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Top 4 Best Singing Lessons for Musicians

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy

Most musicians love to sing along to the songs they play on their guitar or any other instrument. Some guitar players focus entirely and solely on their instrument and that’s perfect, but there’s also the breed who loves to sing and play their hearts out. Even if you’re not, you definitely want to read on.

Most of us are not naturally born singers, and even if you are, you can always use some help to improve your singing voice and work to become a better singer / guitar player.

A lot of musicians just think they don’t have what it takes and they can’t do anything about it. They just throw in the towels and accept they aren’t really the singer type.

But that’s where they are wrong, you can definitely work to become a better singer, a good singer, and some even become great singers. But good is good enough.

How great is it to play your instrument and sing to your songs with confidence. Singing along with your instrument adds an extra dimension to the experience. You now have two instruments (your voice is also an instrument) that complement each other.

Learning to sing also helps you improve your playing, because playing guitar is all about listening and aural skills and that’s what you develop with singing lessons.

The most common problems people face are “problems with pitch”, “the crack in the voice” when going from chest voice to head voice, “singing higher notes” and “losing the voice” due to using of the voice in the wrong way. Most people also don’t know there are simple and easy ways to start improving the voice in a real short amount of time.

The Absolute Importance of Building a Repertoire

By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

You’ve been a guitar player for several years. You’ve got some skills in your pocket. And then comes that moment (it always does), at home, at someone else’s place, in a guitar shop, at a party, or some place where a guitar is spotted and someone knows you can play, and the inevitable question pops up: “Hey can you play something for us?”.

A lot of guitar players will scratch their heads and say “Uhh, No I don’t think so.” or “Well, maybe another time” because they don’t know what to play and their obviously not prepared.

Deep inside, they’re disappointed, they missed an opportunity and wished they could’ve come up with something cool to play with conviction and confidence. Wow, that would’ve been awesome!

Well for those who can relate to this. It’s time to change this. Let’s get ready and prepared. This is going to be a fun and exciting journey.

Building a repertoire does not only come in handy when you’re in the company of people who love to hear you play. The benefits are manifold.

Let’s dive in!

How to Play Guitar With a Band or Group

By Klaus Crow 6 Comments

How to play guitar with a band or group Playing guitar with a band or group requires certain skills, knowledge and attitude for things to work properly and make the overall sound coherent, rocking, and above all, a joy to listen to.

Depending on who and what instruments you are playing with, you’ve got a role to fill and really need to look for the right ingredients to make a difference and be part of something great.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important things you need to work and focus on when playing with others.

Be cohesive
Be a part and value to the band or group. Don’t try to stand out by outplaying everyone in the band. To make a band sound great you want to make it a whole, not four musicians and an ego-maniac.

Make sure your amp volume is appropriate and levels with the other instruments. Try to find the right balance.

Don’t fill every second with riffs, fills and solos, leave space for your fellow-musicians and let the music breath now and then. Be a team player.

Listen carefully to what others have to say. Talk about it. Learn from constructive critism. It can be tough to swallow, but these are the moments when you grow the most as a musician. Respect the opinion of your fellow musicians. Keep things cool. Be supportive and appreciative. Continue Reading

How to Memorize Music and Lyrics Forever and Ever

By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy

Memorizing song lyrics hasn’t always been my strongest asset. Learning chords, chord progressions, scales and guitar solos were always the easy part.

I’d go through them once or twice and they were stored in my brain for ages. But those nasty lyrics didn’t seem to get further than my short term memory.

Spaced repetition

I ultimately tackled this problem by using a learning technique called spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition works with graduated time intervals. It makes use of the spacing effect where you learn something several times spaced over a long time span.

Instead of cramming (hastily and intense studying at the latest possible moment) which is great for storing huge amounts of information for a short period of time, spaced repetition will pass the information from the short term memory onto the long term memory and make it last indefinitely.

Source

This technique was first discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a german psychologist who experimented with the study of memory and did some extraordinary findings. He contributed to science with brilliant insights on the forgetting curve, the learning curve and the spacing effect.

Practice Memorization

While you can apply the spaced repetition technique to any kind of (musical) information, we’ll take “memorizing lyrics” as an example.

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