Any tips for going from Medium to Hard?

[ThreePieceSuit]

Got Rock Band a few days ago and as of now, I've beaten solo tour medium for Vocals with 4 and 5 stars on every song except for a select few that give me trouble (3 stars on Run to the Hills, GGaHT, and Cherub Rock.) Right now, I'm trying to make the jump from Medium to Hard Vocals and I'm having a really hard time. I'm passing the songs but only with 3 stars, sometimes 4. I'm just wondering if there are any ways to make the transitions easier.

[The Rooster]

There can be a little lag when doing vocals. You might want to consider manually setting the delay in your system in the options screen until it woks how you like, or do like I do, and make sure you're singing just a hair early on each phrase. Get the pointer where it should be before the phrase starts and that's half the battle right there.

I sing on Expert, don't waste your time on Hard. Well, do if you want the points, but as long as you can carry a tune you should be fine on Expert. You just have to be more accurate.

[ThreePieceSuit]

Nah, I don't care about points. I'm just using Hard as a stepping stone to Expert. I can carry a tune, did theatre all through out high school. The thing I find funny is that the whole time, the director told me I was too low (I'm baritone), now Rock Band saws I'm too high. Aye.

[DesiredFX]

The main thing I try to remember is that you're trying to mimic the original performance as closely as possible where pitch and rhythm are concerned.

Spend some time going through practice mode, and if you do poorly on a phrase, let it play without singing and try to hear EXACTLY what the singer is singing, not what you think he should be singing based on the melody for another line.

Also, it sometimes helps to start the first note of a phrase about a half-second before the pitch bar shows up so that you get credited for the pitch from its very start. For me, at least, it seems to take a half-second for the arrow to go from zero to the pitch I'm singing--and this is with the lag properly corrected.

I'm not sure what causes it, but I did a lot better when I started doing that.

[ThreePieceSuit]

Also, I'm using the Xbox Live Headset and was wondering where you have your Mic Sensitivity set to.

BTW, I manually calibrated my system like you said and did Blitzkrieg Bop on Expert Practice. This is the first time I ever sang an Expert song:

Messy - 4%
Weak - 4%
Okay - 21%
Strong - 25%
Awesome - 46%

May not seem great to some people, but it was better than I expected.