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The latest Rock Band report includes songs sung on Expert, and drumming.
Yesterday and today I tried singing on Expert level. Yeah, whole different experience there- my scores will not appear too bad, but I'm used to nailing every phrase and I definitely was not able to do that on this level. And you can see exactly how you're screwing up with the little pitch indicator thingie. Attacks are my weakness. I'm a lover not a fighter. Anyway, here's the ones I've done the last couple of days...
"Interstate Love Song" Stone Temple Pilots (0/96)
"Man in the Box" Alice in Chains (0/97)
"All the Small Things" Blink-182 (1/96)
"Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden (1/90,91)
"See You" Foo Fighters (1/92)
"Sorrow" Bad Religion (1/97)
"The Perfect Drug" Nine Inch Nails (1/84) TOUGH! Stevie suspects it's because Trent layers his vocals in such a way that it's hard to hear the one you're supposed to be singing, and I suspect he is right. I didn't try his trick of tweaking the levels to bring out the main track though, which I ought to do at least once.
"Today" Smashing Pumpkins (1/93) Dammit, now that I've heard it so much, this song has grown on me. I went out and downloaded their greatest hits album, and I like just about every song on there. I mean, I knew they were all individually songs I enjoyed and that they were by the Smashing Pumpkins, but somehow they never collectively clicked and inspired me to buy their stuff.
"De-Luxe" Lush (2/97,97) I went and got their album as well, and like most of it so far. Some of it's more straight punky stuff which I'm not as into; the rich wall-of-sound ones (I think it's called shoegaze) are my favorites.
"My Iron Lung" Radiohead (2/94)
"Nine in the Afternoon" Panic at the Disco (2/89)
"Alive" Pearl Jam (3/89)
It wasn't a lot, but it was harder work, relatively speaking.
I busted out the drum kit. Every time I've played with someone they wanted to play drums, and it hasn't been a burning desire for me to drum so I never asked to. But now that I have my own, it only seems reasonable that I ought to at least gain minimum proficiency on drums. So, because I'm a masochist, I decided to try "The Perfect Drug", which is a difficulty level 6 for drums. I love the drumming for this song... well, it was the only one I had any opinion about with regard to the drumming (probably because of this video that I've watched a gazillion times). But I'm not completely crazy, so I put myself through the tutorials initially, then played it on easy at 50% speed. I got a 97%!! Which means I'd get about a 49% on full speed. One of the factors that make this so hard (I suspect) is that unlike a lot of rock songs, it's not the same 2-3 patterns repeated through the song. Every phrase practically was something new, so there's no predicting it. I would've probably tried speeding it up but I had a thing to go to. And my eyeballs were drying out. I definitely need to practice more.
Incidentally, the reason I post the scores I made while singing, and now drumming, and not the scores I've made the many, many times I've played bass is because the singing and drumming are actually singing and drumming, whereas the bass is nothing like playing an actual bass guitar. So in my mind, the vocal and drum scores relate at least somewhat to a real-world musical skill, but guitar and bass are more just a video game score.
Yesterday and today I tried singing on Expert level. Yeah, whole different experience there- my scores will not appear too bad, but I'm used to nailing every phrase and I definitely was not able to do that on this level. And you can see exactly how you're screwing up with the little pitch indicator thingie. Attacks are my weakness. I'm a lover not a fighter. Anyway, here's the ones I've done the last couple of days...
"Interstate Love Song" Stone Temple Pilots (0/96)
"Man in the Box" Alice in Chains (0/97)
"All the Small Things" Blink-182 (1/96)
"Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden (1/90,91)
"See You" Foo Fighters (1/92)
"Sorrow" Bad Religion (1/97)
"The Perfect Drug" Nine Inch Nails (1/84) TOUGH! Stevie suspects it's because Trent layers his vocals in such a way that it's hard to hear the one you're supposed to be singing, and I suspect he is right. I didn't try his trick of tweaking the levels to bring out the main track though, which I ought to do at least once.
"Today" Smashing Pumpkins (1/93) Dammit, now that I've heard it so much, this song has grown on me. I went out and downloaded their greatest hits album, and I like just about every song on there. I mean, I knew they were all individually songs I enjoyed and that they were by the Smashing Pumpkins, but somehow they never collectively clicked and inspired me to buy their stuff.
"De-Luxe" Lush (2/97,97) I went and got their album as well, and like most of it so far. Some of it's more straight punky stuff which I'm not as into; the rich wall-of-sound ones (I think it's called shoegaze) are my favorites.
"My Iron Lung" Radiohead (2/94)
"Nine in the Afternoon" Panic at the Disco (2/89)
"Alive" Pearl Jam (3/89)
It wasn't a lot, but it was harder work, relatively speaking.
I busted out the drum kit. Every time I've played with someone they wanted to play drums, and it hasn't been a burning desire for me to drum so I never asked to. But now that I have my own, it only seems reasonable that I ought to at least gain minimum proficiency on drums. So, because I'm a masochist, I decided to try "The Perfect Drug", which is a difficulty level 6 for drums. I love the drumming for this song... well, it was the only one I had any opinion about with regard to the drumming (probably because of this video that I've watched a gazillion times). But I'm not completely crazy, so I put myself through the tutorials initially, then played it on easy at 50% speed. I got a 97%!! Which means I'd get about a 49% on full speed. One of the factors that make this so hard (I suspect) is that unlike a lot of rock songs, it's not the same 2-3 patterns repeated through the song. Every phrase practically was something new, so there's no predicting it. I would've probably tried speeding it up but I had a thing to go to. And my eyeballs were drying out. I definitely need to practice more.
Incidentally, the reason I post the scores I made while singing, and now drumming, and not the scores I've made the many, many times I've played bass is because the singing and drumming are actually singing and drumming, whereas the bass is nothing like playing an actual bass guitar. So in my mind, the vocal and drum scores relate at least somewhat to a real-world musical skill, but guitar and bass are more just a video game score.
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Date: Dec. 5th, 2008 12:43 am (UTC)From:I was never really "into" shoegazer per se as a whole and so I don't actually know much about the following bands, but the other major shoegazer bands were Ride and Swervedriver.
That's just off the top of my head, maybe I'll have something more later.
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Date: Dec. 5th, 2008 06:44 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: Dec. 5th, 2008 07:28 pm (UTC)From:I'll lend 'em if I can find 'em. I haven't seen Beaster for a while, and I'm not even 100% sure I didn't sell Copper Blue at some point. One or both might be in the fabled and feared storage space.