Day: 4 March 2021 (page 1 of 1)

I have managed to improve on my timing for Happy Birthday and I am now working on singing along while I am playing. I am finding this incredibly difficult as I am both tone deaf and find it difficult to remember the lyrics while also remembering what notes to play. I have been following the directions of an article named “8 Tips for Playing Guitar and Singing at the Same Time” which I have found extremely useful. The first step says to choose a simple song, which I have already done and the second step suggests to work the song into your muscle memory so that you no longer need to concentrate on remembering what to play. I have been practicing Happy Birthday every day whenever I have a spare fifteen minutes and already feel myself playing with my memory instead of constantly trying to remember. I believe I still need to practice for a few more days to fully have it committed to my muscle memory and then I will try to sing while playing again! Every step that I get closer to being able to play Happy Birthday on the guitar is very exciting as I believe it will be a great special activity for my future students birthdays.

I have attached below the steps that I found from Musical-U.com and will continue to follow as I continue to work on mastering Happy Birthday!

To learn the guitar I decided to begin by looking online for simple songs to learn for an elementary classroom. The three the seemed the most important to me were Happy Birthday, the ABC song, and Old MacDonald. I watched a YouTube video and also found the tabs for each of my chosen songs. I found that the tabs helped me understand what I needed to do a lot more than the videos did. I jotted down the tabs so that I can easily refer back to them during my practices, which I do 3-6 times a week for approximately 15-20 minutes. I have managed to get the basics of the song down but have no fully mastered the timing.

While I do feel that my ability to read sheet music has improved since I very first began, I do not feel confident enough to rely on it for my 1st or 2nd song. Hopefully for my final song, I have enough faith in my sheet music reading ability that I am able to use it.

Below is the notes I took on the tabs for Happy Birthday.