Why I Sing Soft in Rock Band (RB Video: Lost Soul)

This is a video/blog combo I have been meaning to do for a while but it always ended up on the back-burner. Yesterday while trying to record Amberian Dawn- Lost Soul (at the request of the lovely Seli) I unintentionally ended up with decent enough footage to demonstrate what I mean.

To give you some background I've been doing Rock Band videos since May 4th, 2009 when I used to use my digital camera to record my tiny tv (I have a new one now lol) for my videos. In fact here's a link to my very first video: Forever (Rock Band 2) Expert Vocals 100%. My singing has improved since then (or at least I hope so O_o).

I've had lyrical singing lessons (only 7 hours mind you and I hope to take more, but I learned something that was life changing) and I was told that I was placing my voice incorrectly thus giving me a false lower voice and potentially damaging my vocal cords. I've since stopped... and although I pretty much seem to have good natural projection my projection has improved. I know how to not sing "weak".

However the game forces me to sing soft and weak. Thanks also in part to the removal of the sensitivity adjustment on Rock Band 3, if I sing at full (or even partial projection) I get horrible mic distortion, especially on high notes (which due to the nature of high notes are naturally louder).

The Importance of Calibration in Rock Band 3 Vocals

Overall I love Rock Band 3, but it seems every day or so I find something else that I either hate about it, am annoyed by, or wish there was a patch to correct. I could get into that long list of things (and I will eventually) but right now I'm going to talk about one of them: calibration.

You may remember last week's post: Video of the Week: Song of the Damned (Army of the Damned). Despite all my best efforts I kept getting a 99% FC. I say "FC" because I had managed to keep my combo throughout the entire song (getting "awesome" at the end of every phrase and never seeing a visual break in combo) but ending with a percentage of 99%. Never having encountered such an issue in the other Rock Band games I played, I assumed this was a bug. I wasn't sure if it was a bug with the song itself or with the game, but I assumed it was a random issue with the game because the scores on the leaderboard for this song showed SOMEONE had FCed it.

So I posted my videos and my blog and I got A LOT of responses, help and feedback. My issue wasn't a bug at all, in fact this problem had been encountered in other Rock Band games I never purchased (Rock Band: Beatles & Rock Band: Green Day), so it's been around for a while actually, but being that I wasn't a fan of band-specific games, nor those particular bands, I was afforded the luxury of being ignorant to its existence. Those were happier times.

Video of the Week: Evil Inside Me (RBN)

This week's video is another Amberian Dawn song. What can I say? They are probably the songs that are the most fun on vocals. Plus it is nice to have music you like in one of your favorite games. ;)

I really like to listen to this song, but sadly (and oddly) it wasn't as fun for me to sing as LionHeart or Kokko (which I didn't really like to listen to as much as some others). I think my main problem is I just don't like the way I sing it.

Also I think it is charted weird.. generally I don't have issue with anything Rock Gamer Studios has charted, everything is pretty good and rather accurate. I've noticed that often the lyrics are slightly off on the Amberian Dawn songs, but it's generally really minor.

Video of the Week: Lionheart (RBN)

This week saw the release of TWO Amberian Dawn songs, Lionheart and Evil Inside Me.

I had intended to do both today but I ran out of time, so you only get one :p

Like Kokko, this song really wasn't one of my favorites to listen to.. again, not that I hated it.. just there were other songs I liked more. However, Lionheart has grown on me.. BIG TIME. I REALLY like it.. vocally it is fun, lyrically it is awesome.

I never pay too much attention to lyrics, I generally read through them once when I get the album and then they end up forgotten. However playing the songs on Rock Band

Video of Last Week: Kokko- Eagle of Fire (RBN)

I was bad last week and let this one slip by without blogging about it.. naughty me.

Honestly I didn't really have too much to say about this video anyway other than MORE AMBERIAN DAWN (insert fan-girl squeal)!

Kokko has never really been one of my favorite songs, it's not that I hate it.. I just like other songs more, but ya know.. Kokko is really fun to sing.

So this song earns 5 stars on my "fun on vocals" scale.

I think it came out pretty well other than the mic distortion and am happy with it. It got good ratings

Video of the Week: Wytches 2010.. (Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna...)

So in other non-WoW related news I have acquired a new microphone! Yay! I actually got this while visiting a friend in Amsterdam for cheaper than what it would have cost online (double yay!)

It's basically the one I had before (previous to the purple one): The Logitech Vantage.. you'll notice though that this one is black. It is in fact the one for the PS2/3 (it was all they had) but clearly it works with the xbox 360 as well.

Anyway this week's video is Wytches 2010 by Inkubus Sukkubus.

Video of the Week: Paralyzer (RBN)

This week's video is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven available for purchase on the Rock Band Network from the fine folks over at Rock Gamer Studios.

I think the last time I heard this song was when I was in the US.. so it gives me memories of home.

The song was pretty easy for vocals. My sight read of the song resulted in a 99%.. which I think was a bare miss even.

OMG RBN! Video of the Week: River of Tuoni

I totally had intended to remake my first ever youtube video but I had a change of plans.

It just so happened that while I was failing at FCing Forever by only getting a strong on the last note Dpritch sent me a message on xbox live talking about the ever spreading rumor that the RBN was coming TODAY!

I immediately decided it wasn't worth continuing to kill my voice for In This Moment- Forever and hovered over twitter watching for the latest news..

And then it came... Rock Band Network was listed under the Music Store and I instantly downloaded the 2 available Amberian Dawn songs (Hey! I helped get them in the RBN ok?) Naturally I went straight for River of Tuoni.. I mean I love Amberian Dawn but He Sleeps in a Grove is not one of my favorite songs of theirs. (I can't wait for the incoming 5 new ones)

I'm actually EXTREMELY lucky I got to play these songs at all because the RBN was not available everywhere.

Change of Plans: Thank You E74

Today I had intended to write an entry about how much I hate Guitar Hero 5... well while I still intend to tell you the original reasons why I hate Guitar Hero 5 (though not in today's entry), I have a larger one to add to the list to tell you about unfortunately.

Today I got the dreaded E74 xbox error. I'm going to partially blame Guitar Hero 5 on this one. As far as I know (and this seems specific to my case)this error is related to video/graphical hardware problem.

It happened that I was actually working on a video for next week, a Guitar Hero vocal video, just to switch it up a bit. I use a dazzle to capture the in-game footage, but my dazzle seems to be compatible with PAL only. As I live in Europe this normally isn't an issue. With my xbox I have the display options of PAL-60 and PAL-50. For my dazzle to record in color I have to have my xbox on PAL-50, being that you can't really see the difference I've always just left it there. I've never had to worry about changing it except to play Guitar Hero 5 actually.
The game was purchased in France (where I live) and clearly states "PAL" on the back but for some reason it tells me it is not compatible with PAL-50, so I had to put my xbox in PAL-60 (a fake NTSC if you will) to be able to play it. This kind of rather sucked as my dazzle would only record in black in white, but I went ahead and did it anyway.

After I got a video recorded, I decided to work on a Rock Band project I had planned to do with fellow Team Cena member dpritch. Well since Rock Band actually lets me play in PAL-50 with no complaints I decided to switch back my display settings so I could record in color at least. I went ahead and changed my settings back to PAL-50 and headed through the xbox panes over to "Play Rock Band 2". As I was passing through the frames I noticed that my xbox avatar looked weird.. she had all kinds of lines going through her and she wasn't whole. She was rather graphically messed up. I figured it might be because I had just changed my settings and decided to give my xbox a nice restart...

When I turned it on it sounded strange, nothing was on the screen and then suddenly I see:

I tried everything I could think of, praying that this wasn't really happening.. but nothing worked. I took the HDD off, I tried a HDMI cable instead of the furnished component one.. but no luck, I was left with no choice but to call Microsoft.

Calling Microsoft was a pain though, luckily you're given the option to speak to someone in English (despite the fact I called the French number), but I guess they outsource their tech support to some country where the people don't speak English natively. Don't get me wrong the twice I called (yeah I had to call twice for something not their fault) I spoke to two very nice and helpful women but it was so hard for me to understand them, we had awkward moments of silence and misunderstandings.

Anyway the good news is that for E-74 the repairs will be covered, so I won't have to pay for anything. The bad news is that I need to find a box at a store. All the stores had already closed for the day when this happened and things in France are always closed on Sunday so I have to wait till Monday. Then I got to schedule a pick up and after that it is about 2 weeks wait. Knowing my luck RBN will be released and I won't get to pounce on the Amberian Dawn songs like I've been dying to do for months now.. -sigh-.

Here's my short explanation on youtube:

Weekly Rock Band Video: Superbeast (DLC)

As a member of Team Cena I post gameplay videos of Rock Band 2 every week on youtube. My sponsored instrument is vocals, so that is what my videos mostly consist of. The videos I post are split screen (meaning you can see me AND the gameplay at the same time). I decided to do this after asking my subscribers what they would like to see and looking for something to make my videos a bit more entertaining. I also play with the original vocal track turned all the way down just because it is more fun that way.

What I would like to do (and intend to do) is post here every week with a bit more insight into my video for that week. I generally record them on Thursdays and upload them shortly after. It really depends on the amount of time/work I have involved.

So this week I did Rob Zombie- Superbeast (DLC). I found this song to be REALLY fun for my last 2 videos (I had done a bonus guitar one). It may just be that this is a genre of music I enjoy (outside of my usual symphonic metal) whereas usually there aren't too many songs on Rock Band I actually like (that will change with the RBN).




For my guitar video, skill wise it wasn't too hard. Expert guitar isn't my primary instrument, but it is what I started Rock Band on (from previously playing Guitar Hero). My main difficulty was actually a physical issue: my finger nails. As I tried to slide down to catch the yellow/orange "chords" my finger nails would actually catch the raised frets on the guitar and I'd end up missing. I'm pretty sure that if I worked at it (and cut my finger nails) I would probably FC (full clear) it without a problem.
Overall fun song and honestly not hard at all on expert guitar.



Vocally I would say this song wasn't too challenging either. It mostly consisted of talkies that were pretty easy to manage. The hard part for me I would say, was the " a ragged they come and a ragged they kill" phrase.
I really struggle with low marked stuff, so I didn't sing it in original octave. It came out a bit higher (and stranger) sounding than the original. Even in doing this I barely made the phrases. Looking back at the video I honestly don't know how I did. The pitch marker was so often in the red. One of the mysteries of the game I guess.
I also didn't manage to activate overdrive at minute mark 2:47.. I don't know if it's an early window or what.. I honestly hate that though, especially when I'm recording my weekly video, but I'm honestly not the kind of person who looking up optimal paths as I personally hate score whoring songs.

Slightly off topic I did happily wear my Knights of the Ebon Blade shirt for this video. If you play World of Warcraft you know what I'm talkin' about. Being that my main is a Death Knight tank, I really am attached to my shirt :)