Practicing Take it Easy

[des0free]

Continuing practicing from my Eagles for Easy Guitar book.  Higher tempo!

http://www.soundclick.com/AgaveBlueCaster

[Glenn Mitchell]

Nice tempo, nice rhythm guitar and vocal tone.

[Wiley]

Sounds great. I love these guys songs and you do them well.!

[inshallah]

Nice work, Vox and playing .

[OsCKilO]

This Rules!!!!!!!!

Everything is Good about this!!

[Tony W]

Great post. I loved the backing vocals

I've got questions!

Are you singing and playing at the same time? If so that is fantastic.

This book, can you link me to it? I love eagles tunes

How long have you been playing, because this is pretty damn good?

[henwrench]

Confession Time..... Take it Easy is one of my all time fave songs, and I love what you've done here. Yes the tempo is slower than the original, but it works really well with the intimacy of your vocal delivery. Great post!

                                           henwrench

[des0free]

Great post. I loved the backing vocals

I've got questions!

Are you singing and playing at the same time? If so that is fantastic.

This book, can you link me to it? I love eagles tunes

How long have you been playing, because this is pretty damn good?

Thanks for the compliments, although I also don't mind criticism (suggestions for improvements).

I am singing and playing at the same time on the three Eagles songs I posted (http://www.soundclick.com/AgaveBlueCaster).  The chords and lyrics are from "Eagles Anthology Easy Guitar" (book available on Amazon.com). I can't play and sing on every song I try, only certain ones.  I've been playing guitar for about 2 years sporadically, and about 1 year trying to sing.  I'm self taught from looking at a few books. 

At first it seemed "impossible" to play guitar and sing at the same time.  Finally after much practice I found I could sing while playing one particular 4/4 strum pattern I could sort of put on "autopilot": "down-skip/down-up/skip-up/down-up". Playing that strum pattern actually helps me sing along and keep track of chord changes, but it only works well for certain songs. If I try to do any other strum pattern I can't sing at the same time and I mess up chord changes. I can't even do a simple "down-up/down-up/down-up/down-up" while singing without messing up. Another breakthrough came a few months ago when I finally started using a capo to shift the (simple open) chords in the books up to a higher key, which made it easier for me to sing in tune.

I am largely clueless about playing Bass and lead guitar and mostly just try to play the root-note of the chord or noodle improvised patterns that seem to sound ok against the chords.  Backing vocals I only sparingly attempt, and I think I mostly end up just doubling the same notes rather than singing harmony, but would like to learn how to do it better; or perhaps find online collaborators to do backing vocals?

The next Eagles songs I might try to record are "Best of my love", "Desperado", and "I can't tell you why". I also have some other "easy guitar books", a Beatles one and a classic rock compilation.  At some point I will try to play and record some songs from these other books, but I seem to find only a few songs that work well for me. Fortunately there are a lot of songs out there to possibly cover!

[Tony W]

I should have replied to this days ago. thanks for the tips in here! I belted out a few lyrics the other night while playing. It felt good.

"The best of my love" is the first song I ever learned to pick a finger up while strumming. That opened me up for a lot more versatility.