I <3 Rock Band
Played a lot of Rock Band over the weekend. As Nik put it when D came over yesterday, "My wife woke up this morning and decided she could sing on Expert." I recently came to the conclusion that practicing on anything but Expert is actually a bad thing, once I sort of know the song. Unlike with drums, guitar, and bass, vocals don't get any extra notes on Expert, the scoring is just stricter. On Easy, you pretty much just need to be making noise somewhere near the right note at the right time. On Medium and Hard, it gets stricter about the pitch and timing. On expert, you just have to get it right. So learning a song well enough to pass on Medium means that I have to unlearn bits of it that I wasn't singing quite right. Something just clicked in my head yesterday, and I was consistently scoring in the 90% range. Now I'm up to the songs that I get under 80% on. I learned that it is possible to clear a song on Expert with only two stars when I scored 70% on Green Grass and High Tides, which is challenging in part because there are so few lines. Not much leeway for error, and not much space in which to learn the song. I was very pleased with myself for clearing Sabotage by Beastie Boys in one shot, since that's a rap, and thus relies entirely on getting the timing just right.
However, I have developed a deep and biding hatred for The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, and whichever developer thought it was a good idea to include Gimme Shelter in the Rock Band playlist. The song is a horrific, unsingable mess. There's a female guest/backup vocalist, but anytime they're both singing, the note you're supposed to hit is the one Mick Jagger is not so much singing as screeching. My ear is desperately casting about for something resembling a real note, and latches on to the backup vocalist, because she's actually singing. Then I realize I'm not singing the right note, and I warble around, looking for the note I'm supposed to be singing, and then I get booed off the stage. It's good that we have a soft couch. I can throw the microphone at it in frustration with a fair amount of force without worrying about damaging it. This was necessary a few times. Particularly when I made it about 92% of the way through the [long string of expletives] song before getting booed off the stage. I totally understand the necessity of including a Rolling Stones song in Rock Band. I understand that it's a super-famous song. But I cannot figure out why, in the name of all that is holy, anyone would want to be able to sing this song. I need to be able to sing it to clear the song so I can finish L.A. After I do this, I will never, ever sing this song again.
I still haven't cleared the blasted thing.
However, I have developed a deep and biding hatred for The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, and whichever developer thought it was a good idea to include Gimme Shelter in the Rock Band playlist. The song is a horrific, unsingable mess. There's a female guest/backup vocalist, but anytime they're both singing, the note you're supposed to hit is the one Mick Jagger is not so much singing as screeching. My ear is desperately casting about for something resembling a real note, and latches on to the backup vocalist, because she's actually singing. Then I realize I'm not singing the right note, and I warble around, looking for the note I'm supposed to be singing, and then I get booed off the stage. It's good that we have a soft couch. I can throw the microphone at it in frustration with a fair amount of force without worrying about damaging it. This was necessary a few times. Particularly when I made it about 92% of the way through the [long string of expletives] song before getting booed off the stage. I totally understand the necessity of including a Rolling Stones song in Rock Band. I understand that it's a super-famous song. But I cannot figure out why, in the name of all that is holy, anyone would want to be able to sing this song. I need to be able to sing it to clear the song so I can finish L.A. After I do this, I will never, ever sing this song again.
I still haven't cleared the blasted thing.