i gave up that along time ago... i cant sing anyway and my range is bloody aweful, but i could always play better then i sang so i focused entirely on guitar.
i know that as an exercise for learning the cycle of 5th/4ths and learning what chord you are playing, is to create an order in which to play them, and say them outloud as you do, its a hard task but soon you just know where your hands go without needing to think about it.
the hardest part without a doubt is playing a rhythm on guitar and singing a different rhythm. often your hands want to play in sync with the spoken syllable. im sure there are many ways to do this.
Practice is obviously the key, my advice is to focus on the 2 different rhythms your creating. without thinking about pitch or guitar chords. mute everything, and say the worded rhythm with your mouth, and then play the guitar rhythm then try and do both, before long you will be know both well enough to keep yourself in time, which is useful if you ever find your drummer speeding up or the likes.
lets say you want to sing the phrase.
"Puppy dogs need a bath every day."
obviously you could sing this in a huge variety of ways. the way this is going to go is this.
Pu-ppy dogs need a bath, ev-e-ry day
1 + 2 3 + 4 | 1 + 2 + 3 4
or you could say
coffee tea, coffee tea, coffee coffee tea tea
now the guitar rythym might be syncopated
1 AND 2 3 4 AND | rest AND rest AND rest rest
tyring to tap those 2 rhythms with 2 seperate hands will be a nightmare, imagine throwing in some rediculas chords and vocal lines.
Obviously not everyone that sings and plays does this. but for me if i was, this is the method i would use cause it would keep me on track of exactly what to do musically and let me know exactly what was going on, there is no way you could break it down further then that. therefore you can't go wrong with this method.
its always a good idea to analyse yourself within a counting based context.
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