The "Singing and Playing - what are you working on?" Megathread

[kesslari]

Last night I was working on a new song that's a bit of a challenge, and thought we who sing and play could use a place to share the trials, tribulations, and occasional triumphs of working 2 instruments at once...

Feel free to jump onboard...

Yesterday I heard Paul Pena's "Gonna Move", and it just grabbed me as perfect for the band I'm in. For those of you who don't know Paul (may he RIP), he was a blind bluesman who lived in San Francisco. He wrote "Big Old Jet Airliner" (big hit for Steve Miller), taught himself Tuvan throat singing (and went to Tuva and won in their national throat singing competition - topic of a great documentary called Genghis Blues) and wrote a bunch of great songs. He was a great songwriter and musician, and "Gonna Move" is one of the great "feel good" songs to sing.

The original bassline is great, and I wanted to keep it (or at least keep that feel) but it's pretty full and syncopates a bit off from the vocals. So it's requiring some reps to get it to work. Not the "hardest song to sing and play" that I've hit, but far from the easiest. I figure it'll take a few more days to get it down, but it'll be worth it.

What are you guys working on?

[Phalex]

John Hyatt's Angel Eyes. I mostly have it, but the bridge is giving me fits for some reason.

[kesslari]

So what do you do when a part is giving you fits?

I tend to either:
a) practice it a bunch...

or if that isn't working

b) really break down where the syllables fall (or *should* fall) against the bass line, and work that

or, if all else fails

c) simplify the bass line further

[Phalex]

I play it without singing it until my left hand thinks it knows what it's doing. Then I try to sing it, and I suddenly find out my left hand was lying to me about knowing what to do. Then I go back and play it over and over without singing it.......

I just try to get the bass worked out, and eventually the vocals will follow. That being said, on most anything with a semi challenging bassline, I'm really not worth a whole lot as far as singing goes.

[Deacon_Blues]

Funny you mentioned tuvan throat singing. I've actually been working on that lately. I start to have it under control too.

Anyway, What I try to do is to learn to use overtones in a controlled way in normal western singing. You can create clearly audible overtones in normal singing just by controlling how much you open the mouth, your tongue position, choice of vowel etc. I'm not trying to "sing harmony with myself" but to create a more powerful sound. I think that is fully possible.

Regarding plain singing, I'm working on the U2 song "Bad". Most of it goes well, but the highest part is giving me trouble ("I'm wide awake..."). I can sing the phrase in curbing well (it goes up to C# above the "tenor high C"), but I'm trying to find the Belting mode to make it more powerful (see this page for definitions of curbing and belting. Curbing is almost synonym to "mixed-voice" and belting is a "screaming" mode). I just have trouble finding this Belting mode this high up in the register. I know it is possible to do it and I know what I should do but it is still freakin' hard... Well, not even Bono sings this in the original key live, and on the record you hear him struggling with this phrase a couple of times. Live I think he cheats on this phrase...

Here's the song (studio version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2kDzJ5hsbw
The difficult part is exactly three minutes into the song, and in the end as well. I can do this song a half a step down but not in A. I don't like to transpose or tune down so I want to nail it in A too. Guess I need to work harder...