Singing and playing bass together?! Help!!!

[abarson]

I'm having difficulty figuring out how to combine my singing and bass playing skills. Does anyone have any tips how to practice the two together?
What seems most difficult is that I'm concentrating on the bass line and then I lose sight of the melody, or if I focus on singing the bass line ends up being playing root/5th.
Chewing gum and walking is no problem, though...

[Whafrodamus]

Originally Posted by abarson

I'm having difficulty figuring out how to combine my singing and bass playing skills. Does anyone have any tips how to practice the two together?
What seems most difficult is that I'm concentrating on the bass line and then I lose sight of the melody, or if I focus on singing the bass line ends up being playing root/5th.
Chewing gum and walking is no problem, though...

It takes practice.. Just work on talking and playing at the same time. I can chew gum, walk, play, sing, and give back massages at the same time... So step up!

Seriously though, just work on playing the stuff until you can do it with your eyes closed, and work on talking while playing.. You'll get there!

[jive1]

There's a thread stickied to the top on the Band Management forum that's helpful

[GeorgiaHonk]

What I recently discovered (just last night, in fact) that helps me is to play with a pick. I've been playing a while, and have sung background vocals successfully all along. But singing lead vocals is a different beast, for me at least, and it has taken some adjustments. While I'm normally a fingerstyle player, using a pick is more "mindless" I suppose, and so helps me to avoid getting confused while playing and trying to remember the words. Normally I only use picks on songs that require pumping straight eighths or some other such nonsense, but using a pick also lets me focus on my singing.

[the ombudsman]

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/search...earchid=953767

There's a new thread about this almost every week...

[allthings]

It's helped me to have the words printed out to read along with various note names over key words. My brain can read words while I play better than it can remember them. Trouble is, I may be getting dependent on this after doing it for so long. Maybe the way to beat the dependency problem is to write out only parts of the song lines. Or stay dependent and have someone in the audience hold up cue cards.