"Singing" in Sabotage and Epic

[assholitis]

Hi, I just recently purchased Rock Band and this is my first time on the forums here so I apologize if this is a repost. I am having trouble mastering the vocals on Sabotage and Epic or at least the rapping aspects of those songs. For the majority of those songs, the pitch level is at the very bottom, underneath the general pitch level, where that bottom level bar is. I know that's not the best description, but I'm sure you all know what I'm referring to.

This is how the rap vocals are and also for a few other songs, where the singing is very low-pitched and quiet. I think Nirvana's In Bloom and Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun have a few verses where the pitch is at this bottom level.

My question is, how do you sing those parts? I've tried all kinds of ways to sing it and have gotten mixed results, none of which are consistent. I've tried singing to a very low pitch, whispering, just reading the lyrics, and a very monotone bass voice. Sometimes I'll get "awesome" or "strong" but then when I try again I'll get "messy" or "weak." Probably the best method was just to read them straight, but even that doesn't always work and I"ve gotten many "messy" from that. Also, I'm hoping I'm not supposed to just read the lyrics, as Sabotage is a very high-charged song and deserves a good rap, or at least scream.

Any help would be appreciated. Sabotage is one of my favorite songs from the setlist and I'd love to jam along to Epic, but as it stands, I can't even get through a single play without failing out.


Thanks in advance.

[JShmazzle]

I'm certainly not the best source for singing, but since I like Sabotage and had a chance to do it a few times over Christmas, I'm pretty good at it.

If you try and rap it like... Is it MCA in that song, or Adrock? At any rate, it's hard to do it exactly like the song, because it's yelling a majority of the time.

Just concentrate on hitting the words as they appear (awesome vs. messy). Start and finish the words at the vertical line. Because there are so many, it's easy to fail out if you're not exactly on time. My guess is, regardless of what method you're using, you're not hitting the words exactly.

Oh, and save up your breath after the interlude for the Why?------------------------------------

[davidshek]

My question is, how do you sing those parts? I've tried all kinds of ways to sing it and have gotten mixed results, none of which are consistent. I've tried singing to a very low pitch, whispering, just reading the lyrics, and a very monotone bass voice. Sometimes I'll get "awesome" or "strong" but then when I try again I'll get "messy" or "weak."

When the pitch meter is at the bottom as you're describing, that means the pitch at which you sing those parts doesn't matter. There's no pitch detection going on during those parts.

And as some people have shown on Youtube with their humming videos, there's no word detection going on either. All it's looking for is the timing of the sounds you make. You could go 'Oh Oh OH Oh Oh OH' and as long as you're doing it with the correct timing of the syllables of the lyrics, you'll get good scores. Of course, it's usually easier to say or yell the words (particularly when you're really getting into it on Sabotage), just make sure your timing is spot on. That's what is getting scored in those sections.

[tbradshaw]

To be just a little more clear, Rock Band has two scoring methods for vocals. Pitch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28music%29) analysis and phoneme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme) analysis. They are never both used at the same time.

If you see the "tubes" that indicate the pitch of the singing, then the pitch analysis is grading you. You can say or hum anything you want, but the pitch of your vocalization must be correct. (Although, it legitimately easier to sing the words in all most all cases, there's a lot of research that's be done on this case.)

If you see the lyrics with no tube, but instead small lines on the lyrics line indicating word length, then there is no pitch analysis at all and instead the phoneme detection is active. This means you can speak the lyrics in any tonality, but you must be saying the correct words. This is an important distinction that causes a lot of fails.

Best example of phoneme based failure:

At the end of The Hand That Feeds, the Rock Band team has chosen to chart the speaking/singing that Trent does during the end section as all speech. This is perfectly accurate at the beginning of the section where he is clearly speaking, but he increased in pitch to the point that he's sort of singing at the end. The catch? When he's saying "Will you bite---- The hand that feeds--------- you", he will be using an "a" vowel sound for "feeds". This is (to oversimplify) a vocalization technique in singing to stay on pitch and sound better. However... you must not sing that way when playing Rock Band! Because of the phoneme detection, "F-aaaaaaay-ds" will be wrong, you must say "F-eeeeeeee-ds". This is tough for people that sang in a choir or anything, as they will naturally follow the pitch and sing with an open "a" mouth shape.

Hope that helps.

[Shayde21]

Thanks for the explanation. I so very well at the pitch, but just fall apart at the speaking parts. This will hopefully help me fall into the groove correctly.

[jpw21683]

Because of the phoneme detection, "F-aaaaaaay-ds" will be wrong, you must say "F-eeeeeeee-ds". This is tough for people that sang in a choir or anything, as they will naturally follow the pitch and sing with an open "a" mouth shape.

Hmmm....that explains why I always suck that part up. Thanks for the heads up!

[v1g1lance1]

Very interesting - thx!

[foolosophy]

See the problem with the speaking parts is if you rap it the way the Beastie Boys do you'll get Messy a lot. If you speak it like sentences and statements you will do good. Kind of a trade off, quality or score.

[assholitis]

Thanks to everyone who posted helpful tips. I will try those tonight when I play. Not quite the same as the real Sabotage, but I've got no complaints with Rock Band thus far.

[CowShark]

Because of the phoneme detection, "F-aaaaaaay-ds" will be wrong, you must say "F-eeeeeeee-ds". This is tough for people that sang in a choir or anything, as they will naturally follow the pitch and sing with an open "a" mouth shape.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I seem to get faster bar fills with "fades" instead of "feeds" in the latter part of that section. Same way with saying "Oh mah gahd" in Sabotage (not to mention "thorn," where I have no good way of approximating the way I say it when imitating the original track). You can see your arrow turn green when the game is registering you making the correct sound.

My advice (that I got from Skeltonath, one of the fine ScoreHero vocalists) is to turn down your mic sensitivity. It seems that higher sensitivities must distort your input more, and bork up the detection, which must just be getting noise instead of phonemes (doing Epic or Sabotage, I put my mic sensitivity two clicks away from dead bottom- and I'm one out of maybe only a few people who's FC'd Epic on Expert).

My other advice is that the game likes meaty end consonants where applicable. In Epic, you'll get as much or more 'disc fill' from slapping gross, held out t's and ts's at the ends of the words in the phrase "It's it, what is it" as you will from holding out the vowel sound. More than anything, I think clearly tagging my "Bite" and "hand"s with well enunciated consonants helped me combo The Hand that Feeds more than the wiggling between Feeds and Fades did.

[Project_Mercy]

Two additional tips for the "talkie" parts. Hold the mic further from your face (the phonetic detector is touchier about distortion), and don't shift octaves during the talkie part. While it shouldn't be detecting pitch, it seems to stop sampling the voice while it's trying to determine the octave shift, and screws you.

I also second the statement on not trying to 'sing' like Adrock during sabotage. In fact, you'll find that avoiding any of the vocal irregularities that some singer's voices are known for (like James' growling on the Metallica songs) and keeping your pitch clean and simple will work out better for you. This isn't true though where people are adding accents to their singing (things like the clash or ramones songs, or flirtin' with disaster) which changes how their voicing it, which changes the phrasing slightly (which makes a big difference on expert).