In a rhythm capacity on guitar, I'd perhaps be able to make myself useful, but I do get nervous singing in front of people...

If I'm on lead guitar, absolutely no chance whatsoever of me trying to sing...

If I have to, and I'm happy doing some backing. I'd much rather focus on my guitar playing though.

If you can hum a tune, you can sing it - it's just most of us don't practice it enough to become competent.

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: If I have to, and I'm happy doing some backing. I'd much rather focus on my guitar playing though.

If you can hum a tune, you can sing it - it's just most of us don't practice it enough to become competent.

Well not quite IMO, but doing it is a useful form of practice. I've taken to singing in the car on the way to work (well everybody's already gooiing me signs because my gas-saving driving strategy doesn't include haring through residential suburbs at 90ks, so what have I got to lose) and things are improving. Areas I notice an improvement are holding pitch on a sustained note and on changing pitch on vowel sounds.

I think there is a bit more to singing than humming, but if you can hum the tune then you've got enough pitch control and pitch recognition to identify and hit the notes.

My biggest problem - and practice isn't shifting it - is that every now and then (usually at the beginning of a phrase) the note seems to stick in my throat.

As lead singer on our band - Roxy Blu - I should hope I can sing, even if I have to say so myself :-[. I have had my voice trained but never had any guitar lessons. I learned to play guitar (rythm only) to acompany my voice. Many of our current repetoire I don't even play now as we have 2 lead guitarists and add a little percussion.

Can't sing harmonies for toffee.

I do a little voice overs and sing in some demo's for my song-writer producer friends!

I do some croaking but um not a trained singer as such. When it's just you and a guitar you gotta improvise.
If I'm playing bass in a band I'll just shuddup and concentrate on the rhythm... 8)

Yep, I sing... solo stuff... me and my guitar.... as well as being the main singer in our band. I also giving singing lessons based on SLS method... speech level singing. To sing well requires much practice but like anything it has to be in the right way or you might do yourself damage.

i can sing up a storm over my incredible vocal range of 4 tones. and that's about it.

For most of my life I held to a general observation that people that couldn't sing focused more on playing the guitar and those who could sing never amounted to much guitar-wise. I have since seen the fallacy of this. All the truly great guitarist of my idiom, Blues, sing! From the shrill worbelling Robert Johnson, BB, Earl and Freddy King, Lighnin Hopkins, Pete Green , Jimi, SRV, Clapton. Bonamassa et al. Except for one notable exception none of them sang particularly well but they did so because I think singing is an essential element to expressing the blues no matter how dog- gone well you can play guitar.

They say I cant. All of them say so! From the time I was chucked out of the choir in junior school. But I want to. And today I wanted to sing the Welsh anthem. I dont think I'm Welsh I just think it's a great song. But then again I may be Welsh becasue there is an oke in the Welsh team with the same last name as me.

a huge secret in the music biz......... is that NOT everyone CAN sing ....... and if you LIKE ME and know singing is not your strong point ...shut the f...k up , it does no justice and only drags the standard down of everything else you have to offer musically ........cos nothing can ruin a band like a bad singer ........... or even a mediocre one.........

sorry to be the killjoy but it's a fact .....

hey for sure sing in the shower , or even kareoke but leave the singing on stage for people with tone and pitch .......

i mean would you let a beginner guitarist be your lead guitarist ...hell no ....so why let a sub standard singer be your vocalist ......

i seen many a brilliant band get fired from venues when the muso's all kick butt...... but some or other buddy "thought he was a singer' and they let him sing ..........

hiring a good singer is as important as hiring a great guitarist ........ or a drumer that can keep time, or a bassist who can stay sober till the 4th set

ps.................. apologies about the bassist quip......... i got it wrong ...not all bassists are like that and get drunk onstage by the 4th set thats possibly inaccurate ........ truth is most can't stay sober past the 2nd set ( just kidding ...really ... i mean it .... my tongue is firmly in my cheek ..............ducks for cover..... )

Whether or not I can sing, the thought of doing it live scares me a bit haha ?

@Keira WitherKay
Haha I love it, while its nice to believe we
can all sing I believe you are spot on ?

Garren wrote: @Keira WitherKay
Haha I love it, while its nice to believe we
can all sing I believe you are spot on ?

well this is not my personal brain child but something that was taught to me many years ago in a far away land (France ?) by someone i took lessons with while i was there ......who told me over a bowl of spagetti that great musicians...... are not good at everything or every style they attempt ....... but rather the great ones.are the ones who know what they "can't" do well then just never do that live on stage ..............so what they offer musically is never tarnished by what they can't do

Keira WitherKay wrote: a huge secret in the music biz......... is that NOT everyone CAN sing ....... and if you LIKE ME and know singing is not your strong point ...shut the f...k up , it does no justice and only drags the standard down of everything else you have to offer musically ........cos nothing can ruin a band like a bad singer ........... or even a mediocre one.........

sorry to be the killjoy but it's a fact .....

I'm not so sure. I don't think everybody is Maria Callas, but most people should be able to sing and to harmonise.

I work at a hospital. From time to time the nurses there get out in the garden and sing (for various reasons). Now when you apply for a job as a nurse they don't ask "can you sing?" but they can. Strong voices, good pitch, harmonies... I think there is something in modern, dare I say "western" society that has resulted in most of us not singing. It's a learned skill, sure, but people used to learn it quite a natural way. They'd have singsongs at home, or round a camp fire (Boy Scouts perhaps). I've made the point before about Eliza Carthy who is a fab singer and clearly has a bit extra in the "natural talent" department but who also comes from a family of singers. Her mother is Norma Waterson of the famous singing (acapella) Watersons family. Only three of the Watersons originally got up on stage (joined first by a cousin whose surname inconveniently was Harrison, then later by Martin Carthy) and most of the kids didn't go into the family business at first. But in recent years Waterson off-spring have popped up seemingly out of nowhere for various tribute and reunion shows (Norma is now the last of the original Watersons left) and they are all excellent singers. Because that's what their family does - they sing. Even the ones who decided to not pursue a musical career. And they all sang (and were sung to) from a very early age.

Joe Boyd has talked about this, saying that so many singers he hears these days are sort of manufactured but there are some (he named Kate McGarrigle's kids) who have always sung, since they were toddlers, and they sing in a different way.

So ja, I think it's a little bit of a loss that we have all sustained. We don't sing any more, and because we don't sing we can't sing.

I dunno, you'd have to ask the guys that I jam with if I can. I guess it all depends on what I'm asked to sing. Growls, no problem, if I do it last because everything after that and my voice breaks and everything is a growl, I have to admit, that I'm pretty comfortable singing like that anyway.

Nowadays I've been drawn towards a bit more control and playing around a bit than just blasting.

As for singing while playing guitar..........baby steps.

Always wanted to sing on my own and be the centre of attention... :-[ Lately though I've realized that I actually have great aptitude for harmonies while doing backing vocals. 8) Have only once played guitar AND sung, it was Amazing grace, so there wasn't much space for error. I find myself mumbling if I try to sing and play...gues I need to play better before combining, time will tell if one can do harmonies while playing ryhthm. Anybody here do that?

Nitebob wrote: Always wanted to sing on my own and be the centre of attention... :-[ Lately though I've realized that I actually have great aptitude for harmonies while doing backing vocals. 8) Have only once played guitar AND sung, it was Amazing grace, so there wasn't much space for error. I find myself mumbling if I try to sing and play...gues I need to play better before combining, time will tell if one can do harmonies while playing ryhthm. Anybody here do that?

I don't, but I know that it can be done because so many people have done it. It doesn't start and end with The Beatles, but they're a prime example.

I'm wondering if there's an age gap thing at work here, because to me (older than anybody who turned 50 in the last couple of weeks) it always seemed quite unremarkable that one could sing (lead or harmonies) and play at the same time. Everybody from Dylan to Hendrix and Clapton was doing that.

Nice to see some responses. I wonder if the shape of the distribution will hold up as more people vote. Non-response bias and all that ? Thanks to all who have so far.

There have been some "lead" guitar players who are good vocalists - as renesongs points out - and a couple who are phenomenal. I'd add Robert Johnson to Peter Green in that regard because, although Johnson was extremely unconventional (at least by today's standards) the subtlety of his voice is extraordinary.

And of course... there's Prince. Is there anything musical that guy can't do?

Interesting to me, like Bob, that people are commenting about being ok to sing but not sing and play at the same time. As he says, it seems normal to me from the music I grew up with: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones.

I was quite inspired by that PhilX guy who demos guitars on Youtube who can sing big rock numbers that were typically sung by vocalists supported by a dedicated guitar player. He seems to do it with ease. For example he'll do Zeppelin numbers with the big Plant vocal and the rapidly changing guitar riff going on underneath it. I'm now trying to develop a bit of a technique for doing this - and it ain't perfect by any means - in which I start by linking the specific beats of the vocal to what I'm doing on the guitar.

So for example if I'm singing "Baby you're so unconventional!" or something, and there're some single note guitar licks underneath it that don't follow the time sequence of the vocal, I'll be like, Baby you're so just goes over a constant quarter note part of the lick, so no problem. Then I need to sing "you're" with no guitar, start playing the triplet during the gap before so - ending it a beat before "so" finishes. Etc. etc.

As you can imagine, this is laborious and frustrating. But I do find it gets easier as you practise. And after a while a breakthrough occurs, and I'm not thinking about it any more. My hands go and I'm free to sing.

Like I said though, it ain't perfect. If I leave off practising it, I tend to stuff it up the next time I try to play it. I'm back to trying to remember where in the middle of a word I'm supposed to double-pick the A-string - not very fluid at all and a recipe for disaster. But I think it can be developed.