Hey, I've seen this question a few times and up until now I didn't ever really have what I thought would be a at least semi-legitamate answer. Before reading I should note that I'm only 16, and been able to do the playing/singing for about 5 years. Thus I beg of you to take what I say with a grain of salt. So with that out of the way here's how I can best explain it. This year I've had to take notes for a lot of classes and while I don't recommend this for school to get good grades here's my process. Mind on autopilot and let the fingers do the same. This might sound confusing but hear me out. You ever read a paragraph of a book and have to re-read it? Not because you didn't understand but you simply let your eyes follow the words without absorbing any of it. When this happens it can be tedious but when used to your advantage it's quite nice. Our brains are able to not only process thoughts but process other thoughts about those thoughts. So when I'm taking notes straight out of my textbook I couldn't tell you a single word of what I'm typing but my mind is essentially on autopilot reading it, not comprehending but directly translating that to my fingers (since I know how to type using the home row keys) and I'm just using my "outside" part of my mind(the one that processes thoughts of my thoughts) to just think about random stuff. So to relate this back to the whole playing thing. Now obviously this doesn't apply to every song but say your playing something as simple as a classic 4 chord progression. Get into a groove with it. Play it over, and over, and over. And as you do it let your mind slowly wander. If you mess up then bring it back and try again. It's kind of like meditating tbh. Now if you let your mind wander use try and translate that to just thinking about the lyrics but still make sure youre in that groove. The same part of your mind that just reads the paragraph without comprehending is playing the chords and the other is just thinking about the lyrics. Now again I should note that this should be taken with a grain of salt and is not a "super fast, super simple, 100% garunteed way of doing it first try". But I think it could be a helpful way to kind of think about it differently. It still takes practice people. And whilst I hate the word practice with a fiery passion I cannot deny it here. I remember starting out trying to sing "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz on Ukulele by matching words with downbeats but for me it didn't work. This did for me. So who knows it might for you. I get that this can be a hard concept to understand and maybe only one that people who know how to do it already can but who knows. Hope this helps you and if it doesn't, well, sorry to waste your time. [Although youre scrolling reddit so that's probably already time well wasted ;) ]
Submitted April 25, 2021 at 11:25PM by I-Play-Notes https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/mynipr/playing_and_singing_at_the_same_time/?utm_source=ifttt