How to sing while playing the guitar. If you're hoping to be able to play and sing songs for yourself around a campfire, or even on stage at an open mic or in a band, then here's some tips on how to begin doing that. First, start simple and easy, a song that you're really familiar with. then learn the words and melody. So sing through the words in the melody without playing the guitar. then learn the chords, learn the chords to the verse, the chorus, etc.

Then what I would do when you start to put those together is play through the catchiest part of the song like usually the choruses or probably the core So start with the chorus or if it for some reason, another part of the songs like super catchy to you then Then start there. And what you're looking for is to have words or target words that line up with the chords. And remember to work one part at a time. And repetition is the key. So as an example, I'm going to play or go through a song that we're all familiar with Happy birthday. I'm gonna play it like I'm singing to my little cousin or something on her birthday.

Her name is Madeline. And I'll just play through it for you and kind of hint at all those things I was pointing out like the target words and melody with the chords and just, you know, repeating apart over and over again. So here we go. So for example, if you're to start off Happy birthday, so what you do is first play the starting course. Well, we'll play it in the key of D. Go be good. day two.

Right so now you're starting to see where the target chords and words are. So happy day two. So you can see on birthdays when we strum that D than two to you is when we strum that a seven chord. And then usually when you get that nailed down the things in between just start to come a lot more naturally. So first work on that you can you know, even if you're learning a song that has like a really neat strum pattern is something if you're going to learn to play and sing at the same time, you can just play like it once play the chord once Happy birthday to you. Once you're comfortable with that, then you can you know, happy birthday.

Happy birthday. So those are just some tips for learning a new song. I remember first learning proud married, you know Roland and and i remember i would just sing along with the recording like a million times through. And then I would play along with the recording like a million times through. And then I would just go for it and try to sing and play along and I would just like even if I was messing up, I would just still try to power through it, you know, and so it was just taking the time to sit down. If you have, you know if your voices in the key of the recording and the chords are easy enough, it's good to do that to try to play along with the recording.

And so I just sat down and just hammered it out, just spent a bunch of time doing that. Now that was might even be a little more challenging at this point. I mean learning songs like Happy birthday or Mary had a little lamb or something should probably be a lot easier to play and sing right now. That key a D. So for example, if we're going back to Happy birthday, and that kid D is either too low for you and your vocal range or too high for you and your vocal range, what you can do, first, try using the cable, shifting it around. Now, if it's too low, then the cable definitely should help you just start putting it on. On a couple frets higher so like say that was way too long a birthday and then you want to raise it up.

Okay, so let's try it here. Happy birthday to you a little higher. If that's still too low, you can you know, raise it up a little more because you're changing the key each time you play with the cable. Bye Keeping the same shape, of course, and Happy birthday to you. So that would be too high. For me, the reason I chose D was because that was a good, good spot.

Now if I were to put the cable all the way up on the 12th fret, then you'd just be back at plane playing a D again, so it would just be the same key where you started off at so basically moving down from there a little bit, you can actually lower the key for yourself. So if I did, like, say right here, then it's kind of like going working your way down from that deaky it gets a little, a little funny like when it's way up high like this. I mean, there's songs that that have the cable that high like Here comes the sun and I see fire by Ed Sheeran. But you You can try that if the song is too high for you, and you need to lower it, you can try doing that. So just again, if the song is too low, then you can try just putting the cable up a few frets, like maybe start with doing two frets up, that's still too low, and they're fed up.

If it's too high, you could try putting the cape on higher here and, and then sing a little lower that might that might help too, although it does get a little funny here. So that brings me to my next topic is transposing. So what you can do, so for example, instead of playing wait up here, a certain shape, which so for if you were to put the cable right here, that's actually a G chord. Okay, that's you've noticed the D shape it says We've moved it up in key, so it's the G chord. Now instead of playing everything up here with the cable, you can just play like a G. Right. So if you knew that you needed to change it to change the key to something like a G, then what you can do is what's called transposing the song to another key using the chords you've learned in the course.

This actually is a good exercise. If you recall from the E blues modules, you have the one four and five chords in any particular key. This is also commonly referred to as the Nashville number system. The one four and five chords are actually the ones being used in the song. We are in the key of D. So D, the one chord, the four chord is G and the five chord is a B, or a C. Seven, it's good to start to memorize that. Now if you want to try changing it to the key of G For example, I would first look online See the link below for the Nashville numbers for each key what the one four and five chords are in the key of G. That being said right now I'll just tell you and you can have the link on hand for later.

So the one chord is going to be G, right? So we're using again, we're using the one, four and five chord in the Happy Birthday song. So when we're in the key of G, the one chord is G, the four chord is C and the five chord turns into D. Now for C you can play see, okay, see the one chord G, C as the four chord or C Nine function the same in the key of G, and the five chord is D. So then you would just transpose each chord accordingly. And you may want to write that down on your on your chart when you're playing through the song I'm sure you'll have the words and the chords, you may want to write down where you see the D chord and swap it out with the G. So, g would replace D as the one chord and then C or C nine would replace g as the four chord.

D would replace a as the five chord. This is actually an excellent thing to start learning how to do, you would gain a very strong understanding of music after a while. Also it would really help to bring together all the concepts taught in this course. If you look back to the QD m key of G, notice how I used the one, four, and five chords in each key. See what's happening, the one, four, and five chords are the ones that are the most commonly used in any key. And so are very important to know.

So that's just a bit of a side from how to play while singing. Or how to play the guitar while singing because you're probably going to find that where you go to learn a song in a certain key, and then it's either too low or too high. And so you'll need to somehow transpose the song either by using a cable or by understanding which chord number that is being played in the song. And then if you're for example, again, switching it from the key of D to the key of G knowing how to swap each chord so something to think about I know that's probably a little over your head right now maybe I totally just confused you. You might want to go back and just listen to this lesson again or you could just let it sit and not worry about it right now and just play Happy Birthday in the kiddie and, and have fun doing that which is awesome.

So I hope that helps. And all the best if you plan to say, you know, play a song around a campfire or go to an open mic or anything like that. So have fun.