The first dirty little secret about guitar playing if you're a music teacher is that it's not really about guitar playing, it's about singing.
An elementary music teacher will spend almost all their time playing an accompaniment to the class’ singing. Enter: the guitar!
The guitar is also a great instrument to add underscoring to some talking or an introduction to a song. But never lose sight that it will primarily be used for accompanying.
A music teacher playing guitar in class has to multi-task while playing. Aside from doing things like singing and talking, you'll need to play while maintaining eye contact, walking around the room, and transitioning students in and out of a song.
If you are struggling with any of your guitar techniques while singing, such as switching from chord to chord, or strumming a convincing comping pattern, the sound of the guitar will fail. It won't sound convincing.
Your classes don’t want to watch you try to play – they want you to sound like a muse, a rock star, or at the least, a competent musician. Until you synchronize everything, you'll just sound like somebody trying to play guitar and sing in front of a bunch of kids.
While it's important to get your guitar chops up and running, it's your singing that is going to be key to making your guitar playing sound good. Start taping yourself singing a cappella. Study and analyze your recordings. What is your optimum singing range? Are you able to play the song on guitar in your best vocal key? Can you use a capo to move the chords you can play into more vocal-friendly keys? More on that in another blog post.
Guitarists at all levels should try this.
At home, or in your empty classroom before school, or in a practice room in your college music department, pretend you have a class in front of you. Stand up. Visually pick something out that's ahead of you that will be the focus for your eyes – pretend that visual focus is a student looking at you.
The idea is not to look at your fingers when you play; the idea is to make contact with the students’ eyes at all times. Play and sing a song.
If you are just starting to play guitar, before you even try to sing a song with guitar, try this.
Stand up, with a guitar on a strap around your neck, and move your right hand as if your strumming the strings but make no contact with them while you have your left hand up at the top of the neck, close to the headstock where all the basic cowboy chords are voiced. Basically, you are going to pretend to play guitar as you sing a song.
If you can't convincingly sing that song, and by “convincingly”, I mean singing in tune and in time with your eyes focused on a target in the room, realize that you're not doing the song justice, and your guitar playing, no matter how good it is, will not salvage your vocal performance.
As I noted elsewhere in another blog, I didn't play guitar until I got my very first job teaching after graduating from college. Before that, I primarily played double bass. I played bass in orchestras, jazz combos, local and touring big bands, folk groups, Dixieland bands - in short, any ensemble that could take a double bass, I was trying to get the gig.
Eventually, I got a gig in “A Touch of Class”, a five-piece wedding band. It necessitated me getting an electric bass rig. I was in what they called the “backline”. I didn't front the band – the leader of the band, Jack Malloy, did that as well as sang a bit, played tenor sax and a bit of keyboard.
Next to Jack was our lead singer, Joe Dombrowski, who did all the introductions and all the lead singing. Our guitarist, Larry Nai, didn't sing. I was in the back by the drummer, Mike Malloy. I had a microphone, but I was only doing backup vocals.
As bad luck would have it, we had a gig one night and Joe was sick and couldn’t do the gig. Jack, who was my father’s age, turned to me and sternly said, “You're a music teacher. You must know how to sing, you're the singer tonight.”
I was petrified. “You really don't want to hear me sing lead and I don't know if I can sing while I play bass.” Jack’s fatherly response was, “Do you wanna get paid tonight? Sing!”
The thing you have to understand is that singing while you play guitar is much easier than singing while you play bass. The bass has such a critical role in a group and it has to lock precisely with the drums in such a certain way that it doesn't lend itself easily to singing at the same time as playing. We call that “playing in the pocket”.
I got through the gig, but just barely. Jack decided I sounded pretty good and that Joe and I would share lead vocals. That week, I went home and in my living room, set up my music stand with lyric sheets on it, my microphone stand with no mic in it, just the mic stand, and me standing there with my unplugged bass around my neck.
I simply practiced playing bass while singing the songs into the microphone stand. I maintained as much eye contact as possible with a clock that was on the wall at the other end of the room.
I quickly learned that I needed to simplify things: just stand up and pretend I was playing bass and really work on the vocals. After I got the vocals down, I played very simple bass parts while I sang. Lots of half notes, lots of whole notes.
Over the weeks I slowly got better but every time I learned a new song, I basically had to do the “empty-microphone-stand-I'm-singing-to-the-clock-in-my-living-room” deal to nail it and be prepared to do it live on the gig.
An ancillary effect of singing with bass was that it became infinitely easier to sing and play guitar.
Depending upon your guitar chops, you might have to do the exact same thing. Whatever you do, make sure that your vocal is stronger than the guitar part because it's the vocal that they will remember.
The worst mistake you can make is not trying. You can do it – but don’t put it off! Make a plan and take action.
And then, share what you've learned - teach your students how to play guitar. You know they want to, so why not teach them.
Lucky for you, with a little bit of practice, the second dirty little secret about guitar playing for the music educator is a bit easier.
An elementary music teacher will spend almost all their time playing an accompaniment to the class’ singing. Enter: the guitar!
The guitar is also a great instrument to add underscoring to some talking or an introduction to a song. But never lose sight that it will primarily be used for accompanying.
A music teacher playing guitar in class has to multi-task while playing. Aside from doing things like singing and talking, you'll need to play while maintaining eye contact, walking around the room, and transitioning students in and out of a song.
If you are struggling with any of your guitar techniques while singing, such as switching from chord to chord, or strumming a convincing comping pattern, the sound of the guitar will fail. It won't sound convincing.
Your classes don’t want to watch you try to play – they want you to sound like a muse, a rock star, or at the least, a competent musician. Until you synchronize everything, you'll just sound like somebody trying to play guitar and sing in front of a bunch of kids.
While it's important to get your guitar chops up and running, it's your singing that is going to be key to making your guitar playing sound good. Start taping yourself singing a cappella. Study and analyze your recordings. What is your optimum singing range? Are you able to play the song on guitar in your best vocal key? Can you use a capo to move the chords you can play into more vocal-friendly keys? More on that in another blog post.
Guitarists at all levels should try this.
At home, or in your empty classroom before school, or in a practice room in your college music department, pretend you have a class in front of you. Stand up. Visually pick something out that's ahead of you that will be the focus for your eyes – pretend that visual focus is a student looking at you.
The idea is not to look at your fingers when you play; the idea is to make contact with the students’ eyes at all times. Play and sing a song.
If you are just starting to play guitar, before you even try to sing a song with guitar, try this.
Stand up, with a guitar on a strap around your neck, and move your right hand as if your strumming the strings but make no contact with them while you have your left hand up at the top of the neck, close to the headstock where all the basic cowboy chords are voiced. Basically, you are going to pretend to play guitar as you sing a song.
If you can't convincingly sing that song, and by “convincingly”, I mean singing in tune and in time with your eyes focused on a target in the room, realize that you're not doing the song justice, and your guitar playing, no matter how good it is, will not salvage your vocal performance.
As I noted elsewhere in another blog, I didn't play guitar until I got my very first job teaching after graduating from college. Before that, I primarily played double bass. I played bass in orchestras, jazz combos, local and touring big bands, folk groups, Dixieland bands - in short, any ensemble that could take a double bass, I was trying to get the gig.
Eventually, I got a gig in “A Touch of Class”, a five-piece wedding band. It necessitated me getting an electric bass rig. I was in what they called the “backline”. I didn't front the band – the leader of the band, Jack Malloy, did that as well as sang a bit, played tenor sax and a bit of keyboard.
Next to Jack was our lead singer, Joe Dombrowski, who did all the introductions and all the lead singing. Our guitarist, Larry Nai, didn't sing. I was in the back by the drummer, Mike Malloy. I had a microphone, but I was only doing backup vocals.
As bad luck would have it, we had a gig one night and Joe was sick and couldn’t do the gig. Jack, who was my father’s age, turned to me and sternly said, “You're a music teacher. You must know how to sing, you're the singer tonight.”
I was petrified. “You really don't want to hear me sing lead and I don't know if I can sing while I play bass.” Jack’s fatherly response was, “Do you wanna get paid tonight? Sing!”
The thing you have to understand is that singing while you play guitar is much easier than singing while you play bass. The bass has such a critical role in a group and it has to lock precisely with the drums in such a certain way that it doesn't lend itself easily to singing at the same time as playing. We call that “playing in the pocket”.
I got through the gig, but just barely. Jack decided I sounded pretty good and that Joe and I would share lead vocals. That week, I went home and in my living room, set up my music stand with lyric sheets on it, my microphone stand with no mic in it, just the mic stand, and me standing there with my unplugged bass around my neck.
I simply practiced playing bass while singing the songs into the microphone stand. I maintained as much eye contact as possible with a clock that was on the wall at the other end of the room.
I quickly learned that I needed to simplify things: just stand up and pretend I was playing bass and really work on the vocals. After I got the vocals down, I played very simple bass parts while I sang. Lots of half notes, lots of whole notes.
Over the weeks I slowly got better but every time I learned a new song, I basically had to do the “empty-microphone-stand-I'm-singing-to-the-clock-in-my-living-room” deal to nail it and be prepared to do it live on the gig.
An ancillary effect of singing with bass was that it became infinitely easier to sing and play guitar.
Depending upon your guitar chops, you might have to do the exact same thing. Whatever you do, make sure that your vocal is stronger than the guitar part because it's the vocal that they will remember.
The worst mistake you can make is not trying. You can do it – but don’t put it off! Make a plan and take action.
And then, share what you've learned - teach your students how to play guitar. You know they want to, so why not teach them.
Lucky for you, with a little bit of practice, the second dirty little secret about guitar playing for the music educator is a bit easier.
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