Will the next rock band include a REAL vocals tutorial?

[KSwharph]

Seriously the "If you can't match a singer's voice, just sing an octave higher or lower, you know what i mean!"
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT!
she then proceeds on showing an example of both AND I STILL HAVE NO CLUE WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT!
I dont understand notes (voice-wise) at all!

According to the sticky above, i apparently am fighting half the battle because I know all the words to Say It Aint So, but i can only just barely pass it on medium and cant even get past the first chorus on hard. I managed to pass paranoid on hard somehow, i was literally failing the entire time. I know all the lyrics to Blackened, can't do that song at all - even on medium. Then my sister plays, and seriously just guess half the lyrics and passes it on hard no problem - WHAT THE HELL!

I read some other thread on vocals, were people were talking about how they should drop songs by 1/4th octaves or something and i was thinkin "Lol, wut?"

And im singing too. Which the game doesnt seem to like, because the only way i can pass songs on medium is to use a really ******ed sounding voice, which takes all the fun out of it.

So, i leave you with this - what the hell is the trick?!

[Rock_Starman]

Yea I need serious help here too.

I just tried singing in quickplay for the first time. Run to the Hills on medium and failed horribly in a minute and then 4 starred Sabotage on Expert both first trys. Something is wrong here.

[phulcrum]

Looks up octave in a dictionary and what she says will make more sence.

[Segnosaur]

i dont want to flame but it's a music game. Octaves are an impoortant part of music that you should know about.

[Sonci]

From what I understand, an octave is basically the bar that is your pitch. To go up an octave, you sing high enough that the pitch indicator "pac-man's" up and ends up at the bottom, so you can hit the lower notes by just going higher. That's what I have to do.

[phulcrum]

I'll be nice today. Think of it this way. You've seen a piano/keyboard right? Do you think that EVERY key on that piano has a different letter assigned to it? No. They don't. There are 7 notes (im not counting flats or sharps to make it simple) A-G. Now, if the word you need to sing is a C but it's too low for you then sing a C but an octave higher (higher pitch). Same goes in reverse for high notes you can't hit. Sing the same note just an octave lower.

[Rock_Starman]

After further attempts Sabotage is the only song I can sing and I get 4 stars no matter what the difficulty. :confused:

[Apples]

I don't know anything about this octaves and pitch nonsense, (some sort of new-fangled music "terminology") so I just sing higher or lower until the arrow matches up, then go from there.

[nvwebb]

After further attempts Sabotage is the only song I can sing and I get 4 stars no matter what the difficulty. :confused:

That's because you are having trouble singing at the correct pitch, and sabotage is the only song where your pitch isn't rated, just the words are. Try another song and hum along into the mike. See where the arrow is relative to the bar. Adjust your voice to that pitch. Once you figure out how to produce the correct pitch, then sing the words like you were humming.

[rockbandrocker123321]

Who said ANYTHING about a second rock band?

[shaybo]

You don't have to even use any words at all to get perfect scores, just hum or sing the right notes. The game doesn't check for words except during the 'talky parts' where there is no green pitch line.

The longer you match the right note, the more the circle fills up. Higher difficulties mean you have to be on the right notes for a longer time to fill the meter, and you have to be closer in pitch to the correct notes.

[shaybo]

This might help you figure out what an octave is. Do a song vocals solo that has a long part at the beginning without vocals, like Green Grass & High Tides in quickplay. Sing a note steady and notice where the arrow is when you are singing. This might be a "C" or a "G". If you keep slowly singing higher and higher, eventually the arrow will cross over the top and be at the bottom again. Eventually if you keep going higher, you will get the arrow back to the original position. This is the same note one octave higher.

Here's a picture of a piano keyboard with the names of the notes on each key. http://www.lee.k12.fl.us/schools/com/band/PianoKeyboard.jpg All the same letters are the same notes in different octaves. Notice how the pattern of black and white keys repeats itself across the keyboard several times. An F to the right is the same note in a higher octave. If you hit any "F" on a keyboard while you were doing vocals on rock band, the arrow would be in the same place on the screen no matter which F key you hit on the piano.

[shaybo]

What you want to do when you are singing is to look and see if the arrow (the note you are singing) is matched up with the green line. You only get points when they are in the same position. If the note you are singing (arrow) is below the green line on the screen, you can make your voice higher to match, or keep going lower until your arrow moves across the bottom of the screen back to the top and then keep going lower until you match.

[shaybo]

Notice that when you are playing on Easy, the circle fills up much faster than on Expert. Also, on Easy, the green lines that you have to match are much wider than they are on Expert. The circle in each measure fills up when your arrow is on the green line. Filling the circle completely gives you an "Awesome" rating. If you fill it up almost completely, you get "Strong" and so on, down to Messy. Once you fill the circle, you can stop singing for that measure and still have "Awesome" which comes in handy if you need to catch your breath.

Let me know if you have any other questions. :) That was more than I planned to type about it, but I wanted to be thorough.

[Xzyliac]

Shaybo as knowledgeable as you may be I'd advise you learn to use the 'Edit' function.

[KSwharph]

Thanks for the help, i think i get it. I played in bloom on hard and got 75% on it. i kinda get the pitch matching thing now but the humming didnt help at all, i seriously missed it everytime i was supposed to say "hmm" in the song.

Still the hardset part of the game IMO. i dont see how you could sing and play an instrument at the same time :confused:

[endlessly]

some are just more musically inclined and or vocally talented than others
no offense
just the truth

and to seriously simplify octave for you
sing one note...doesn't matter what note
and sing that same note but in a higher or lower voice
there you go, you sang in another octave

[Blue-Alloy]

Thanks for the help, i think i get it. I played in bloom on hard and got 75% on it. i kinda get the pitch matching thing now but the humming didnt help at all, i seriously missed it everytime i was supposed to say "hmm" in the song.

Still the hardset part of the game IMO. i dont see how you could sing and play an instrument at the same time :confused:

If you're having trouble with the "Hmmm" bit on "In Bloom" then it might be because the sensitivity of your microphone is turned down too low. For that particular song, try turning it up because when you hum, with your mouth closed, you're basically "dampening" your own sound and making the microphone work harder to pick up your note. Turning up the microphone sensitivity should help alleviate that somewhat if you're really hitting the right note. I know that there are some songs where I'm hitting the note perfectly, but I forget sometimes to project enough, and so the lack of volume on the note is what penalizes me in the eyes of the game.

This may or may not be your problem, but give it a try and see if it works. And good luck with it.

[shaybo]

Yeah, I turned up the sensitivity and started getting better scores on the talky parts. It's another thing to play around with if you think you should be scoring better than you are getting credit for.

[Sabiancym]

I love watching tone deaf people play this game.

[Rock_Starman]

I did even worse with humming. I'm always just slightly above or slightly below the line trying to sing it. I've been able to do Sabotage on all 4 difficulties with 4 stars every time,Tom Sawyer,Welcome Home,Won't Get Fooled Again,Epic,Ballroom Blitz and Enter Sandman on easy with 4 stars,Blitzkrieg Bop with 3 on medium (while attempting a British accent) and I Fought the Law with 1 on easy.

What's with the good singers having problems with the talky parts when I'm not so good but able to get awesomes a lot of the time?

[Codi]

Some people have it, some don't. If you cannot sing the part, don't dispair, Rock Band has come bundled with two more (three if you've actually got another guitar that works) instruments to play. Some people are born the strum and others are born to drum.

Biggest help to me wasn't knowing octaves or pitch -- or anything involving musical theory -- it was knowledge of the song itself. If you can learn to mimick the singer, then you're in good company and you'll become more adept in singing over time.

Fantastic game and I sure do hope that they release RB2, or perhaps a boatload of free downloadable content. :)

[KSwharph]

I love watching tone deaf people play this game.

So then, do you put a mirror right next to your TV? ;)

Also yea, i can do drums and guitar on expert, but i wanted to master the whole game :(

[evilkitty]

What's with the good singers having problems with the talky parts when I'm not so good but able to get awesomes a lot of the time?

The 'talky parts' mostly grade you on your timing. There is some sort of detector built in to detect a particular loudness as well - for example you can whisper the 'Now I lay me down to sleep' part in Enter Sandman and get an Awesome, but you have to be pretty loud in 'Won't Get Fooled Again'. Other songs just have talky bits that don't seem to make any sense - the 'ahhhh' section in Sweet Leaf is supposed to sound like someone gently exhaling smoke, but mimicking that won't get you anywhere. I don't think anyone really knows the exact conditions required for the talky bits for all the songs.

Although why most of the top singers have problems with the spoken bits, I don't know. Maybe we have bad timing or something.

[janai]

Although why most of the top singers have problems with the spoken bits, I don't know. Maybe we have bad timing or something.

I don't think timing's a problem, but sometimes I suspect we're too controlled. Whatever the game's looking for on those talky bits, which I can't manage for the life of me most of the time, it does seem to come down on the side of exaggeration. And I've got a pet theory that it secretly wants Boston accents. ;)

I'm ranked sixth on solo vocals on the PS3 right now and am having no significant problems with the actual singing. Sabotage, though? Ohdeargodamhopeless. And the songs with interspersed talky bits routinely kill my combos, even when I'm getting the words right and could swear I'm timing it correctly. (Don't get me started on how many times I've restarted "Brainpower" just to get the initial "I love it" down, varying from Weak to Awesome with almost no difference to my ears in how I'm yelling it. It drives me CRAZY.) I'm cuuuurseeeeed......

[Rock_Starman]

Well I guess it's like Run DMC said:

"It's tricky to rock a rhyme
To rock a rhyme that's right on time
It's tricky!" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=-C2b8XWJnfE)

[Alpha2]

Sabotage really IS sabotage, to your score.

Since I have the stand alone version of the game (PS3) I have no choice but to do vocals, and while I know the lyrics to Sabatage from listening to it for years on my own I find it just dosent care.

What it seems like it wants is to hear is you saying the words for the exact same duration and loudly. If you try to trail one word into another it dosent seem to work as well as it does if you're just really good at cutting off your voice to put a space between your words.

That's my impression anyway.

[Blue-Alloy]

And I've got a pet theory that it secretly wants Boston accents. ;)

Oh my God. I think you're onto something. I'm going to try Sabotage saying nothing but "Chow-dah" and "Dol-lah" and see what that gets me.

[Rock_Starman]

Think I'm starting to get it. Beat Orange Crush (only with 2 stars) and upped I Fought the Law to 3. I got even better at Sabotage when getting better at the other songs. 100% when it came up on easy tour. Also got 100% on My Sharona on easy,yea I know it's only easy but it's a big step up over failing.

[Conner_Malvecino]

That's because you are having trouble singing at the correct pitch, and sabotage is the only song where your pitch isn't rated,
Also sections of "Epic" and "Hand that Feeds" that is also pitch asensitive...if that's a word at all...I'm sure it's not but you get my point.

[Rock_Starman]

Ballroom Blitz and Enter Sandman have them too. There's also one song that has one word at the end of most of the phrases but I forget wich.

Are you people having trouble with Sabotage trying to sing it? Look up a Twista song,that might help though I suppose it could make it worse.

[BrianIsLive]

Dude, Hmmm In The Beginning She Said It's All About Pitch. Tried Sticking With That???

[SpiritedSniper]

I dont know if what I am about to explain has been said already but here it is. Each person has a comfertable vocal range, which is the lowest note you can comfertably sing, to the highest note you can comfertably sing. Rock band has the singing set up so your vocal range can be registered. Now an octave is a practicaly a set pitch for what you are doing. To dumb it down, say glen has a high voice, bob has a medium voice, and roger has a lower voice. Roger has a lower octave than glen and bob. So for the lower notes of a song in rock band, sing a lower note of your comfertable vocal range, then tweak the note by making your pitch higher or lower to get it spot on, then remmember that pitch, and do the same for the higher notes, eventually you will be singing like a pro.

[Elegy]

Is it just me, or does changing octaves not really work?

Cuz I tried to octave it down on In Bloom (which i really didn't have to, i was just comfortable singing lower, I'm a bass in choir), and I couldn't hit anything. On the other hand, on a song like Dani California, I sing the song JUST like Anthony Kiedis, and I'm too low

[muaddib101]

Ok, the vocals are not that hard in this game. It's the one part of the game that I just jumped in at hard and had not problem.

This is going to sound strange perhaps to some of you, but if you have any kind of sinus issues while you are playing (it is the middle of winter, after all) it will cause you to have problems recognizing and matching pitch. So, if you have a bit of a cold or something like that, give it some time.

If you do not suffer from any kind of affliction to your sinuses, perhaps you can not match tones. Try recording your own voice while singing these songs and see what you sound like. You might be suprised how different you sound after playing back the tape and recognize that all the notes that you think you are hitting are more like a mono-tone drone.

Many people take for granted that singing is just a natural ability that you are born with. You can either do it or you can't. This is not really the case. Almost anyone can learn to sing. It just takes patience and practice. An honest self examination is pretty helpful, too.

As for changing octaves, I have had no problem getting that to work. Check your mic. Perhaps it's sensitivity is too low and when you hit the lower register, it is having a hard time picking it up.

[KSwharph]

Well now that i think of it, whenever i get playback from xbox live or something, it ALWAYS sounds like i have a stuffy nose (or am homosexual for some reason, lol) so that could be a plausible reason..

[HMXChrisCanfield]

Tuning vocals is tough. No matter what song you're on, knowledge of that particular song is more important than skill. So if you happen to know Green Grass better than you know The Reaper, you're probably going to get a better score on Green Grass. Really, the best advice for doing better as a singer is to stick the songs on an iPod and listen to them all on loop. Don't drill the words, just try to let the melody work its way into your head. The more familiar you are with the songs, the better you will do.

If you're having trouble hearing the pitch, there are two things to do. One, play by vision. If the arrow looks high, bring your pitch down a touch. Trust the arrow; you probably are out of pitch. Two, listen for the interference patterns. If you're close to a note but not right on it, you'll hear this weird pulse where the waveforms interact. That's how you tell if a guitar is in tune or not, and it can work for singing. The weird pulse way is a bit tougher, but you'll get the hang of it.

Describing octave wrapping in ten seconds of a tutorial isn't easy. "The interval of eight diatonic steps or from one note to its nearest note of the same name, 12 half steps away," just wasn't high on the clarity scale.

[Alpha2]

I'm getting better with the talky parts. I've also discovered that trying to imitate the signing voice on Sabotage is what kills my score! you cant go as high as him and have it still register for some reason so if I use my regular voice it seems to register better. Every time I was trying to do it exactly how it sounds because from years of hearing the song it's just the habit you fall into but I'd look at the arrow and it'd be orange half the time instead of green to signify you were on target until I dropped my range.

One thing I notice is that when singing high it dosent seem to drop low enough to match the lowest notes in some songs. I think Maps is one example, because you can be high up and then the vocals come down to the lowest part of the range and no matter how low I drop my voice it wont follow into that last part and hovers just above it... almost as if the only way I could hit it is to go from falsetto to tenor in the same phrase. Even trying to sing it in a lower octave it seems you have to completely trade necks with someone else or something.

[Sgt Pepper]

The game seems to like it better when I do either an unusually deep voice (think Barry White) or a really high pitched voice (think Barry White on helium)

[Guard]

Singing an octave higher or lower means singing 1 scale higher. The bar you see on the screen is ranging between all the notes, A-G.

If the pitch you have to hit is C, there's several octaves you can sing it in and you're still in C. This means if a girl is singing in a high-pitched C, you can sing in a low-pitched C and still nail the note. Octaves are a basic part of music terminology, so after 6th grade chorus/band you should understand it.

[TheTFacta]

The best advice given in this thread was to download (er, buy off iTunes) the songs that are in RB and keep listening to them. Once you know the lyrics, it'll come A LOT easier.

Oh, and don't be afraid to embarrass yourself. You should hear me singing The Kill. 5 stars, but I make my friends deaf.