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Something I've been wanting to try out in Rock Band for awhile is what the gaming nerds call 'voxtar', which means playing guitar and singing in the game simultaneously (vox=voice plus (gui)tar). So you're playing two characters, and thus two parts at the same time. The main thing that was holding me back was the fact that I didn't have a mic stand, which is needed since you need both hands to play bass and the mic's obviously gotta be somewhere near your mouth. There's the headseat but the mic on that thing sucks. Anyway, I went to Stevie's apartment to feed his cats while he's away visiting family over the holidays and there it was... a mic stand. Yoink!
Since I play bass and not guitar in Rock Band, it's really more voxbass than voxtar. Maybe I can just call it "box". Who knows what they call it for drummers. Anyway, I figured I'd just jump right into it and do the Cars challenge, where you do all nine songs from the Cars' debut album. I listened to that album approximately eight hundred thousand times when I was in high school and could probably sing the whole thing from start to finish in my sleep. I dropped the bass difficulty level to Easy (I usually play on Medium) and the vocal difficulty to Medium. I've been singing everything on at least Hard level and not doing too shabby on Expert on a lot of songs, but since I'm a lot more familiar with the vocal track than the bass part, I knew I was not going to be able to look at the vocal indicator much at all. And being familiar with a song doesn't guarantee you'll do well on it- though it helps a lot.
I wish I'd though to write my bass scores down, but oh well. Here's how I did (first number is the difficulty for the vocal track (0-6), second my percentile score):
"Good Times Roll" (2/95)
"My Best Friend's Girl" (2/87)
"Just What I Needed" (1/100)
"I'm In Touch With Your World" (3/94)
"Don't Cha Stop" (2/84)
"You're All I've Got Tonight" (2/94)
"Bye Bye Love" (2/97)
"Moving In Stereo" (3/95)
"All Mixed Up" (1/99)
What can we infer from this? Well, that I am able to do it, first off. Also, that I do noticeably better when I'm singing the Ben Orr songs (100, 97, 95, 99) than when I sing the Ric Ocasek songs (95, 87, 94, 84, 94). It could be because I like Ben Orr's voice a lot better than Ric Ocasek's, but what's more likely is that it's because Ben Orr was the bassist for the Cars- so maybe he played in a way that synced up well with what he was singing. It stands to reason, right?
For the record, I'd love it if Rock Band would release more Cars stuff.
I worked up a sweat doing this. I wasn't doing anything physically but standing there and doing the equivalent of typing with my hands, but my brain was working really hard. This takes a mental coordination that I have very little familiarity with and no practice really, so I imagine it's burning a mess of new neural pathways. And since the brain uses up a lot of energy, I'm guessing this sort of thing heats it up quite a lot.
Something that really baked my brain was that in almost every song, the vocal track had a percussion section. This is something Rock Band does to keep the vocalist busy during long instrumental parts; gives them percussive notes to hit by tapping the mic or slapping it against your leg or whatever, and in the soundtrack they add in some tambourine usually, or clapping or even cowbell (yes, "Don't Fear The Reaper" is in Rock Band, so I have played WITH MORE COWBELL). This is tricky, since as previously mentioned both hands were occupied with the bass, but you can hit the notes by singing little plosive consonants ("tuh, tuh, tuh, tuh") and voila- hands-free percussion. But this was very often in a different rhythm than whatever the bass part was doing, and so I was sometimes doing it as quickly as possible since for just the vocal percussion parts it counts it if you hit it on the notes but doesn't against you if you hit it on the rests. Mostly I was just missing it though.
I ventured out into other songs, sticking with ones I was really familiar with, and that had easy bass tracks. I did write down the bass scores for these, those are the first set of numbers. Here's how I did:
(0/99) "Float On" Modest Mouse (1/99)
(0/99) "My Iron Lung" Radiohead (2/99)
(0/98) "All The Small Things" Blink182 (1/100)
(2/98) "Today" Smashing Pumpkins (1/99)
(1/97) "Interstate Love Song" Stone Temple Pilots (0/97)
(0/95) "Cream and Bastards Rise" Harvey Danger (4/97)
(3/96) "Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden (1/99)
(0/96) "Baba O'Riley" The Who (1/100)
It's apparent that this is easier than I thought it was going to be, and I could probably up the difficulty level of both parts and not fuck it up too bad. I'll try that soon.
Since I play bass and not guitar in Rock Band, it's really more voxbass than voxtar. Maybe I can just call it "box". Who knows what they call it for drummers. Anyway, I figured I'd just jump right into it and do the Cars challenge, where you do all nine songs from the Cars' debut album. I listened to that album approximately eight hundred thousand times when I was in high school and could probably sing the whole thing from start to finish in my sleep. I dropped the bass difficulty level to Easy (I usually play on Medium) and the vocal difficulty to Medium. I've been singing everything on at least Hard level and not doing too shabby on Expert on a lot of songs, but since I'm a lot more familiar with the vocal track than the bass part, I knew I was not going to be able to look at the vocal indicator much at all. And being familiar with a song doesn't guarantee you'll do well on it- though it helps a lot.
I wish I'd though to write my bass scores down, but oh well. Here's how I did (first number is the difficulty for the vocal track (0-6), second my percentile score):
"Good Times Roll" (2/95)
"My Best Friend's Girl" (2/87)
"Just What I Needed" (1/100)
"I'm In Touch With Your World" (3/94)
"Don't Cha Stop" (2/84)
"You're All I've Got Tonight" (2/94)
"Bye Bye Love" (2/97)
"Moving In Stereo" (3/95)
"All Mixed Up" (1/99)
What can we infer from this? Well, that I am able to do it, first off. Also, that I do noticeably better when I'm singing the Ben Orr songs (100, 97, 95, 99) than when I sing the Ric Ocasek songs (95, 87, 94, 84, 94). It could be because I like Ben Orr's voice a lot better than Ric Ocasek's, but what's more likely is that it's because Ben Orr was the bassist for the Cars- so maybe he played in a way that synced up well with what he was singing. It stands to reason, right?
For the record, I'd love it if Rock Band would release more Cars stuff.
I worked up a sweat doing this. I wasn't doing anything physically but standing there and doing the equivalent of typing with my hands, but my brain was working really hard. This takes a mental coordination that I have very little familiarity with and no practice really, so I imagine it's burning a mess of new neural pathways. And since the brain uses up a lot of energy, I'm guessing this sort of thing heats it up quite a lot.
Something that really baked my brain was that in almost every song, the vocal track had a percussion section. This is something Rock Band does to keep the vocalist busy during long instrumental parts; gives them percussive notes to hit by tapping the mic or slapping it against your leg or whatever, and in the soundtrack they add in some tambourine usually, or clapping or even cowbell (yes, "Don't Fear The Reaper" is in Rock Band, so I have played WITH MORE COWBELL). This is tricky, since as previously mentioned both hands were occupied with the bass, but you can hit the notes by singing little plosive consonants ("tuh, tuh, tuh, tuh") and voila- hands-free percussion. But this was very often in a different rhythm than whatever the bass part was doing, and so I was sometimes doing it as quickly as possible since for just the vocal percussion parts it counts it if you hit it on the notes but doesn't against you if you hit it on the rests. Mostly I was just missing it though.
I ventured out into other songs, sticking with ones I was really familiar with, and that had easy bass tracks. I did write down the bass scores for these, those are the first set of numbers. Here's how I did:
(0/99) "Float On" Modest Mouse (1/99)
(0/99) "My Iron Lung" Radiohead (2/99)
(0/98) "All The Small Things" Blink182 (1/100)
(2/98) "Today" Smashing Pumpkins (1/99)
(1/97) "Interstate Love Song" Stone Temple Pilots (0/97)
(0/95) "Cream and Bastards Rise" Harvey Danger (4/97)
(3/96) "Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden (1/99)
(0/96) "Baba O'Riley" The Who (1/100)
It's apparent that this is easier than I thought it was going to be, and I could probably up the difficulty level of both parts and not fuck it up too bad. I'll try that soon.
