Return of the Vocal Videos

Things have been busy for me lately. Aside my continuation in Skyrim (level 56 almost 57) for All Achievements, I also recently picked up Rocksmith last week since the game was FINALLY released in Europe. Now not only am I trying to level up in Skyrim for that damned Legendary dragon, but I am also trying to make sure I play Rocksmith consistently to maintain whatever callouses I may be gaining.  That is not including the fact that Rock Band still releases new DLC and I want to record vocal videos (especially of Amberian Dawn songs). So many things I want to do and so little time... first world problems, ya know?

So today I shook off some of the lazy and hauled my desktop to my living room to get some recordings done. I actually managed to get 2 videos recorded, Cold Kiss and Passing Bells; both by Amberian Dawn.

Video of the Week: Interstate Love Song

This week's video is Stone Temple Pilot's Interstate Love Song.

I've always liked this song and it is short and sweet (like this entry about it will be) so that was definitely incentive to choose it for my video this week. The song is a bit on the low end and this is where I tend to have more trouble as I just fail so much musically that I can not find out how to make myself sing it in a higher octave.. I managed to make 100% anyway so I guess it doesn't really matter.

As before I have included external audio along with the capture for volume reasons. It does seem though that since filming this video I have found a solution that will allow me to use full direct audio for next week.. yay! ^^

Sadly I also had my camera too zoomed in and cut off part of my head.. ooops.

Video of the Week: Just A Girl (who spied ass-chaps)

We're going to pretend I wasn't bad and totally forgot to blog about my last 2 videos ok? :p (So Cold and Call Me When You're Sober).

This week's video was "Just A girl" by No Doubt, the good Ol' Tragic Kingdom No Doubt that was the one of the first CDs I had ever purchased (which was a big deal at the time because cassette tapes were still used and around).

Overall I found this (as with most old No Doubt songs) easy for me. My real problem was actually preventing myself from "over-singing" the song. By that I mean singing it so enthusiastically that the game was not happy with my singing. Sadly because of my enthusiasm it took a few takes, but it wasn't because it was difficult.

I kind of took this song in full stride, I mean I am indeed a girl and when I was 13 it was a great "motto" song of sorts. I sported my "Things you learn from video games" t-shirt so show my female gamer spirit.

One thing though that I did NOT expect in the entire recording of this video was a male character in a pair off ass-chaps.

Vocal Covers? Do I dare?

Hey guys. I know this really doesn't have a whole lot to do with gaming but I don't have much other place to write about this so I'll blame this on the sexy microphone I received from the Team Cena sponsors.

I've been singing/playing vocals on Rock Band for sometime now, I also (as you know) have been posting videos of myself playing the game for a while too. I know that being good at the game on vocals doesn't make you a good singer. It's more or less like an advanced karaoke where you have a pitch line to follow that hopefully prevents you from sounding less bad than a tone deaf monkey.

I've kind of hid behind the game, this was a way I could post videos of myself playing it and having fun knowing that I wasn't really trying to impress anyone with my singing or anything. I know covers are a whole other world and open to more criticism and possibly rude comments.

Another reason I've never attempted covers is the kind of music I like generally has a classically trained soprano vocalist. Being that my only experience involves singing in a car or when I'm by myself this hasn't exactly been a welcoming domain to enter. I'm not into pop music too much (which would be much easier to sing) and the vocalists I like are just jaw-droppingly impressive. On the other hand this mic is so awesome that I HAD to test it out especially knowing that such vocals were too overpowering for the microphone I had previously.

So this is a partial cover of Amberian Dawn's Passing Bells. I just was singing it for fun and thought I was recording the whole thing to compare mic quality when I realized for some reason I had only a partial recording (hence why this is "partial"). I guess it is a good way to see if I should even bother trying covers of such music and/or if my youtube subscribers are even interested.

Either way whether you think it is bad or not, bet your ass I'm doing ALL of Amberian Dawn's DLC from the Rock Band Network for my youtube Rock Band videos. And if I DO do more covers in the future know that they won't all be Amberian Dawn and they will probably be much less frequent.



Should I bother pursuing covers? I know for sure I need more practice, but would you be interested?

Weekly Video: GH5 Smells Like Teen Spirit

So this week's video for youtube is something a bit different. After people asked me to do some Guitar Hero ones I borrowed the game from a friend and decided to do one.

I had intended to record several of them and release them little by little but as my former entry stated, GH kind of indirectly killed my xbox.

Being that I mostly play Rock Band I really had quite a few bones to pick with Guitar Hero..

So here is my list of issues I had with GH5.

1. I had to play the game in PAL-60, not only did this irritate me because I couldn't capture in color with my Dazzle, but it indirectly gave me the E74 error with my xbox
2. I could not for the life of me find a place to turn off the vocal track while playing. I found sound options and turned down vocals as much as it would go and the mic all the way up but it didn't seem to change anything. It MUST exist somewhere but I didn't find it in GH's messy interface (albeit less bad than GH:WT)
3. Guitar Hero is way quieter than Rock Band. I have to crank up my stereo volume just to hear it and then get blown away when I put RB in. I again looked for sound options to help with this and didn't find anything relevant to what I was trying to do.
4. The other default band players are ALWAYS the same.. I really HATE Judy Nails with a passion and want her poser ass the fuck out of my band.

As with all these kind of games I enjoyed making my character. In this song I use my "Anex" character.
My only beef with GH character creation is the women are still too skinny. If you increase the weight it actually just stretches the model horizontally which looks really stupid and not so much that they aren't anorexic. The game also tries to be too realistic. I kind of find all the character models rather creepy and they all seem a bit edgy.. there is just something about it I don't like. I DO like the color customization and outift choices, I also like that choosing a hat doesn't make me change my hair cut.

But anyway back to the actual song:

)

Smells Like Teen Spirit on GH (or even RB for that matter) is not all that hard. The only hard part I found personally was the "Hello Hello Hello How Low" parts. They were a bit low but there isn't much room to breathe in there to go straight to the next part after.

Bonus tid-bit for the week: This week's intro/outro features Nightwish- Devil and the Deep Dark Ocean. I really love this song and the album is quickly becoming one of my favorites (I had lacked 4 of Nightwish's Tarja-Era Albums, but recently found them online Nightwish: 1997-2001 BOX.) I love Tarja's scream in this song. It's like an uncontrolled hauntingly powerful operatic wail.. I dunno I just love it.

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 :)