Learn how to be a Vocalist in Rock Band.
I’ve been a huge fan of Rock Band ever since my parents bought it for us in August 2008.
I can’t play the instruments due to my carpal tunnel but I can do the singing and I’m slowly starting to sound better.
I’ve been singing on the Expert difficulty since October 2008 and am now just focusing on improving my singing.
My major problem is that I tend to mimic the singer instead of singing in my “own” voice and that just makes it sound strained.
On this page I’ll tell you some tips about being the vocalist and I’ll explain how being a vocalist in Rock Band works.
Rock Band in a nutshell.
Rock Band is the name of a series of games brought out by Harmonix.
In Rock Band up to 4 players can either sing, play the guitar, bass guitar or the drums along with the game.
We find it highly addicting and it’s great party game.
The goal of the game is to play along with the music on the screen while timing your instrument just right and with singing you also need to get the pitch right.
If you don’t you’ll fail the song and you’ll have to redo it.
The nice thing about Rock Band 2 is that it has a no-fail mode, which makes it great for children to play it, or drunk friends for that matter since you just can’t fail the game.
It doesn’t save your progress then though.
It currently has the following versions :
- Rock Band
- Rock Band 2
- Rock Band unplugged
- AC/DC Live- Track Pack 1 & 2
- Rock band Classic Rock
- Rock Band The Beatles.
- Lego Rock Band
The nice thing about the different versions is that you can buy a special key to download the other games to your console’s hard drive so you can play the other ones while you only have to use the Rock Band 1 or 2 disc.
Our Rock Band 1 disc is ruined by our Xbox 360 so now we can still play the songs that came with it.
You can also buy songs online for about $1.50 a song, and with more then 600 songs to download, you can have a huge collection of songs to play.
We have it for our Xbox 360 but you can also buy it for the Playstation 2 and 3, the WII, PSP, iPod/iPhone and Nintendo DS (Lego Rock Band only).
You can find out more about Rock Band here.
How does being a vocalist work?
Vocalist is a nice name for singer, so you’ll have to sing for starters. 
Luckily the game doesn’t care how good you’re at it, just make sure that you time it right and follow the pitch.
In the options menu it has a few settings :
The other option for Vocal Style is Static but I don’t like it so I never use it.
The pitch is indicated with the arrow I marked in the above image.
Make sure that this follows the line and you’ll do just fine.
I play on Expert so my line is really thin. In lower difficulties it’s thicker so you don’t have to be as exact.
Then there is the “energy” that you collect while singing.
Whenever the line you follow is yellow and you sing it flawlessly, you’ll collect energy.
During the parts in the above image you can “set it off” by yelling or saying something in the microphone.
Besides making the game more fun it also has 2 practical reasons :
!) You can “save” a fellow player if (s)he failed. You only have a certain amount of time for this though or the entire band will fail.
2) You get more points because it doubles the score multiplier (that is the number you see just above the sing bar).
During instrumental parts you often see this :
If you hit your microphone on the exact time the little circles come by, you’ll get extra points.
There are also “talky” songs.
With these you only have to worry about the timing.
And this is what Static looks like :
The difference is that the arrow moves instead of the music.
I don’t like it because I find it harder to get the timing right but it is good for learning the words.
And that’s all you need to know to become a Expert vocalist and start getting gold stars for bragging rights.
Note : I made these screenshots on my computer and my TV card doesn’t like the Xbox 360 very much so I’m sorry for the blurry images.
“In the Middle” by “Jimmy Eat World” sung by me.
Tips and tricks.
- You can hum a song instead of singing it. This is great when you don’t know the lyrics yet.
- Set off your energy as late as possible to get more points.
- Time the “setting off” of your energy together with your bandmates to get a huge score multiplier going.
- Don’t set off your energy if one of your bandmates has trouble with the song. This way you’ll always have enough energy left to save him or her.
- Drinking water with honey and lemon is good for the vocal chords.
Click here to view all the Rock Band items on Amazon.com
I love Rock Band!
I mostly play it together with my mother-in-law and together we have the “Band of 2″.
She currently plays the drums on Hard and a few songs on Expert.
She often comes by on Sunday and then we spent hours playing it.
My husband rarely plays it because he prefers real instruments.
Because of it he did buy drums from his birthday money in March 2009.
Both he and my mother-in-law actually use Rock Band to play along with it with the real drums and it works pretty well.
And this is my solo band MCLN :
From left to right : Aingeala (me), Keaira, Page (yes, I’ve made my husband 
) and Keenan.
My band info can be found here.
In case you’re wondering why my vocalist icon doesn’t always looks the same, that’s because I’ve done the Endless Setlist (play all Rock Band 2 songs without a break) on both medium and Expert and that Achievement changes the colors of it.
Oh, and 1 more thing :
I just had to buy that shirt when I came across it.
Similar games.
While the game continues to feature the use of a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of rock music, Guitar Hero World Tour is the first game in the Guitar Hero series to feature drum and microphone controllers for percussion and vocal parts, similar in manner to the competing Rock Band series of games. The game allows users to create new songs through the “Music Studio” mode, which can then be uploaded and shared through a service known as “GHTunes”.
Rock Revolution was published by Japanese game publisher and developer Konami, who is well known for their Bemani series of music video games, such as their band simulation games GuitarFreaks and DrumMania. Rock Revolution received generally negative reviews due to its overall lower quality in comparison to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, with GameSpot’s Aaron Thomas noting that the game brought nothing new to the genre of music video games and was considered to have “lousy” gameplay throughout. The game also experienced low sales numbers in its first month in comparison to Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour.
Ultimate Band allows players to play guitar, drums, bass or be the front man or woman in a band (though vocals are not supported). The Wii version follows the fortunes of an upstart rock band, with the player building the career of their customizable character, unlocking bonus songs, venues and accessories.
Ultimate Band forgoes the use of specialized peripherals such as guitar and drum controllers, relying mainly on the Wii Remote and Nunchuk for the Wii version, and the touch screen and stylus for the DS version. For example, to play notes on guitar in the Wii version the player must press a button combination on the Nunchuk while strumming the Wii Remote up and down.[1] The DS version, based on Hannah Montana: Music Jam’s code base, will also allow players to create and record their own songs, and have greater song customization options
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Keep it up, bookmarked and referred a few friends.
Great post!