Tycho Talk

New least favorite Rock Band song:

'Prequel to the Sequel' by Between the Buried and Me. Three words: Cookie Monster talkie. Ugh.

I did complete all the bass challenges in Rock Band; there's about, oh I dunno, half a dozen with increasingly complex songs (or with increasingly complex bass parts anyway) up through the Impossible Bass Challenge. I completed it on the medium level of difficulty since I'm not really fantastic on bass the way I am on vocals. :P I can't bring myself to pour a lot of energy into getting really good with Rock Band bass without feeling guilty that I'm not putting it into getting better at Real Life bass; at least the vocal skills translate somewhat.

Anyway, the reward for getting through the impossible challenge is a different outfit for every instrument. For bass, the outfit is the alleged 'Ultimate Punk Outfit'. For women it seems to be an outfit that seems to consists of a lot of strategically-placed electrical tape, which is silly. For men, it's a mess of tattoos for the top part, which you can't see if you wear any sort of shirt, and the bottom is... tighty-whiteys. Now, check that icon- Trogdor there is my bass-playing character. Do you suppose tighty-whiteys go with a jacket and tie? I think not. I am sending a strongly-worded email to someone. Okay, I'm not, but I'm thinking one, godammit.

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. ( Read more... )

I had thrown the Rock band bass on my Amazon wish list, and Brö got it for me for Christmas! So I spent some time getting used to it. The whammy knob replacing the bar was not a terrific idea, because it's next to impossible to use it while playing- but this is not much of an issue on bass anyway. I haven't gotten the hang of the split strum bar, but I probably ought to... I will tend to strum using my thumb. Playing this is still nothing like playing a real bass, but it mimics aspects of it certainly. For one thing the neck's longer than the guitar, so I have to stretch my hand out more. And while my hands are pretty long, they're also narrow- so it is definitely a stretch. I need big broad Jimi Hendrix hands. That will go on my wish list next.

Rock Band has battle of the bands that last for a few days... they're often 3 or so songs that have a common theme, and there's different requirements. They had a vocals challenge that I couldn't resist; solo on 3 very hard songs on Expert. One was "Spoonman", which I've done on Hard several times. I forget the other one, but then there's "Tangled Up In Blue". Bob Dylan may be a great poet, but his singing style annoys the hell out of me, so I'd avoided doing this song. But I was familiar enough with it (and Rock Band only counts pitch and not diction, which Dylan doesn't do all that well anyway) and was able to not fail out of this. I beat the band they put me up against; I am not sure if it's some made-up band or if I'm actually beating a real person somewhere out in the world. I sort of hope it's the former, not being competitive by nature, but whoever it was I totally kicked their ass.

Then I remembered the other challenges, the ones that come with the game, and checked out the vocals ones. I finished up the hard one, and unlocked the "impossible" one which had "Spoonman" and "Tangled Up in Blue" along with another one (I think it was "Long Time" by Boston) and did not care what level you performed at. So I did that at Hard, and for my troubles won a weird outfit, which didn't work on the character I was singing with except for the boots. Somewhere in there I also got a golden microphone, which I put the band logo on. Not that you would ever see it... but I know it's there. I got a clear microphone at some point as well, which is freaky and interesting.

My next challenge will be to do the Endless Setlist. Oh, and to get a mic stand attachment so I can try playing and singing at the same time.

Turns out, Eric can't drum us through 'Don't Fear the Reaper.' But I can't sing us through Beck's 'E-Pro' on expert, either- failed out miserably. Odelay, motherfucker! Bah.

I did do the 90's marathon on expert with an average of 94%, so I got that going for me.

This icon is a picture of one of my Rock Band characters. Because I am a big goddamn dork. Say hi to the nice people, Trogdor!

Here's the songs I did last night. There's repeats, since I like some songs and want to sing them, dur. Also we're limited to the songs that we’ve unlocked so far, plus the ones from RB1 (thanks, Stevie!) and the ones I've bought- and with a couple of exceptions, I only bought songs I like.

I started on difficulty level Medium to warm up. As usual, the first number is the vocal difficulty level (0-6) and the second is the score I got (0-100).

"Self-Esteem" The Offspring (0/99) This one was for Eric, who loves this song. It reminds him of a certain girl. I think most of us have been there.
"See You" Foo Fighters (1/99) Dammit, I love this song so much. It’s probably my favorite one to sing, even though I have to do this octave-wrap thing because I can't sing low enough. My favorite to play right now is probably "De-Luxe" by Lush, for the record, though I’m not as fond of singing that one.
"Sorrow" Bad Religion (1/100)
"My Iron Lung" Radiohead (2/99)

Okay, so I’m warmed up, and switched to Hard difficulty.

"I Think I’m Paranoid" Garbage (0/89)
"Interstate Love Song" STP (0/100)
"Monkey Wrench" Foo Fighters (0/96)
"Orange Crush" REM (1/93)
"Mr. Brightside" The Killers (1/93)
"All The Small Things" Blink 182 (1/100) She left me roses by the stairs...
"Today" Smashing Pumpkins (1/98) Our xbox freaking loves this song. Whenever we do a random pick half the time we end up with this song. I had no objection to it initially but I’m getting a little tired of it now.
"Roam" B-52s (1/97) Eric is very fond of this song. The very, very high part at the beginning surprised me, but I pulled it off.
"The Perfect Drug" NIN (1/87) Why can't I do better on this one? I know it really well but I still fuck it up, and that makes me sad.
"When You Were Young" The Killers (2/97)
"Pinball Wizard" The Who (3/97) The line "He's got crazy flipper fingers" makes me think of Thalidomide babies, which is terrible and I'm sorry.
"Rock'n Me" Steve Miller Band (3/98) Like the last one on the list, this was another song that I winced when it came up but ended up doing fine on due to familiarity.
"Reptilia" The Strokes (3/68) I failed out of this one! Thankfully Stevie rescued my sorry ass. Ugh.
"Let There Be Rock"- AC/DC (4/82, 85) The random pick feature meant we sang it twice. I bitched both times, but at least I improved. I got 80 when I sang it a couple of weeks ago.
"Spacemen" The Killers (4/82)
"Any Way You Want It" Journey (5/93) I was terrified when this came up, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, probably because I was familiar with it.

Okay, first of all, because I'm so very proud of myself for my ongoing battle against my weird phobia of singing in front of others, I often will download the songs I've sung (you've already figured out that I write them down) and put them in a 'Rock Band' folder on my iPod and iTunes. For the record, I don't buy them from iTunes, because of that copy protection bullshit. Amazon sells them for the same price and doesn't hassle me if I decide to play them at a different computer. There's only been a couple I haven't been able to acquire, including "New Wave" by Pleymo, and "New Kid in School" by the Donnas.

This means I end up with some songs on my play list that I don't like very much. I've already complained about "Buddy Holly" and most punk doesn't really speak to me. I also dislike "Aqualung" quite a bit. "Feeling like a dead duck" is some of the dumbest lyrics ever written... and "dee dee dee, dee dee dee dee dee dee dee" doesn't win any awards either.

I've also been introduced or re-introduced to some songs I like quite a lot, or songs I didn't care for much when I heard them but got to love once I sang them... "Perfect Drug", "My Iron Lung", "Black Hole Sun", "Man in the Box" (these all seem to have some similar qualities, don't they? Hmm.)

In addition, I've increased my audience to two. The reason this is so much easier than, say, singing karaoke is because when people are playing Rock Band they're not paying attention to much else besides playing their own instrument. I have no idea why the idea of people listening to me sing makes me queasy, especially considering that I'm in a choir, but it does and I'm working on it. Dammit. Anyway, so Stevie has historically been silent on the topic of my vocal abilities, which is fine with me. But this time Eric came along, and he told me in advance that he was planning to listen to me. After we left, I shyly asked him to tell me what he thought. After blowing some smoke up my bum which any spouse with any sense would do, I pushed him to give me an honest critique. He said, essentially, that I was too timid, which makes sense. He said that sometimes he didn't even hear me if he wasn't making a point to pay attention to me, and he was sitting right next to me. This fits with my perception. I'm not sure how to man up and belt it out, but I'll be thinking about it. He also said he never heard me hit a bad note... though I suppose I could've been hitting them all very quietly.

What I noticed was that when I wasn't focusing on what I was doing, I tended to get lazy and... oh, how to describe this... sort of flatten my palate which makes the tone sound dull and a little nasal. When I caught myself doing that I tried to open it up and do it like the conductor at the church is always pestering us to do (which makes me sit up straighter just thinking about it), and it sounded better to my ear. It seems awfully square and, you know, does Trent Reznor and Chris Cornell do that sort of shit? Maybe so but they manage not to look like they are... well. I guess it will become an issue when I get pulled up on stage at a concert.

When we did some of the mystery setlists, where the computer picks random songs that I was often unfamiliar with, Stevie lent me a hand by singing the first line or so during the intro. This was immensely helpful, and on a few songs he sang along or sang harmony which was really cool. It made it more interactive, which like I said is something Rock Band really isn't. Before when I was going to parties where Rock Band was being played and staked out my territory on the bass, I would often sing harmonies very sotto voce mostly to see if I could. The notion of playing an instrument and singing at the same time causes me to be filled with awe; it's a coordination that doesn't come easily to me. Learning music on a French horn is partly at fault (when you play horn that's all you can do); I have similar problems reading multiple lines of music (like for keyboard) but it's not an impossible obstacle.

Anyway, here's one of my vocal role models- Paul Simon. John found this, and I'm glad he posted it. I haven't watched a lot of tv lately and I would've missed it, which would've sucked because this is one of my favorite songs of all time ("American Tune"). He was never a really flashy singer, but his vocal style has matured very well, in my opinion. The guy is almost seventy... it boggles my mind.

It's been fairly quiet. Friday we went to Brö's and did the usual chewing of the fat and watching of the movies. On Saturday it was mostly poking around the house with a little jaunt to Manny Hattan's for lunch where I ate a dish so terribly bad for me that I didn't eat anything else for the rest of the day. I shan't describe this horror other than to say that it was named the Yankee Stadium; you can google it if you're that curious. Eric had plans that evening and I couldn't find anything to do initially, so I sang myself hoarse listening to Jeff Buckley and cleaned my desk, which probably is a lot more impressive than it sounds. I collect a lot of clutter around my desk.

A couple from Dallas whom I've only spoken with online was in town, though, and called and invited me to see an improv show at the Coldtown Theater, that place on Airport where we went to see ' Super High Me' a few months ago. I'd never been to an improv show, and it was amusing. Not bust-a-gut hilarious, but at least I got out of the damn house. And it's always nice meeting online friends.

I sang at services today; it was focused on Thanksgiving so we did what is apparently our traditional T'giving song. It's something some church member wrote, and it's not my favorite piece ever but I sang it last year which means I've been in this choir for a year now. And a good year it has been. Now we're going to focus solely on our big Christmahanukwanzakah piece which we'll do at services on 12/7, so save the date if you're interested.

After, we tried to meet Dallas couple at a Mexican place (Ananda's) but it was too crowded and we ended up at separate tables. That's okay, though, I was starving and cranky and probably not terrific company. Lunch was dirt cheap, though; I got 3 breakfast tacos (2 bean and cheese, and a potato and chorizo) for $2.50! Ordering orange juice was a mistake; I got a tall glass of iced orange drank that was vaguely Tang-like. Bleh. But it was probably thirty cents or something so I'm not going to bitch too much. Eric got a giant plate of eggs and chorizo and beans and tortillas for $3. Tasty! But also very noisy, so we were glad to bolt out of there and visit Dragon's Lair nearby, then do the dreaded pre-Thanksgiving shopping trip. Luckily they were well-stocked so we weren't stuck there for too long, though it was crowded as hell.

Peopled out, we're planning on doing a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day. We might be visited by Whitebear or Nikki, and if not may pop in on Stevie who is preparing to undertake a mighty quest- the Rock Band Endless Setlist on expert level, which means he has to play every song without pausing or failing; he expects this will take about 6 hours. So he invited us to do the Rock Band equivalent of throwing water on the marathon runners and otherwise cheering him on.

Stevie made some room in his schedule for me to go over and do some singing. I don't think I did terribly well; I don't have any quantifiable evidence for this but I just didn't feel like I was in the groove as much as I have been at times past. Also, Rock Band released a bunch of AC/DC songs and we did several of those- and those are hard bastards to sing. I had to drop an octave half the time and it doesn't sound right when you do that (not to mention if you're singing it as opposed to screaming it, but that may be a style nitpick :P ). Anyway, in my continuing desire to obsessively chronicle what I sang, I went to Wikipedia to get the difficulty ratings for the vocal tracks, but they've taken them down for some reason. Fie! All that's left to me is the ratings Rock Band uses, which go from zero to five dots, then five angry dots. In other words, seven levels. The additional indignity is that they have no ratings listed for the AC/DC songs we did, and I know at least one of them had a five angry dots rating for the vocal part ("High Voltage", if I recall correctly). I did, oh, I dunno, maybe 2/3 of the songs on medium and 1/3 on hard. I got 100% on several of the medium songs- mostly ones I was really familiar with. The lowest score I remember getting was 77%, though I don't recall which song. Anyway, the list. There's a couple of repeats, since I'm using a different rating system.

"La La Love You" The Pixies (0)
"Perfect Drug" Nine Inch Nails (1) Why do I love this song so much? It's so cheesily emo. Maybe that's why.
"Vasoline" Stone Temple Pilots (1)
"Bodhisattva" Steely Dan (1) Holy shit, this was insanely difficult on guitar.
"Buddy Holly" Weezer (1) AKA "Fuckin' Buddy Holly". It came up on random or else I wouldn't sing this one. I don't know why it annoys me so.
"All Mixed Up" The Cars (1)
"Celebrity Skin" Hole (1)
"Baba O'Riley" The Who (1) I managed to get 100% on this one- thanks in part to the version Tracy Bonham sings.
"Still Alive" GlaDOS (1)
"Nine in the Afternoon" Panic at the Disco (2)
"Complete Control" The Clash (2)
"Bye Bye Love" The Cars (2)
"Bad to the Bone" George Thorogood (2) Yes, I picked it. And yes, I laughed my way through it.
"De-Luxe" Lush (2) Is this song in 12-8? Why I believe so! That makes it cool.
"Wonderwall" Oasis (2)
"Brainpower" Freezepop (2)
"One Way Or Another" Blondie (3) Another "so that's the lyrics, huh?" moment. Major creepy stalker song.
"Girl's Not Grey" AFI (3)
"Alive" Pearl Jam (3)
"Under the Bridge" Red Hot Chili Peppers (3) Thanks to Weird Al, the opening notes to this song trigger the thought "Oh, it's that Flinstones song."
"Something About You" Boston (3)
"Moving in Stereo" The Cars (3) I love this song, and know it backwards and forwards, but I cannot sing it as sung worth a damn... too low.
"Round and Round" Ratt (4) I have no idea why this gets such a high difficulty rating. It's your standard hair metal song, not much to it.
"Livin' on a Prayer" Bon Jovi (4) Another one sung with rolled eyes. At least it wasn't "Dead or Alive".
"New Kid in School" Donnas (5)

And here's the AC/DC songs I mangled, which are as mentioned unrated:
"For Those About to Rock"
"Hell Ain't No Bad Place to Be"
"TNT"
"Back in Black"
"Money Talks"
"High Voltage"

Alright, I just have to put these ratings to the other songs I've sung. Dammit, somebody has to! ( Read more... )