Acoustic Solo Singers Melbourne- HOW TO LEARN A SONG!

One thing to recognise is that all people learn things slightly differently. Some people may use chord charts, while other prefer sheet music. Some people prefer to learn the vocals and instrumental line of a song at the same time, while others prefer to learn them separately. Some people might just hear a song and be able to start playing it, while others need to learn phrase by phrase. There really is no right or wrong. Below are Lexi’s top tips!

1) Find A Song You Like:

At Celestial Band we take our inspiration from everywhere. We have a song list that highlights music from a variety of genres, country, rock, pop, R&B, soul and funk tunes! We also take song requests and have the opportunity to incorporate those into our regular song list. You can pretty much get your inspiration from anywhere. You might hear an old school song on the radio and decide to learn it. You might hear something used in a movie and decide to learn it. Or you might follow other likeminded musicians on social media, see the type of stuff they’re playing and be inspired to learn it.

2) Learn The Instrumental Version Or Vocal Part First:

Our next tip is to try and learn either the vocals, or the instrumental accompaniment first. From our experience, and we’ve tried everything, its best to learn one at a time. For instance, listen to the version of the song enough times that you know how to sing it pretty well. Including inflections and any ‘hard bits’. Then once you’ve got the vocals down, learn the chords. To learn the chords, we usually just grab a chord chart off the internet, however you could get sheet music and read that. It just depends, if you’re a classical player and classically trained, you might like to use proper sheet music. We just like to keep it simple by using chord charts and our musical ear.

3) Learn The Chords And Core Riffs:

When it comes to playing an instrument live, people perform with a varying degree of skill. If you’re pretty much a beginner, you might opt to just play or strum the main chords of a song. A lot of pop music only has four chords repeating the entire song. So, it can be quite easy to sing and play those types of songs. Another way you might structure the playing of a song is the following: Learn the key riffs that make a song recognisable, for instance the famous riff in Stevie Wonder’s Superstition. You could then play the riff at the beginning, middle and end, and just play simple chords the rest of the way through.

If you’re a little bit more advanced instrumentally, you might like to do an instrumental solo halfway through the song. This can involve playing the main chords and playing other notes in-between that belong in the main scale of the song. If you’re even more advanced, and more daring, you might like to incorporate other notes that are not in the main scale. This makes the song sound more interesting. You can also learn the exact instrumental solo as it features in the original version of a song and play that.

Advanced instrumentalists will generally be able to play the melody quite well of every song, and play all the little extra parts. This all thickens out the sound and makes it more interesting.

4) Find A Beat:

So with this, it all depends how big you’re trying to make your sound as an Acoustic Solo Singers Melbourne. On the one hand you could just stick to plain guitar + vocals. Or in the case of someone like Lexi Ross, piano + vocals. However, when playing at venues, a lot of people say they want to hear upbeat ‘happy’ music. A fast hack to getting a beat is to use a backing track, or some kind of drum loop track. As a guitarist you can also use loop pedals. A keyboard player can also use a loop pedal, but it’s not that easy. When you play keyboard you generally can’t see your feet, and well…. it’s just kind of hard to use a loop pedal and play keys. You also don’t see that many professional keyboardists use them. If they do use a looping tool, it tends to be the little stations that they can press with a finger. Anyways, our recommendation is to just use a combination of backing tracks, drum tracks, and at times nothing. It’s good for the live audience to see you actually playing without the use of any backing track. Just to show you can play!

5) Practice:

Once you’ve learnt the instrumental version, the vocals, AND got a beat, it’s time to practice everything at the same time. You might like to use a metronome app and slow the tempo down a little. Practice makes perfect!

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