Shoeless
12-11-2007, 03:37 PM
I'm not really a "serious" vocalist for Rock Band, although I can hold my own on some of the songs on Expert when I buckle down and just hold a note (who knew that awful experience in a children's choir was going to actually pay off some day?) but I've been noticing some things about the vocal aspect of Rock Band that I thought I'd share my thoughts on.
First, it's probably been said here many many times, but I'll repeat it; I think that either a patch, or else Rock Band 2 needs to address the practice mode for vocalists. Just like drummers, guitarists and bassists, vocalists are going to want to practice specific portions of the song, and having sit there, waiting for the song to play, then experimenting for a few precious seconds at the "problem spot" only to find that you're wrong is a bit of a downer when you know it means having to restart and wait another 2 or 3 or 5 minutes before song gets to that bit again. Granted, I understand that vocals are a different animal and can't quite be broken down into discrete musical units the way the other instruments can, but I assure you, many singers would be happy if they could open up the practice screen and be presented with a menu that lets them select--and repeat--the sections of the song they want to work on. Perhaps if Harmonix broke it down by verses and chorus that might be an equivalent to the way it's separated for drums and guitar, but I understand that the way some singers "bleed" over into different sections of songs, it's not as straightforward as that.
The other thing I'm wondering about is my complete bafflement at how the phoneme detector works. Just the other day, in a fit of lunacy, I decided to sing "Enter Sandman: The Pirate Edition" and when I got to spoken portion of "Now I lay me down to sleep" I improvised with this:
I'm a pirate with one eye
That makes it really hard to cry
I like to drink a lot of booze
And then I go to bed and snooze
And I actually got an "Awesome" rating for this. On Expert. Apparently Rock Band really dug my pirate version, and even gave it to me when I sang out "Yo ho hooooo and a bottle of rum!" towards the end. Similarly, trying to mimic the singer for "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld" works far less effectively than... well, just pretending you have Tourette's Syndrome for real and barking like a raving lunatic.
How the heck does this spoken stuff work?
First, it's probably been said here many many times, but I'll repeat it; I think that either a patch, or else Rock Band 2 needs to address the practice mode for vocalists. Just like drummers, guitarists and bassists, vocalists are going to want to practice specific portions of the song, and having sit there, waiting for the song to play, then experimenting for a few precious seconds at the "problem spot" only to find that you're wrong is a bit of a downer when you know it means having to restart and wait another 2 or 3 or 5 minutes before song gets to that bit again. Granted, I understand that vocals are a different animal and can't quite be broken down into discrete musical units the way the other instruments can, but I assure you, many singers would be happy if they could open up the practice screen and be presented with a menu that lets them select--and repeat--the sections of the song they want to work on. Perhaps if Harmonix broke it down by verses and chorus that might be an equivalent to the way it's separated for drums and guitar, but I understand that the way some singers "bleed" over into different sections of songs, it's not as straightforward as that.
The other thing I'm wondering about is my complete bafflement at how the phoneme detector works. Just the other day, in a fit of lunacy, I decided to sing "Enter Sandman: The Pirate Edition" and when I got to spoken portion of "Now I lay me down to sleep" I improvised with this:
I'm a pirate with one eye
That makes it really hard to cry
I like to drink a lot of booze
And then I go to bed and snooze
And I actually got an "Awesome" rating for this. On Expert. Apparently Rock Band really dug my pirate version, and even gave it to me when I sang out "Yo ho hooooo and a bottle of rum!" towards the end. Similarly, trying to mimic the singer for "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld" works far less effectively than... well, just pretending you have Tourette's Syndrome for real and barking like a raving lunatic.
How the heck does this spoken stuff work?
