Hi everyone, I am about to complete the Beginner Grade 1 module of Justin’s guitar course and am currently practicing while watching Nitsuj Module 7 practice sessions.
I am comfortable with basic 4/4 and 6:8 strumming patterns while practicing but whenever I try to sing along, I lose the rhythm completely and everything falls apart.
Did you guys faced any such issues, how did you overcome that.
Hello Dev and welcome to the community!
I for one, did.
For me, what worked was practice practice practice.
First thing: get the rythm/playing sorted. Get the playing to the point where you can, for instance, play the song your practicing and look out the window at the same time and NOT get distracted in your strumming.
If you got the rythm/playing down to where you are comfortable and don’t need to think about it, you can start humming the lyrics along while playing.
When that works, it’s time to start singing.
Do this slowly but surely. Rememeber, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. These things take time to learn.
But the more you practice, the better you’ll get.
Have fun and good luck!!
most everybody experiences this. for some it’s more difficult than for others.
singing while playing is VERY hard for me. guitar part needs to be on auto pilot. and you need to at least know the lyrics, imo, so your voice can focus on pitch and whatnot. if you have to think consciously about too many things, it’s not going to work.
I can sing and play a total of 2 songs. and my singing isn’t very good.
I have come to accept that singing is just not my thing. There are other things I can do, though. I can play along to the original recording. I can play along to drum tracks. My wife sings, so I can play with her. I bought justin’s solo blues course, the whole point of which is to play with no singing. I’m enjoying that course very much.
I also find that playing something that’s the same strumming pattern all the way through can get boring if I’m not singing. so I mix songs like that up with songs that have more variation.
I separate the two completely. ie I learn to play a tune first, then put the guitar down. I then learn to sing it to a backing track. Only when I have both parts nailed do I put them together but I may still use a backing track or metronome before I go completely solo. By the time I have got that far my foot taps the tempo without me thinking about it. L
I can’t remember in which of Justin’s lessons he says this, but IIRC, he says to practice talking while playing to help solidify your guitar playing from distractions and such.
Hi Dev
I am also bad playing and singing at the same time. I think the general consensus is that whatever you are play has to be virtually automatic, in other words you are so familiar with it there is virtually no effort or thought about what chords you are playing or rhythm. If hit is the case then you can then use more or your brain to focus on the melody and singing along.
Some people find it easier than others my best friends daughter has the wonderful ability to learn a song from ear and play the chords relatively quickly, strum pattern etc in a couple of hours and then just sing the melody note perfect on 1st or 2nd take. Se has been able to do so since she was about 7 or 8 and she has a natural ear and ability that most of us certainly do not have. It can be quite soul destroying to see, but she does have a beautiful voice not disimilar to Eva Cassidy IMO.
It is a matter of plugging away at it until it comes together, I think.
Yes, singing and playing guitar at the same time takes practise - the first few are the hardest, but you’ll get the hang of it and it will become easier with time.
I would echo what Martin @MartinCS has said: you need to know the melody and phrasing on its own first before combining it with your guitar playing. I have never sung to backing tracks, but my approach is to learn the melody and then sing it slowly to quarter-not strumming of the chords. This should help you with getting the phrasing right (when exactly does a vocal line start). Using quarternote strums, without any patterns, should be automatic enough so that it does not require too much attention. When you have the singing-to-quarternote-strumming down to a tempo you like (and in time of course) then build up your strumming pattern to what you want it to be, one simple step at a time - start with one up strum or start missing one down beat. When that works, then increase the complexity of the strumming pattern a bit more.
I find this approach gets you faster to the end goal and with a better musical result than first learning the strumming patter in its full complexity and then vocals on top of that - that’s just too complicated for the brain to handle, even if the strumming seems to be automated. It never is as automated as it needs to be when you are still starting out.
Good luck!
I found this incredibly difficult and still do, but I do manage to play and sing a few songs so if I can do it, then it is possible. Having the rythym/strumming pattern so automated you could fall asleep doing it is helpful, then you free up some brain power for the singing. For a while I could only play and sing using old faithful. Knowing the words so well you don’t have to think about them at all is good. Or just sing the melody using ‘mee ow’, I find this helpful for trying to test a song to see how difficult it’s going to be and trying to get my voice to sound a bit more reasonable without having to think what words I should be singing. I have heard it said that you should just talk while playing but this I find even more difficult. I choose songs where the rhythm of the lyrics sync fairly well with the guitar rhythm, that seems to make it a bit easier. Focus only on the verse or chorus or even just a line and repeat. I also draw the bars out and see where the strums and where the lyrics line up so when I play I can get a feel I should be singing this word at this point in the rhythm. I also have listened a lot to the song I am trying, over and over. Frightening when I see the stats on Spotify. It gets easier some songs I can play bits fairly quickly. Others not. For some reason chorus of wonderwall took forever, to get my head round. And still find difficult. Long drawn out, ‘maybe’ that covers a lot of strumming. Good luck it is possible, break it down and build it up.
Hi Dev
I’m by no means an expert and only just started playing myself…but, to use an analogy below, I would think of it like this:
When learning to drive a car; I thought someone had put ‘kangaroo petrol’ in my tank due to my dreadful clutch-control thereby impersonating a frog driving down the road; then oh my goodness I also had to look in the mirror, and then I was asked to put my indicator on. To achieve this I had to remove my hand from the streering wheel! and then take my (right) foot off the accelarator; and then apply it to the ‘middle peddle’ to slow down, then, if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to turn the steering wheel, take my right foot off the middle peddle and apply it to the accelerator again and check my mirror again after I had turned the corner! Arrrgggghhhhhh!!! 
Needless to say I passed my driving test way back in 1982, when all the above manoeuvres were being completed seemingly automatically, without what seemed conscious thought from me,…if you get my drift?..practice, practice, and more practice…
Good luck on your journey 
Steve
how much time did it take you to get comfortable at singing while playing?
It makes sense, thanks for your advice!
Consider watching the recording of my recent Live Club about this topic!
https://www.justinguitar.com/live-events/180
(session starts around 08:20 https://youtu.be/Cpe8dAXFbVo?t=499 )
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m “comfortable” singing and playing, even now. I can only sing with 2 of the songs that I play. And those 2 songs are songs that I’ve spent MANY, MANY hours playing. I had been playing the first one around a year before I started to sing it, too. Even still, my rhythm tends to get sloppy when I sing it.
The other one took less time to learn to sing and play. But it’s the same - my rhythm is much more dialed when I don’t try singing. When I try singing it, my rhythm gets sloppy.
B.B. King couldn’t sing and play at the same time. So there’s that.
Dev, when you try to sing and play at the same time, you are actually trying to do four things at the same time - fretting the chords, strumming the rhythm, singing the melody and singing the words. When you start to sing and play you should pick songs with melodies that you know very well. You need to use very simple chord progressions at first and simple strums like 1 strum per bar or 4 if you can do without thinking. When you try to record yourself singing and playing then it may seem twice as difficult if you are like me 
I had several years experience playing sing alongs with simple tunes, but it is still difficult for some songs now. I didn’t record a song with singing until I was in grade 3 and i still started with simple grade 1 songs. Be patient, keep it simple and practice, practice, practice and you will eventually be able to start singing and playing.
Yep, I absolutely faced that issue. And didn’t plan to sing at all because of it’s difficulty. The first song I learned all the way through was Blowin in the wind. Because I thought it was too hard, I played it and my wife sung it. After 50 or 60 times, quite by accident, I found myself singing along out loud in the chorus.
From that moment on I started singing to every song I played.
One thing to look out for and avoid until you gain your confidence is syncopated or offset lyrics, where the lyrics / singing doesn’t align with your chord changes.
Justin does have a lesson about singing and playing at the same time. I didn’t watch that lesson till long after I’d learned to sing. I didn’t find the process as involved as what Justin described but the elements were all there.
Keep playing and get your songs just happening automatically, then try to sing again. You’ll get there, it’s a different skill, but very well worth developing.
Yes, absolutely. I love singing and playing and its getting better but at times, depending on the song and the rhythm I definitely go off piste 
but I find that as long as the timing remains stable it the strumming can vary a bit. Not perfect I’m sure but then we’re not pro’s eh