Practice advice for vocals and guitar.

[Davis Webb]

Originally Posted by jseth

One of the many useful points that I gleaned from my years of working with Judy Davis (legendary vocal coach in the SF Bay Area) was this:

She told us to answer the question, "Are you a singer who plays the guitar, or are you a guitarist who sings?"

Knowing that answer (for YOU) can be key to directing your practice and focus...

Eric Johnson is a good example of a guitarist who sings.

[ARiley]

Love this. Getting the message across to the listeners is the key. For this singer who plays a guitar, that seems to me to call for getting the basic techniques down first.

Choose a simple song (my music teachers, whether voice or instrumental, always chose folk songs for working on technique, and then brought out the fun stuff once that was solid) and work with all the parts of it one after another, bit by bit. Yeah, it can feel like a slog (I got so f'in sick of the refrain of "Early One Morning" I could *scream*) but that's how we build muscle memory. Once we have that built up, once we know how it feels to sing or play something just right and we can do it any time, then we're on our way.

One of the things my voice teachers always lean on is clarity of diction -- if the listener can't understand what we're saying, they won't get the message we want to convey. Even a beautiful voice is only elevator music if the listener can't understand the words. So diction. We can get all mysterious and mumbly once we're stars.

Good luck!

[Mischief]

So just an update and some clarification.
Oh and sorry for the long post.

First off, for those that don't know I can perform sing and play guitar at a descent level. I'm looking to take things from amateur to a more professional level.

I'm still not regimented in my practicing and fitting everything in.

However I have taken some bits of advice and have focused on improving specific songs. I have implemented some basic melodic lines in my chording and I have also been working in playing more with my beat buddy. (This has been great for my timing).
I used to play classical violin and I think my actual internal metronome is fairly good however my internal timing for songs based on solo feel is quite free. The BB helps me lock in and will be beneficial when I play with others. It's also likely nicer for the audience.

I have also taken the time to practice here and there just on singing vocals with backing tracks.

So I still think I want to specifically work on;

Practice vocal warm ups and scales

Work on isolated vocals in the songs I do

Work on guitar scales war ups

Work on guitar intro outro licks and implementing melodic lines

Work on bass runs, walk ups and downs and strumming embellishments.

Plus putting it all together.

Aside from that I need to make time to implement and work with the beatbuddy pedal.

Somehow I have to fit this all into 7-10 practice hours a week average.

Please note I'm gleaning lots from all the suggestions here. I'm just still not sure how to maximize learning so many things at once.

Likely I will try and start doing warm ups and scales for both guitar and vocals every practice session. Then pick one thing to work on and then implement that into a song. I mean if I can do all that in an hour? Maybe I should do that and focus on one song for a week and repeat the process for a different song every week? 10 minutes for guitar warm ups and scales. 10min for vocal warm ups and scales/exercises. 20 minutes working on specific exercise like a lick, bass runs walks etc melodies etc specifically for a selected song. Then 20minutes running through the song and making the song better.

Im not sure if there's a better way to maximize my learning time or not?