Hello @DxnFx and welcome to JustinGuitar Community.
Congratulations on reaching the end of Grade 1.
Justin sings during his tutorials to provide context and enhance the guitar lessons. You do not need to sing. You can play the songs by yourself and not sing. Even better, you can play the guitar part along with the actual song and fit in as a member of the band.
Justin’s Song & Beginner APp provides this function - a play-along experience where you focus on the guitar, the chords, the chord changes, the strumming etc. You can have the vocalist turned on or off - on if you’re not going to sing.
You must sing, you must sing … resistance is futile …
Congratulations on working you way through Grade 1, and welcome to the JG Community, Dawn.
You raise a good question and learning to sing along while you play is something worth considering. It has its own challenges: it’s not for everyone and that’s fine. I have been playing 4yrs, and my first 3 tunes were instrumentals; prior to joining JG and working my through Grades 1-3.
Some prefer to develop playing songs “fingerstyle”, where the melody and rhythm combine; although, imho, perhaps best left for now and focus on progressing through Grades 2 & 3.
I am sure some of the songs you are learning along the way are ones you know quite well.
Perhaps “sing” along as you play: not necessarily all the lyrics but “lah, lah, lah” or humming. It will also help you get into the groove with a song as you play along too.
Many people know the chorus of a song really well but are a bit sketchy on the verse. Whatever you think is best for you is fine; the focus for now is progressing with your developing playing skills.
Richard’s (@Richard_close2u ) suggestions are a great way to help you learning as you play through the next few grades.
I would encourage you to attend in the audience at the JG Open Mics. They are every 6-8wks normally and you will watch people performing at every level of development; ‘beginner’ through to ‘advanced’.
Just a thought but how about some software like Moises in which you can remove various parts of a song --Eg leave the vocals and band but remove guitar and play along.
One thing I’d say based on my own experience is that if you’ve recently completed grade 1, it’s possibly too early to try to introduce singing as well. You’re just about starting to get used to the patting your head and rubbing your belly that is guitar playing and someone is saying “here’s a football, try juggling it with your feet at the same time”!
I’m not a singer, I do the world a favour by not singing but even if I try a few lines from songs that I know well, my playing goes to pot suggesting it’s not as automatic as it needs to be yet
Like what Matt says, singing isn’t for everyone. I have struggled with singing and certainly wouldn’t sing for anyone but me (yet) or maybe my wife if I am angry at her.
However, singing loosely and quietly along as you play, or even humming, is really a lot more fun than I ever expected. It fills in the melody in your head and is just joyful.
It is pretty early to be thinking about it too much. It is pretty hard to play and sing at the same time. As soon as I even try to sing, it suddenly is like my brain loses complete track of what my strumming hand is doing.
I like classical playing, which is often not with words, and fingerstyle and chord melody to play melody without voice, but there is no right or wrong. If those are directions you care to go, they are there for you when you are ready to advance to them. For now, gather your basics, play with the app or backing tracks, and most of all have fun!
I added classical guitar after about a year with Justin, fingerstyle maybe two or 2.5 years in. Probably too early.
You definitely don’t need to sing or play fingerstyle to play guitar. In most bands / live concert, there is the singer (who may play guitar or not), but there is also another guitarist or two who play. Most records involve more than one guitar.
Start with the app, it has cool backing tracks just like if you were the guitarist in a band. And after 1 year or two, you may move to making your own backing track with software like Moise which remove the guitar from a band track so you can add yours. You can see how it can be fun here in grade 3 Math07 JG Rock Songbook Project (10 out of 15) - 3 songs added 3 June
As mentioned by several Community members above, this isn’t true. Lot’s of fingerstyle songs have lyrics - this may have been misconstrued because many if not most songs need “more” than just strumming but fingerstyle (with it’s often intricate patterns) can hold the listener’s attention without lyrics a bit better.
I also recommend Justin’s app… I use it for the playalong/guitar karaoke aspect. It’s built-in backing tracks that are specific to many of the recommended songs in Justin’s lessons makes it easier to learn. One of the best features is the built-in capability to slow the BPM (beats per minute) down - really helpful for songs that are kind of fast for a Grade 1/2 students.
Congratulations on finishing up Grade 1 - I advise spending a bit of time consolidating before moving on to the next step… Good Luck with your Journey!!!
Actually, it’s true in a way. Most solo guitar instrumental pieces are played fingerstyle.
So, if that’s the kind of music the OP is interested in playing, it might be a good idea to think about fingerstyle. (but probably not at the earliest stages of learning)
When I started playing I had no intention at all of singing. The first song I learned my wife would sing and I would play and I was quite happy with that. One day, quite by accident, after I’d played the song 50 or so times, I started singing along in the chorus and my life changed after that. Singing is good for the mental health, apparently it stimulates the vagus nerve and it’s fun, it makes it easier to memorize where the chord changes are, etc.
and maybe I’m overthinking this one - BUT the comment I quoted earlier taken in context with the rest of what the OP said (remember that she’s new to guitar)…
…makes me think that she believes fingerstyle is primarily for non-singers. I would argue that most Folk & Bluegrass is fingerstyle WITH singing - I can think of at least a dozen artists offhand that use primarily fingerstyle arrangements. Yes, they strum & play solos as well but the melody is usually played fingerstyle…
There are many reasons to sing but your last point of relating chord changes to the lyrics is very helpful when playing a song from memory, something I do all the time.
You mention singing a song 50 times.I probably do it into three figures, initially with the original then with a karaoke version. Ok as. I have said previously on the community I do take singing lessons but a lot are not that I would ever play and sing with a guitar.
That’s a guess of how many times I’d played it at that stage. Justin has a detailed lesson on singing and playing at the same time. His lesson, in my view, makes it more complicated than it was for me. It ended up being quite easy, accidental is a better description.
It’s so very worth it. My voice has improved a lot in the time since then. Like any muscle that needs exercise, so does your singing voice. Don’t worry at the start if your voice doesn’t sound as good as you’d like it to. It will improve just like your guitar playing does.
Get a LOT more familiar with the song. Know it. Watch Justin’s Lesson,…
Once you’ve done it on a song or two, it then makes it easier on subsequent songs with remembering chord changes and such. On your first singing song you have to really KNOW the song.
Also, when starting singing, choose a song where the chord changes line up with the lyrics. Some songs the lyrics are quite offset (syncopated), those are a lot harder to learn to sing.
There’s one song I learned that was a challenge that way, I was using the old faithful D D u u D strum and the lyrics started on the 2nd up of the 3rd measure. I found it really really difficult to learn to sing that. You don’t want that kind of song to be the first you try to sing.
I’ve heard the idea of having the song on autopilot on the guitar. That has NEVER happened for me, no matter how many times I’ve played the song. I can have it completely memorized, but if my mind goes to anything but my playing, it falls apart. I’ve just accepted that I’m not a multi-tasker. Hell, B.B. couldn’t play and sing at the same time, and he had been playing some of those songs every night for decades.
Indeed, that’s true (for folk, bluegrass guitar is played with a pick, generally). Except that I didn’t say most fingerstyle songs are instrumental, but rather most (solo) instrumental pieces are played fingerstyle.
I only weighed in on this topic because for a long time I was in the OP’s shoes. I do not sing and play alone, generally, and after a while playing along with recordings did not seem very satisfying for me. I came to the conclusion that the best solution was to learn instrumental pieces, so recently I’ve been learning instrumental acoustic blues pieces.
I realize a beginner cannot just decide to become a fingerstyle acoustic blues player, at least not before getting some basics down first.
In most bands / live concert, there is the singer (who may play guitar or not), but there is also another guitarist or two who play. Most records involve more than one guitar.
