Listen Obey and be Blessed - Playing and Singing Along With Kids

This is me playing and singing along with kids. This is something not very easy. But one way you can quickly become a pro is by learning how to play and sing along. Unfortunately, developing this skill is not very easy as it took me years before I could play and sing along. This means the most part of the time, you are looking at your music score while your fingers do the work.

This is me Playing with Jeffrey Yuba, Jadon Munonye, Yasmine Yuba, Trust Okeke and McMills Munonye at Akokwa sometime in 2016

We would now examine five points, these are things you need to do to enable you improve your proficiency in reading, playing and singing along at the same time.

1 Learn the Song by Heart Beforehand

In my previous post, I mentioned that knowing the song would help you play better. This time, the same rule applies, you need to somehow know the lyrics songs by heart.  So, even if you have the have the lyrics of the song along with the musical score, you may focus on reading the musical notes instead instead of the lyrics. This would improve your accuracy. This is because trying to read the song lyrics and at the same time reading the musical notes, is quite tasking when it comes to singing along.

2. Focus on the on Hand( Right or Left Hand)

As you know before, the right hand supplies the melody while the left hand supplies the accompaniments: chords, intervals, appergios, glissandos and so on. But when you sing along, your voice plays a role and so you don't really need the full coordination of both hands. This means that if you will focus on the left hand, then you get to play the chords while singing, or play appergios or any other accompaniment pattern you want to use.

On the other hand, if you will use the right hand, you can also play chords, but it is better to use the right hand to play the corresponding melody for each sound. 

Whatever the case, tries to do your best with one hand and then the other hand can follow up than to try both hands and the play the wrong keys.

3. Get a Friend to Sing Along

This is the interesting part of it. And this is a step towards becoming a professional where you can actually entertain an audience on the stage. Your friend would only sing  while for you, its play and sing along. The benefit of this is that if you mix up the lyrics, you can lower your voice at that point, but the voice of the person singing would take care of the error.

4. Get an Audience (possibly of kids) to Access Your Performance

To access your progress, you need an audience. This you can do by gathering  your neighbors kids. Make sure you talk to their mum first! So after playing for a few minutes you can stop to see what their reaction would be. At some point as you play, you can even look at their face to check the level of satisfaction.

5. Record Your Performance

This could have been the first point, just that I forgot, maybe because i was a little hungry when I was writing this post! Whatever the case, anytime you want to sing along while playing, you need to start a recorder. This can be the one on your phone, or iPod or walkman. For me I use my iPad sometimes and sometimes i use my Sony Walkman. At the end, replay and listen to yourself to know which areas you should give more attention.

Final Notes

At every opportunity, try to sing along with your voice while playing

I would like to say big thanks to you for reading and be sure to check back for more piano tips.