Cant sing to metronome cause it throws me out of the feelz

[gallagherf]

This is an absolute random request but can anyone relate?
I can only sing to my guitar but it makes things rlly hard as i always have to record vocals and gutiar together then and my guitar playing sounds really monotone and repetetive as i almost use it like a drum idk if im being really weird or if anyone can relate and has a weird advice.
Im really frustrated by this but cant get out of it- Im getting into a kinda trance while singing and playing guitar and Im just not able to sing as emotional and "good" without strumming my guitar in a really monotone way(LOL!)

This is really weird I know. I really need help- and thought maybe through some miracle someone else has this weird quirk too.



<3


(p.s. i tried visual metronomes doesnt work for me )

[yur2die4]

You don’t need to play the actual metronome as a reference. You can use anything that you record and play / loop it.

Also, as of Live 11 you can take advantage of comping. So if you just keep recording yourself a lot, hopefully you can relax after the first couple takes and get more into that groove. Starting off raw can often times feel a little too stressful, thinking it’s going to be that ‘single perfect take’, and getting the first few bad ones outta your system can really make you feel less confident if you think that’s all your capable of. If you feel like you’ve got all the opportunities in the world, it might be easier to feel natural.

[properLofi]

Playing to a metronome is a skill. There’s a reason there’s the cliche of the strict piano teacher making their student play to a metronome. As yur2die4 says, a drum loop can often help to maintain feel.

I’ve recorded a lot of musicians, many of them students and it can take a while to work out a good recording process for musicians who aren’t used to playing against a click. Try recording a MIDI piano part to record the vocal against and then overdub the guitar.

You might find you need to actually automate small tempo changes if you play/sing with a lot of feel to capture that feel.

[fishmonkey]

i'm assuming that part of your problem is that your guitar is also picked up by your vocal mic? one possible workaround could be to record using an electric guitar to minimise guitar bleed into the vocal mic. then you can overdub guitar later...

[doghouse]

When you wrote

I can only sing to my guitar

Do you mean you have to be playing the guitar while you sing and can't sing to a guitar track you've already recorded?

[properLofi]

If it’s an acoustic guitar there’s a technique using fig 8 mics to try and minimise the bleed between vocal and guitar. It’s not perfect but helps a lot for people in your position.

https://youtu.be/0QWNXzp5P6g

[The_Subject]

I've recently restarted playing drums. As a kid when I "played", I never played with a click. It showed.
So I was wondering how to approach it and not feel like its a chore, and I've taken to adopting an attitude that really helps me.

The click is not the slave master. Its not there beating the drum for you to stay in time to - this will make you feel pressured and worse.

The click is your virtual audience. If you can't hear it, your in time and doing your job, if you can hear it, the audience is laughing at you cos you just fucked up!

A good player will play better with an audience, and a bad player will play worse with one (that's a psychological fact called the Audience Effect). Remember its your audience not your master and get to being a good player so you've no reason to hear the "crowd" booing.
Maybe more of a drum thing as you'll still hear it no matter what with guitar, but think outside the box with it. Change your attitude to the click and practice with it.
Sorry I don't mean to sound harsh by that but this is from my perspective having come back to live playing and regret the years I wasted hitting drums with no measure of how well I was doing it!

Again a drum thing, but gives you great feel which may translate across, but try playing (practicing, maybe not recording?) against the click, i.e. say the click is at 120bpm 4/4 you'll be playing your quarter notes on the AND each, so in tab where an X is a note: 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 2 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 3 X 4 X etc it hard, you'll take some time to manage, but once you're there, going back to actually following the pulse rather than keeping steady off the pulse wil be a million times easier.

[Greenapples2019]

I agree completely with The Subject. I've been playing drums in bands for 40 years, the first 35 without a click and I wish I'd switched sooner. I find it gives me freedom rather than restricts me, gives me confidence that we're playing the song at the tempo that sounds best, gives me one less thing to think about when counting the band in. Songs always sound slower to the band than the audience, so when adrenaline kicks in the tendency is to speed up and you play too fast. The click takes care of that, and the band sounds tighter. The "1" is always there to lock onto if I ever get into trouble but we're not slaves to the click; we have songs where we don't use a click, and songs where we use a click for part of the song, but most songs are entirely with a click. I'm the only one hearing the click, the rest of the band follow my tempo.

tl:dr See the click as your friend not your master

[[jur]]

Did you check the new Tempo Following L11 feature?