I've been playing guitar for several years, and recently started to become more interested in acoustic songs. Problem is just strumming the chord progressions without any vocals is pretty bland, so I want to learn to sing as well. I've been trying to sing along with a few tracks as well as learn the vocal part on guitar and sing along to that, but I'm having a couple of issues:

1) My vocal range is really limited. I can't sing very high or very low.
2) I can maintain pitch sometimes but switching between notes I often make mistakes.
3) I have trouble playing guitar and singing at the same time; I often confuse the parts and end up throwing myself off.
4) When I'm not playing along with a track I can't just sing a note correctly out of the blue. I need some frame of reference.

What's the best way to improve upon these points? Any tips on how to teach myself how to sing? I have over 8 years experience on string instruments but this is much more challenging to me.

1 3 5 sev 1 sev 5 3 1 - major

1 thra 5 sov 1 sov 5 thra 1 - minor

track yourself to an arpeggio on your guitar sing note for not

do 1 5 1 low 5 1 jumps

talking intervals ofc

1) Look for some vocal practices online to open your voice properly and do it before practicing every time.

2) Just need to practice. Im sure you can find some practices online. Maybe doing something like singing A then jumping from A to A#, then back to A and to B, then A to C, then A to C# etc till you hit A to one octave higher A, then go to B and do the same thing with the rest.

3) Practice. You could for example sing the notes you play with guitar and then slowly start to sing words instead of notes.

4) Practice.

Im not a singer myself, but i have a friend who has been singing for like 40 years(and he demonstrated and taught me some tricks, not that i could learn to sing, but cuz information sponge). One thing i wasnt aware of before was the difference between singing from the throat and from lungs. Some music genres use more throat, but in general if you want to be good, you need to learn to sing from lungs properly. Also train your diaphragm(im sure there are plenty of exercises online) and learn to use it properly, its what you control your voice thats coming from lungs. Learn to use your whole body. If you intent on learning to sing on mic, learn to distance the mic properly and change your distance to mic so tht you can sing harder without levels going too high(also sing so that your voice goes next to the mic and not directly to it, it also brings vocal levels down if you need to sing harder).

This post was edited by Antichrist- on Dec 7 2014 06:11am