vocals tutorial discussion

[ChodTheWacko]

First of all, a disclaimer - I sing fairly well, meaning I can pass songs I haven't even heard before (on easy anyway).

But after trying out with some of my friends who not vocally educated (i.e - who ask 'what's an octive' I think it's fairly obvious this game could use a vocal tutorial. I don't like the 'you should know that already' arguments - you want to make this game accessible to everyone!

The other thread got hijacked to death, so I'm starting a new one - how would you implement a vocal tutorial? Go the 'Do Re Mi' route?

I don't know how you could 'explain' pitch, maybe just put the line at 'Mi' and then play someone singing too high/low and hope they 'get it'.

One of my friends was watching me do vocals and he couldn't figure out what the line meant until I hit some continously descending part.

Octaves should be easy enough to demonstrate without explaining what they are. Bascally you just need a continous note, and let them figure out how to match it, telling them to sing lower and lower (or higher and higher) till they get it.

I think the more interesting question, though, is - how do the other singing games do it? Like Singstar? Or Karaoke Revolusion? Do they have tutorials?

- Frank

[bazutti]

As long as there's audio in the tutorial, you could have someone giving examples with their voice on going up and down, while you see their pitch meter go up and down until it hits. If someone actually hears what someone is doing, and sees on the screen how the pitch is affected, and they still can't figure it out...then they should just try guitar/drums.

[CowShark]

I thought the tutorial in RB was pretty decent. It's more detailed than the Karaoke Revolution games (which, also having been made by Harmonix, have different scoring systems, but the same singing interface). That, and the singing interface for these games has always (I thought) been pretty intuitive.

Like, if someone can't play a song they know on easy after checking out the in-game tutorial, there'd have to be a much more intense amount of tutorials in order for them to get help. Since the game isn't designed or advertised as a tool for teaching people how to hit various pitches, I don't think the lack of teaching tools is unacceptable at all.

I'm not sure about Singstar, whether and how detailed their tutorials are, but I played a demo of it once, and thought that it provided much less feedback on what pitches you were hitting while singing. Like, it told you after a note whether you hit it, rather than KR/RB, where you can always see where your pitch is, relative to the note that they want you to be hitting.

[HMXJohnlok]

I thought the tutorial in RB was pretty decent. It's more detailed than the Karaoke Revolution games (which, also having been made by Harmonix, have different scoring systems, but the same singing interface). That, and the singing interface for these games has always (I thought) been pretty intuitive.

Like, if someone can't play a song they know on easy after checking out the in-game tutorial, there'd have to be a much more intense amount of tutorials in order for them to get help. Since the game isn't designed or advertised as a tool for teaching people how to hit various pitches, I don't think the lack of teaching tools is unacceptable at all.

I'm not sure about Singstar, whether and how detailed their tutorials are, but I played a demo of it once, and thought that it provided much less feedback on what pitches you were hitting while singing. Like, it told you after a note whether you hit it, rather than KR/RB, where you can always see where your pitch is, relative to the note that they want you to be hitting.

I think the OP still brings up a pretty valid point. The question you have to ask, then, is "how do you teach somebody how to sing?" in some short, manageable blurb. I have been to bars to show Rock Band to people (drunk people for the most part, yes, but that's not the point), and have taken a stab at teaching my mom how to play the game - it's not always obvious how the systems work.

I haven't exactly done a study on the topic, but I'd be willing to wager that non-musicians and musicians will have the hardest time getting accustomed to the vocal system. Gamers with some musical experience (but maybe not a ton?), I imagine, will do the best. They realize that, like any system, there is a (hopefully) simple and logical design behind the game mechanic, which I think allows them to adapt to something like our pitch arrow better than others would.

I think the best thing to do for non-musicians who are also non-gamers, is set up a tutorial where you can address the basics of what the pitch arrow does, and what it means. If a "newb" can make the connection between what he/she is doing with their voice, and what it's doing in relation to the pitch arrow, I think that's 95% of the battle.

I'm interested to hear what other people have to say on this.

[Ultrace]

I think the best thing to do for non-musicians who are also non-gamers, is set up a tutorial where you can address the basics of what the pitch arrow does, and what it means. If a "newb" can make the connection between what he/she is doing with their voice, and what it's doing in relation to the pitch arrow, I think that's 95% of the battle.

I'm interested to hear what other people have to say on this.
I never used the RB tutorial because, after being to the tour in October, I immediately jumped to medium singing without a problem. But I think that just like in GH games, a segment where you actually have to sing as part of the tutorial would be good. Where it shows the arrow actually moving as your voice changes, and where it has repeated segments for you to match the pitch at (even just some "Ooooooooh!" phrases) and have that pitch move occasionally during the sustain. The tutorial should be sure to have segments at the extreme low and high end of the chart, to give people a chance to experiment with shifting octaves to match it. Even have the tutorial voice demonstrate the same note in different octaves.

During this process it could explain the circle filling up and such, the mechanical elements involved.

[Electric_Zen]

I have found the singing stuff pretty intuitive. I understand what is expected of me.

The 'talky' parts are extremely frustrating, through. I understand they there is some phenome matching, but even on a sustained "Ah" or "Oh" where I clearly enunciate, I sometimes end up with a Weak score. I'm not sure what else I am being judged on. Point of attack? Ending on the right beat?

The real problem, though, is not the lack of a tutorial. It's the lack of a practice mode. If I could just loop through a phrase (and slow it down in some cases), I'm sure that with trial-and-error I could figure out what the game is looking for.

The ommission of a working vocal practice mode was a painful oversight.

[Talli]

I would like a proper section on the talky parts. How the heck do you speak them so the game recognizes it? Is there a dialect that is better? I sang for years and years and had enunciation beaten into me by a choir teacher, and that doesn't work... saying it like the singer doesn't work... speaking in a normal voice doesn't even do it... I am puzzled.

[JetWolf]

The 'talky' parts are extremely frustrating, through. I understand they there is some phenome matching, but even on a sustained "Ah" or "Oh" where I clearly enunciate, I sometimes end up with a Weak score. I'm not sure what else I am being judged on. Point of attack? Ending on the right beat?
I haven't fiddled with it too terribly much, but just from playing, my observation thus far on these bits is that it's looking for you to hit the vowel sound in accordance with the song. Take Daltry's "Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahh!" for example. It seems to me that my circle fills super fast if I can align my intonation exactly how he screams it. A "Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!" (holding a different vowel) doesn't seem to do anywhere near as well, no matter how long I can hold it.

[CowShark]

I guess I'd think it was more useful if during the singing tutorial, they forced play on maybe a couple longer phrases than the "All Right / Oh Yeah" and off you go!

Also, maybe get somone (or a couple somones) to demonstrate those phrases sung on the original notes, up an octave, and down an octave, so people could get a better sense of that mechanic than what is currently demonstrated in the tutorial (which is "All Right" up an octave, and "Oh Yeah," on the original notes, this could probably slip by people real easily).

Then maybe give folks a bit of blank space to freestyle, so they can see how changing the pitch of their own voice affects the onscreen arrow.


Apart from that, it seems like you'd get into actual teaching, rather than a quick tutorial.


Edit:

I don't know how you could 'explain' pitch, maybe just put the line at 'Mi' and then play someone singing too high/low and hope they 'get it'.

This would be a good demo of what the game expects out of people, and it'd be useful, I think. Going all the way into scales might kill everyone due to their Adult Onset ADD, though.

[OfficerMeatbeef]

Talk about a tricky issue. Should a $60 game tutorial teach you how to sing? Can a game tutorial possibly teach you how to sing?

I guess I'm stating the obvious, but with guitar and drums, you're essentially dealing with a binary system: here is one, or two, or three of 5 possible "notes" or beats, clearly colour-coded and even arranged in the order they appear on the controller itself, and you either hit them or you don't. Musically, the only real factor at work is your rhythm.

But vocals, that's a whole different beast. Suddenly you have this entire range of frequencies to deal with, and (at higher difficulties at least) being probably just a few dozen Hz off can be disastrous. Of course, I don't know the actual fidelity of the game's frequency recognition, but I can't see why it wouldn't be pretty damn accurate.

Throw in the concept of octaves, which is surely fairly mind-boggling for someone with no musical experience ('cause it's kinda weird even for those WITH musical experience), and you're looking at a test where there are several hundred possible answers per question, and 3 or 4 of them are actually correct, but they're not actually the same answer, yet they are. Oh, and for some, the questions and answers are basically in a completely different language.

Phew. Frankly, I'm glad that vocals work at all, much less that they seem to work pretty damn well. But as far as this topic goes, I find it difficult to imagine how the vocal tutorial could possibly be much more helpful, except perhaps in better explaining the talky parts, the mechanics of which seem much more complex than the tutorial presents.

Harmonix has spent countless hours considering all of this already, I'm sure. If someone can't, intuitively, modify the pitch of their voice at all to match what they're hearing from the singer, I can't see how anything but practice will possibly improve that. Because I'd say the vocal interface is already pretty much as clear and intuitive as it can possibly get, at least when it comes to pitch. Especially as you can freely stretch your voice at the beginning of the song or during dead spots and see how the arrow responds.

Considering this, it is indeed a shame that one cannot select phrases to practice, and I have to assume there is a very good technical reason for that as it's far too obvious a thing for Harmonix to leave out otherwise.


a segment where you actually have to sing as part of the tutorial would be good... Even have the tutorial voice demonstrate the same note in different octaves.

I ran through the tutorial anyway and it already does all of this.

[OfficerMeatbeef]

I haven't exactly done a study on the topic, but I'd be willing to wager that non-musicians and musicians will have the hardest time getting accustomed to the vocal system. Gamers with some musical experience (but maybe not a ton?), I imagine, will do the best. They realize that, like any system, there is a (hopefully) simple and logical design behind the game mechanic, which I think allows them to adapt to something like our pitch arrow better than others would.

Personal anecdote: I have no real singing experience, but believe (well, "hoped" might be a better word) that I had at least a passable ear for it. I played saxophone in school for several years, but that's about the extent of my musical education, and I've never played Karaoke Rev. or Singstar. So I was very curious to see how I'd do on Rock Band, and upon finally obtaining one and excitedly setting it up at a friend's, I happily took over on mic duties straight away. Beginning on Medium, I was pleased to find I was getting in the 90%'s on songs I at least had a passing familiarity with, and even on songs I had never heard before I could pull off with at least 70%. I even got my first 100% on my first run on (Dont Fear) The Reaper, and I'd never even heard anything beyond the chorus of that one. This would seem to agree with your "Gamers with just a bit of musical experience doing the best" hypothesis.

I assumed Medium vocals just wasn't that difficult (and it probably isn't), but was very surprised to find that my friends, all of them fairly avid gamers and one or two with the same limited musical experience as me all really struggled with Medium vocals, even on fairly simple songs they were very familiar with. I was actually very shocked, and despite my best attempts at explaining the mechanics (which I do believe they understood) they just could not match those pitches. As I picked up a copy of the game for one of them, I'm hopeful he'll keep trying the singing and am curious to see how he improves.

Now the really interesting thing is that the following day, I set it up again so that my sister could play, who has virtually no musical experience and probably even less gaming experience. And she was nailing Medium vocals almost as well as me, if not better, and without any tutorial and just a cursory explanation and performance example from me. I feel confident she could have bumped up to at least Hard and still passed most songs with little trouble. So now the genetic factor needs to be considered too, I guess.

What's any of this prove? Well, it's not exactly scientific, but my limited data seems to suggest that... I'm fairly glad I only have to deal with how the game works and not try to make it work. Matching my voice to someone else's singing apparently just comes naturally enough to me that it's nearly impossible to imagine how it can be so difficult for others. Trying to design a system, tutorial & interface better than the one we have now seems roughly equivalent to trying to develop a fast-paced highly-detailed first person shooter that can still be played well by people with limited motor skills and/or severe cataracts. In other words: I'm glad someone's trying, but even more glad that I don't have to worry about it myself.

[dirty_bird32]

i think that, for the "talky" parts its best to try and sound as close to the actual singer/track as possible