The spicy question allows us to dive deeper into music. The treasures guitarists who sing horde or singers who play guitar holds. Are they the same or are they different?
Learning to play guitar is absolutely going to help you with your singing. It will improve your rhythm-melody dexterity and will enable you to be highly keen on what and when you’re singing allowing you to become a better listener.
I have a lot of things to say about this and why you should definitely consider this. I’m excited and I hope you are too.
Rhythm and Melody Dexterity
When you combine playing the guitar and singing together you do multiple things together.
You obviously play – the physical technique.
You sing – the melody.
You thought that’s it? It’s not.
You also keep time.
Not in just playing the guitar but with your singing as well. This means there is technique and melody which is glued together with rhythm. Three things. All working at the same time. How beautiful.
But, how exactly does it work?
How it Works
You see, the day people realized that a person could sing while playing an instrument works amazingly, the world changed for the better.
You see when you’re playing you have an idea of rhythm and time to which you adhere to make sense of what you’re playing. The idea of singing along with your own playing isn’t that you add another ‘complex’ layer on top of that but build on the same principle.
You sing over your playing. Your hands and your body are rhythmic cues. You know exactly where you are in time when you are singing.
Rhythm
That’s the principle.
In reality, it will force you to keep a good rhythm because without it you will sound weird. So you do it once, you do it twice, and keep it up until you’ve done it properly.
As a result, your rhythm will drastically improve. Why wouldn’t it? Your practice demands that you keep time and do it well. When you play something wrong or miss a beat, you will know.
It happens a lot when you’re learning a strumming pattern and trying to sing on top of it. You know when you miss an upstroke or a downstroke and you pause. Then begin again.
If you have not yet experienced this then I am predicting the future. This will happen and it means progress.
Instinct for Melody
Your ability to discern what a good melody is improved drastically. It also allows you to understand when and where composing and arranging a melody according to a certain harmonic and rhythm structure is going to be the best.
Though the only time you will be using it the max is when you’re composing something but imagine getting references. You won’t know what a good picture is even if you shot one on your phone or a camera.
You’d only know it’s good if you’ve seen someone’s else photo and liked it and then saw other photos of a similar kind. Once you have an idea of what a good photo looks like, you have something to compare your own against.
The same goes for composing and melodies. Once you have understood how other people compose good songs and how they have structured everything around the melody, only then can you come to some confidence to judge your own melodies. That is also how you develop your own voice/style in music (at least the basics of it)
Covering Songs
There are so many songs one could cover on the guitar and voice. There is only more and more room to grow. All of these songs to cover will only make you sharper in your perception of rhythm and how the melody flows along with it.
Remember, some songs are going to use much more complex rhythmic patterns, and some going to use complex harmonic patterns, and the worst of them, which will improve you the most are going to be the ones that use complex rhythmic and complex harmonic structures.
The availability through tabs and chord sheets is amazing but I would recommend that you learn to use your ear as much as possible while learning songs. I made that mistake when I was a teenager and was learning through tabs and YouTube and that never forced me to learn by ear.
I paid for that in college. Imagine that! Not having a strong ear in music college. That was rough but, with time and deliberate practice routine, I think my ear training is now in a very good place.
So, What Does This All Mean?
Learning to play guitar doesn’t just improve your own singing. It goes beyond that and improves your sense of music altogether. It will allow you to reach heights that you didn’t think were possible.
Possible Future Scenarios
I didn’t even talk about the things that you will be capable of doing after you have picked up the skill to sing and play together. Here are some possibilities.
Recording yourself, mixing your own song, and releasing it. The world of music is of endless possibilities and it all starts with adding one skill after another.
Do You Want to Sing Better?
The articles are limited to just providing you with information and basic how-tos and maybe a lesson here and there but if I were to tell you how to belt or how to sing, words won’t be enough. They’re not instructive enough unless you know exactly what to do already.
I am here to help you and I have written another article in which I talk about why online courses are better to have and why everyone should have at least one in their library regardless of their own level.
I recommend The Vocalist Studio. Here is their full list of premium courses. I personally own ‘The Four Pillars of Singing‘, if you purchase from this link, you will get the book along with it, which I don’t have, with the digital course.
But, if you want to, I have written a whole page just about the courses along with their price. Check it out here.
I hope you pick up the guitar and start to sing better and better! All the best!