How Hard Would It Be To Do Vocals And Guitar On This Song? Options

[slash48]

Hi gmc, I was just wondering how hard it is to sing and play guitar on californication by the red hot chili peppers-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVRfzaCRyz8. I have already got the guitar part down, I am just wondering If it is possiable with practice to sing this song and play guitar like lead guitarist john frusciante does at the same time. I would just like to get an idea of how much time it would take and how hard it would be considering the rythmic differences of the guitar and vocals in the song. Any help would be great

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[tonyparnham]

Hi Slash48,
I live in the UK and in the 60's we used to do this all the time. There were many groups similar to the Beatles, it was an era of four or five piece bands playing and singing to gether. I spent years doing it like a lot of others back then.

First (standing up) sing along with the lead singer and get that under your belt first (that is providing you can sing fairly well and hold the tune, if you can't abandon it) Then practice singing the vocal and playing just the chords to the track at the same time to get the timing of everything ( do it many times if you hav'nt done it before). Then once you have done it a lot try playing the lead and singing it (this is quite difficult and really requires practice and experience). Bass players were good at this because they would have to play bass lines throught the whole song singing or harmonising.

I always look at Boy bands a little cynically these days (I know I should'nt to be fair) but when I see them harmonising and singing to ready made backing tracks and no instruments I just think they have it easy.
Lots of luck Tony

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[Ivan Mihaljevic]

It's doable! It just requires some of practice!
You have to see how the melody line interacts rhythmically with the guitar part and then practice it very slowly at first and then when you get it down, you can gradually increase the tempo.
I've done a lesson recently on this topic (not this particular song), so you might get a couple of advices on how to approach singing while playing - https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/singing_while_playing/

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[Bogdan Radovic]

I think it should not be that hard for that song. You should as suggested first practice the vocal line itself, then singing against full strummed chords (Am-F etc etc).And once you can do that go for the original guitar part + singing. Generally if you want to sing along this song alone and you are not playing in a band - strummed full chords will sound better. But if you have a backing etc to go along with - original guitar part is cool.

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This post has been edited by Bogdan Radovic: Jul 12 2009, 11:43 AM