians in the audience will complement you on your playing.

http://www.myspace.com/maracasbrain

[ric1312]

I write most of our originals and of course have to do both on covers as well.

The first thing I do is find bass notes that I can marry the striking of the note with words. Then after that figure out which words fall inbetween when you are not hitting a bass note

On real complex songs, it's gonna be hard to do. Some are imposssible unless you are really, really coordinated. But, you'd be suprised how many really poplular relatively easy songs that can be worked out like this.

You may have to fudge a little at first but o well.

I learn the bass line first then learn the words on covers. The reason is once you learn the bass line well enough you can do it without thinking about it much and concentrate on laying words over hits and then just flowing.

After a while you find it easy and can add back in little fills you left out.

Also, I've found if you are playing by yourself it helps a lot to tap your foot for in internal beat that forces you follow without thinking about it.

As far as writing original songs you of course either put the words where you can sing, or write the bass line around the lyrics in a way that makes them easier to play. Then after the song is written and you've been playing it for a while you can add more complicated parts in while you sing if you feel it needs it.

O, and it helps if you learn to play songs from one or two postions tops. This way you can play the song without looking at your fretboard. And keeping your chin level will make your voice sound better than singing and ducking your chin to look at the fretboard.

[Jismy]

Originally Posted by Chriso21

I think this is a major cath 22. Complicated bass lines are almost impossible to play whilstsinging technical vocal lines. The only way to do it properly is to dum down the bass line. I'm into speed metal and if you're playing a tricky song with unusual timing, like lamb of god, or megadeth - it's near impossible to sing or scream the vocal line.
The best solution? Be the bassist for one band, and the vocalist for a another - get both your urges satisfied!

Alarum does it pretty damn well.(I'm basically obsessed with them right now) www.myspace.com/alarummusic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRB4RoAQ9ZY
The vocalist in necrophagist also does the lead guitar work, and I assure you it's more difficult to play than LoG or Megadeth(Dave Mustaine sings and plays too btw) www.myspace.com/necrophagistde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFhG-DlEXe0
practice practice and more practice.

[eedre]

Learn to sing some Blink182.

There's rule of thumb that applies when you sing and play any instrument that goes against the grain for many (me included) and that is - vocals always before the instrument you're playing.
Unfortunately, Joe Schmoe doesn't give a damn about your bass and could care less about the difficulty level of your rhythm but he DOES like your lyrics and the tone of your voice.

Eventually you don't even think about the bass you're playing.

[ric1312]

Originally Posted by eedre

Learn to sing some Blink182.

There's rule of thumb that applies when you sing and play any instrument that goes against the grain for many (me included) and that is - vocals always before the instrument you're playing.
Unfortunately, Joe Schmoe doesn't give a damn about your bass and could care less about the difficulty level of your rhythm but he DOES like your lyrics and the tone of your voice.

Eventually you don't even think about the bass you're playing.

Good point, or to say it another way......

It's a lot more noticeable within the context of a band as a whole if you are messing up vocals (as the lead singer) than if you are missing the occational bass line, or just not playing as complicated as you could.