Uuum why don't you need to sing?

[fourdegrees]

I was looking around on youtube to see how people sound when they sing and stumbeled upon this. wtf is this ****?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T9fBPYCX9A

You don't even need to sing to get a perfect score? This guy beats the song on expert just by humming.

[DesiredFX]

Don't understand that one myself, especially since the pre-launch buzz was that the game would have "advanced phoneme detection" to make sure you were singing the right words.

[KillAutumn]

Don't understand that one myself, especially since the pre-launch buzz was that the game would have "advanced phoneme detection" to make sure you were singing the right words.

I dont know if that's true on the actual singing. It's supposed to measure your pitch, which is what a LOT of people need to work on anyway.

...BUT it does work on the talky parts.

I can't count how many times on Enter Sandman I keep trying to go "If I die before I wake........At Least in Heaven I can Skate."

[DesiredFX]

That sounds likely, and certainly explains why Sabotage gives vocalists so much trouble.

[DrEvyl666]

Yeah, it really seems that the object of vocals is to suck as badly as possible.

LOL

[OILFAN79]

could you jsut put the microphone to a speaker playing the same song?

[erickOnasis412]

could you jsut put the microphone to a speaker playing the same song?

maybe if it was an acapella? not sure..

and yeah i did notice the humming thing.. i think it takes away from the whole fun, cuz anybody can get better pitch when they hum

[davidshek]

could you jsut put the microphone to a speaker playing the same song?

I'm actually gonna try that. Strip out the vocal track in my audio editor and play it into the RB mic.

Watch, I bet it'll score the original vocal track really low :D

[Elnino]

The videos actually pretty funny. Kinda sounds like Kenny from South Park singing.

[LethalParadox28]

why bother doing it if you're not actually going to sing? If you're so worried about a high score that you "hum" your way through the game....its pretty sad. Do scores really mean that much to some people?

[Cr1ckt]

As far as I know, there's no phoneme detection in the pitched parts. I've been able to FC several songs without singing the words. However, it isn't any fun if you don't actually sing, so you're only cheating yourself if you hum simply to get a better score.

I doubt that the original vocal tracks will work very well, even if they can be extracted from the recording. The game generally expects idealized perfect pitches, rather than the slightly off pitches of the singers. For instance, take Run to the Hills. The cover is pretty far off on the first line ("White man came"), but the game still expects you to sing the same pitches as the guitar part.

BTW, despite Harmonix's claims to the contrary, MIDI works perfectly. If you have the right pitches and rhythm, a MIDI file is capable of FC'ing any song in the game, minus the talky parts. I was going to create MIDI files of the pitches that you're supposed to sing for each song, so people can slow down and repeat sections they're having trouble with. However, such files could too easily be manipulated to get high scores.

[Keebler]

Perhaps no one is familiar with something called audio feedback?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_feedback

[CowShark]

I think I read somewhere that in an earlier build of the game, they had the phoneme detection and pitch matching going at the same time, all the time, but that it was deemed to be too much of a pain in the ass for the singer (for some reason, I keep thinking the exact words were "nightmarishly difficult").

I think you should play through Sabotage and Epic on Expert (hell, if you want to see it get wonky while you think you're saying the same easy phrase over and over again, try The Hand that Feeds), and then come back and reiterate whether you would still want that + pitch detection on every song in the game.


Also think about the options they have when setting up the phoneme detection for a song.


Consider any Nirvana song:

A) Make the phoneme detection recognize the Standard American Pronunciation of all the words - Suddenly you alienate all Nirvana fans who would want to sing the song with some or all of Kurt Cobain's meandering enunciation.

B) Make the phoneme detection recognize as close as the people "charting" it can match Kurt's meandering enunciation - Suddenly you alienate everyone who's not a big Nirvana fan. They'll fire up the song and get killed, because they didn't know which words to run together, where to slur, or which words don't really sound like words at all.

C) Options A and B also alienate foreign players who's accents won't allow them to really nail either of the pronunciations noted above.

[foolosophy]

The "rap" sections give me enough trouble. I'd rather they not combine it with the pitch detection. It's not that I'm saying the words wrong in songs like Sabotage and Epic (believe me I've rapped them before the game even came out and it was dead on), but for some reason either my vocal lags by a second or something and it's real hard on me.

[RedTsunami]

I think I read somewhere that in an earlier build of the game, they had the phoneme detection and pitch matching going at the same time, all the time, but that it was deemed to be too much of a pain in the ass for the singer (for some reason, I keep thinking the exact words were "nightmarishly difficult").

I think you should play through Sabotage and Epic on Expert (hell, if you want to see it get wonky while you think you're saying the same easy phrase over and over again, try The Hand that Feeds), and then come back and reiterate whether you would still want that + pitch detection on every song in the game.


Also think about the options they have when setting up the phoneme detection for a song.


Consider any Nirvana song:

A) Make the phoneme detection recognize the Standard American Pronunciation of all the words - Suddenly you alienate all Nirvana fans who would want to sing the song with some or all of Kurt Cobain's meandering enunciation.

B) Make the phoneme detection recognize as close as the people "charting" it can match Kurt's meandering enunciation - Suddenly you alienate everyone who's not a big Nirvana fan. They'll fire up the song and get killed, because they didn't know which words to run together, where to slur, or which words don't really sound like words at all.

C) Options A and B also alienate foreign players who's accents won't allow them to really nail either of the pronunciations noted above.

Well said, mr. Shark, well said.

And, on the part I quoted, when you mean an early build,l were you referring to harmonix's earlier project, Karaoke revolution, or did they make a completely different engine from that?

Oh yeah, and a quick question to all, if you don't mind: I know that in Karaoke revolution, when you played song on expert mode, when you make vocal jumps while holding notes (if you know what I mean), those would be worth about half of that part, making lots of sightreads harder and making it easier to make stupid mistakes. Did they make it so that every part of a phrase equals the same? I think they did, but I don't get the game til OMGTOMAARO.

[lloydd]

Ya, humming does work as long as you know what pitch you're supposed to be in, but it totally ruins the fun of the game. I only hum if my throat starts to hurt after singing a bunch and I want to finish a set list or something.

What I find even more annoying is that if you have any rasp to your voice at all, for instance if you're trying to sing like the Jet singer, for example, the vocal detection totally flickers away and can't even pick you up.

Which is probably one of the reasons they don't put ACDC into this game.

[strebalicious]

You need to sing so you don't sound like a toolbag by humming everything.

I also noticed on songs like Sabotage and Epic that if you just read the lines instead of trying to sing them, it picks it up better. Of course, reading Sabotage in a monotone voice is almost as bad as humming a song.

[CowShark]

RedTsunami: I meant sometime during the development of Rock Band (which I'll reiterate is something I read- somewhere, unverified). KR never graded spoken parts of songs. They'd just have the words scroll by for reference.

I'm also not sure about your second question, but the pitch grading on RB Expert is much looser than the grading on KR expert (seeing as I've gotten full combos (on expert) on more RB songs in the past month than I have over the course of all 6 Karaoke Revolution games).

[Fatal1ty_Reaper]

It would be nice if words mattered all the time instead of only in talky bits. But that would make it extreemly hard...

Oh and talky bits only really matter if your on at least Hard, otherwise as long as you sing similar word it will give it to you.

[Bakkster]

why bother doing it if you're not actually going to sing? If you're so worried about a high score that you "hum" your way through the game....its pretty sad. Do scores really mean that much to some people?

Exactly.


Perhaps no one is familiar with something called audio feedback?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_feedback

Feedback wouldn't be the reason the original vocalist would fail the song, it's because most vocalists have vibrato or drop the ends of their words which would make them score lower.

[zack10house]

You need to sing so you don't sound like a toolbag by humming everything.

I also noticed on songs like Sabotage and Epic that if you just read the lines instead of trying to sing them, it picks it up better. Of course, reading Sabotage in a monotone voice is almost as bad as humming a song.
yeah, listening to people at best buy sing epic makes me sad

[FLYmeatwad]

That sounds likely, and certainly explains why Sabotage gives vocalists so much trouble.

Oddly enough, I am a reverse vocalist in the sense that I can't sing a lick to save my life and yet am nearing 100% on Sabatoge on Expert. I wish they would put more songs like that on there because they are fun, you actually have to know the words, not just the pitch. Plus, at the risk of being flammed, I'm a hip hop fan as well as a rock fan; thus, I have an appreciation for lyrics over vocals to a degree. It's not my intention to belittle singers, just a personal taste of mine.

[DYoungEagle]

Anyway i wonder what he is saying to friends and family members, i hummm my way out to get the acheivement done?

[Keebler]

Feedback wouldn't be the reason the original vocalist would fail the song, it's because most vocalists have vibrato or drop the ends of their words which would make them score lower.

We're on a completely different discussion now, but what I was referring to was several people's suggestion to just isolate the original vocalist or create a MIDI file of the pitch you are supposed to sing and play that.

[chillzatl]

We've had a few people try to humm their way through songs on our party nights, but we just yell at them and make them take a shot. It seems to work preeeety well...

I still wish the game had a non-scored karaoke mode for vocals only so people could just belt out the song not worrying about pitch in any regard. They're just up there to do their worst impersonation of the song.

[ASPSAX]

Yesterday I started going through medium vocals on a recorder (kind of like a cross between clarinet and flute, you play them in 5th grade music class). So far I'm doing better than if I actually sang. I have a good ear but suck at singing. :( It's funny because I usually only have 4 measures to figure out what key a given song is before the vocals come in.

[SSPWOLF]

I've made a few observations playing on different difficulty levels, and basically.. I'm sure I can eventually finish the expert solo tour, but I don't see putting a whole lot of effort into it.

You gotta look at it for what it is... you show me a real singer who could cover every single one of these songs and

1) Do a great imitation of every single singer in the game

OR

2) Sing every single song in the exact pitch and octave of the original


It just ain't gonna happen.

The singing aspect of the game is almost like an entire game unto itself. If you are primarily a vocalist in rock band then you are either

1) Doing whatever it takes to get those expert level high scores

2) Having a blast doing karaoke.


I'll bet my xbox 360 and my copy of Rock Band that if you took the top five singers on the leaderboards and sat them down with me and Simon Cowell we'd tear them apart. ;)

It's not about being a "great singer" it's about either having fun or being a great "rock band vocalist".

There's hundreds of famous and rich singers who, for all intensive musicianship purposes, suck. Nobody ever accused Ozzy of being a candidate for American Idol. What do you think Ozzy would sound like trying to IMITATE the vocals on "So Sick" or "Sabotage"?


There's a reason why cover songs are so popular. We don't wanna hear the exact same song over and over, especially not vocally. We want to hear it differently. Do you think Johnny Cash could FC "I Fought The Law" on expert? Not without some practice. Even though he does, arguably, the most famous version of that song. (that and the fact he's dead, ... but I digress)


My point is.. you can't look at vocals like the guitar. Most people can become experts on the Rock Band guitar. But the amount of people who will ever be able to play like Buckethead, The guys from Dragonforce, or Tom Morrello are incredibly less than the amount of people who can FC one of thier songs in a Rythym Game.

You can't expect someone who can FC on expert to be able to go out and rock the hell out of a stadium. You also can't expect someone who can rock the hell out of a stadium to be able to FC every song in the game on expert.

Slash does a lot of interviews about how awful he is at playing these types of games...

Personally, I think the game accomplishes it's mission on the vocals. You can "score-monkey" your way into FC on every song on expert by doing a few simple things to get those ultra-high scores. You can also just belt out your favorite songs and do the karaoke thing on medium and even hard for most songs.

[Ktrez15]

I agree with this.^

[Edgehopper]

The recorder idea is cool--I may try that sometime on saxophone :)

[CowShark]

The singing aspect of the game is almost like an entire game unto itself. If you are primarily a vocalist in rock band then you are either

1) Doing whatever it takes to get those expert level high scores

2) Having a blast doing karaoke.


I'll bet my xbox 360 and my copy of Rock Band that if you took the top five singers on the leaderboards and sat them down with me and Simon Cowell we'd tear them apart.

Isn't this always the case? I mean, when you're at a party with friends and you're playing Rock Band, how important is it to get that Full Combo, or to not miss any of the wriggly guitar solo sections? When you're at home with some spare time, and you feel like ratcheting up your career score, don't you play "more seriously" at those times? Hell, I play on Expert all the time now, even when I'm not playing for points, because I don't deviate from the note bars enough for it to hurt me, even when I am just belting songs out for fun, but there's a big difference between the way I'd sing "Sabotage" at a party, and the way I'd carefully meter out the lines on an attempted improvement of my career score.

On the Simon Cowell tip: I doubt it. I'll bet the top 5 vocalists all have great senses of pitch and can tell you what songs they are good at singing. If you just picked a random song off Rock Band, then yeah, you might be picking someone apart- but if the singer picked- while it may not be likely that they're AMERICAN IDOL zOmG material, they'd probably be deemed competent (unless it was one of "those days" for Simon Cowell, 'cause the dude will sometimes maul every performance that isn't spectacular).

[Harsher]

Anyone can do this, it doesn't go by what words you say, just the pitch and if he is humming in the right pitch it will work! Making it go by what you actually say might be a lot harder to program.

[AdamBomb629]

One of the Harmonix guys commented on this not too long after the game came out. Apparently, the speech detection software uses a lot of processor and running that and the pitch measure caused the game to run poorly. That's why it measures the pitch only on the singing parts and the words only on the speaking part.

[Gyojirokun]

I've noticed that if you actually sing, you get a higher score, and it's easier to hit the right pitches.

[DrEvyl666]

I've noticed that if you actually sing, you get a higher score, and it's easier to hit the right pitches.

I've found my situation to be exactly the opposite, as shown in my other thread. I've racked up some absolutely stellar scores humming my way through songs (I call it "the hoover technique")... as shown in my other thread. I even have a few songs where I'm ranking in the top 20 scores.

I even scored 5 stars and 233,863 points on expert doing "Won't Get Fooled Again" - playing the song on a kazoo instead of singing.

And, for the record, I am a decent vocalist.... not spectacular, but good enough to front a real band. Even if you hum, you still have to be able to hit the right pitches to 5-star a song on expert. However, if I'm playing the game with friends... I sing properly. I do all my score mongering Hoover festivals at home when I'm playing solo.

[WiseOldUnicorn]

The singing aspect of the game is almost like an entire game unto itself. If you are primarily a vocalist in rock band then you are either

1) Doing whatever it takes to get those expert level high scores

2) Having a blast doing karaoke.

I don't think that's really completely true. I play on Expert vocals, have a blast singing my heart out without worrying too much about the score (unless I'm about to fail), and I still tend to score at least in the top 500 on most songs.

Maybe I'm just a really good singer? ;)

Of course, if I was going for really high scores, FCing songs, etc. I would have to take the "fun" factor down a notch, but that's true of all the instruments. Sitting there concentrating on FCing a song on guitar and getting a high score isn't the same as simply playing for fun, rocking out on the solos, etc.

[soliwit]

I agree with wiseoldunicorn, I do have a LOAD of fun singing, I actually sing the words, don't make it any different to hit higher scores and I do most of the time hit between 90 and 98 % on expert, indeed, there's just some songs I do lower but that is mostly because I really don't like them (gimme shelter and that awful aerosmith blaaaargh :o )