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Suggestions for designing the ideal GH vocals system?
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BOYOBOYY  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:21 am    Post subject: Suggestions for designing the ideal GH vocals system? Reply with quote

In my opinion the system and engine for vocals are far from perfect. In this thread I'd like to discuss what we, as Guitar Hero vocalists, would like to add to the system and what we would like to remove from the existing system, i.e. GH5's system, and how we would fix any of the issues.

Some of the most common complaints about GH5 vocals from the Opinions/Rants topic GH5 system include:

- The font in which the lyrics are displayed is hard to read at not only scrolling speed but even static (plus it is somewhat tacky)
-No way of discerning whether you are singing on pitch or not (edit: by this i mean you can't keep track of the comet's path in relation to the path of the pitch lines)
-Freeform: they are pointless now
- Can be tough to differentiate between talkies and pitches
- As there are no longer lines that connect the notes, judging the change in pitch can be hard

And there were many more, but I won’t list them all because they can be found here (or perhaps I should list them all for the sake of reference? I’ll decide after I’ve had a few replies to the thread)

What I’d like to see in vocals
- Freeforms gone from the game altogether, or have them actually do something useful again
- Have the font for the lyrics easier to read
- Be able to slow down vocals in practice mode (I don’t see why not, I think it would be helpful in figuring out pitches, particularly on fast songs e.g. Brainstorm)
- Perhaps some sort of system where the note could have a label e.g. note names (A,A# etc.) or colour coding. If the notes were different colours according to their pitch it would be a lot easier to differentiate between notes and I think it would make sight-reading songs more viable if there were a connection between the colour and pitch. I think also it would be useful if the comet changed colour according to the pitch being generated by the vocalist too; then it would be possible to determine if that pitch is off and by how much. The only issues I can find with this suggestion are: a) Wouldn’t work for colour-blind people b) might be a bit displeasing to the eye (but the notes for every other instrument are multicoloured so why not for vocals?) c) phrases are already coloured according to whether they give star power or not i.e. blue or gold. Maybe this would be something you chould choose in the options menu.


...Since its 5 am and there are other things I should be doing like sleeping I’ll leave it at that (even though there are many more things I’d like to add).
Please discuss my ideas and share your own. I will add more to my list of things when I’m feeling less tired.
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Icemage  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

- Freeforms suck. I'd just as soon have them gone than have them do anything meaningful. I like them exactly like they are in GH5 - tiny bump to rock meter, nothing else.

- Have that blasted fireball not wiggle like a Mexican jumping bean when you're holding a steady pitch.

- Lose those stupid pitch pipelines (see: can't tell how far off you are), or at least make the fireball and trail be some other color so you can see what you're singing while it's crossing the pitchlines.

- Solidify the scoring line, while we're at it. It doesn't help to see that green wiggly line of Jell-O on top of the already ick interface problems mentioned above.

- Find some other way of representing talkies than something that looks almost like a pitchline.

- Talkies in general pretty much suck in all current karaoke games, GH included. GH takes the easy way out and doesn't do any phoneme detection at all, just pitch detection, but this fails horribly at simulating performance on songs like Feel Good Inc. where you have short rapping words but you have to keep generating a tone.

- A few more points in general for vocals scoring wouldn't be completely out of place to balance out band scoring / career overall scores.
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toymachine  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think sensitivity adjustment would be a great idea as it's something that I used A LOT in RB2

I agree there should be a small trail to let you know where exactly you are with your pitch.

to be honest I don't think slowing down vocals would help imo.
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BOYOBOYY  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Icemage wrote:
Freeforms suck. I'd just as soon have them gone than have them do anything meaningful. I like them exactly like they are in GH5 - tiny bump to rock meter, nothing else.


I've come to terms with point-giving freeforms being gone now but they gave you something to do during long periods of no singing, the freeforms that are there now do nothing whatsoever and might aswell be gone. The hype boost that they give is negligible: this to me is not enough to warrant their existence. Having "Get Ready" appear on the highway only to be faced with a pointless freeform bugs the crap out of me and it also prompts you to make noise when you don't have to, on top of that they're distracting and quite ugly. Judging from the previews before the game was out, freeforms in GH5 used to do something as after performing them the words "No Boost" were shown; what that boost was is unknown but I would be interested to know. I still have mixed feelings about freeforms really, I enjoyed them in GHWT but then they slowed me down in GH Metallica to the point where I didn't really bother with vocals at all.

Icemage wrote:
- Find some other way of representing talkies than something that looks almost like a pitchline.


Icemage wrote:
Talkies in general pretty much suck in all current karaoke games, GH included. GH takes the easy way out and doesn't do any phoneme detection at all, just pitch detection, but this fails horribly at simulating performance on songs like Feel Good Inc. where you have short rapping words but you have to keep generating a tone.


Interesting, my main problem with talkies in GH is their appearance but i would be intrested to try a system that uses "phoneme detection", are there any existing games that use this or would this be a new concept for karaoke games? I think this would add a new element of challenge to vocals, especially for songs with rapping like Feel Good Inc as you mentioned, but I'm sure it would be flawed in many ways, I can't see the GH developers getting this right with all the other things they've messed up; An example of a flaw in the engine (If one were needed), would be scoring system - having lag affects your score, you can actually exploit the lag offset to gain more points. Another would be being able to get more than 100% of a phrase in Perfectionist mode (this is probably due to lag also).

Icemage wrote:
- Find some other way of representing talkies than something that looks almost like a pitchline.


This is a must. The Gh5 talkies are actually hideous but I would sooner have them than Rock Band's talkies. I know your point was that they look a bit like pitch likes but I just hate the way they look.

Icemage wrote:
A few more points in general for vocals scoring wouldn't be completely out of place to balance out band scoring / career overall scores.


AGREE 100%. Probably the main reason I don't play career is because of no leaderboards. Part of the satisfaction of FCing the full game is having the recognition for being high on the leaderboards overall. It makes the game worth playing for me. Also with all those songs, (and not being able to go to the leaderboards like you could in GHWT - by pressing Y after the song) looking at the leaderboards is a pain in the ass, I don't really bother with it. Also, WTF, why still no co-op leaderboards!? I still enjoy vocals for what it is but the competetive element was a lot of fun for me.



toymachine wrote:
I think sensitivity adjustment would be a great idea as it's something that I used A LOT in RB2


Agree with that. My gameplay suffers so much using my headset that voxtar fcs aren't really an option for me, I pretty much have to eat my microphone to get it to register any sound. Also I get a really weird lag when I use my headset.

toymachine wrote:
to be honest I don't think slowing down vocals would help imo.


Sorry, I have to disagree with that. I think it would be very valuable for determining the pitches in phrases where it just goes by so fast that its hard to really get into your head the melody or even the pitches. It would help if I could at least mute the other instruments or have the notes translated into a clearer sound.

toymachine wrote:
I agree there should be a small trail to let you know where exactly you are with your pitch.

Yes this HAS to come back in some form, it was very useful to a lot of people.
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StormEagle  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One improvement: Make sure that the pitch line and vocal lines are synched when you calibrate your video lag. Annoys the hell out of me. Astonishing fact: This was actually done in World Tour, but in no game afterwards.

Edit: And make the leniency 1.2 semitones instead of only one.
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dr00bles  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm loving GH5 vocals, but there are definitely some things I'd love to see changed (many of which have already been mentioned.

First off, let me say that I think that GH5 vocals feel very natural in general. I can sing exactly how I think I should sing and the engine will usually pick it up perfectly.

I agree, however, that a better pitch indicator is crucial. As has been stated, you can't tell where your voice is in relation to the notes, which makes figuring pitches out troublesome.

I also agree that the base value for vocals scores should be higher, especially now that freeforms give no points (and, by the way, thank heavens for that).

Frankly, I have no problems with the talkies. Yes, they're easy, but they should be easy; as long as you can talk, you should be able to do well at talkies. The alternative is something like the talkie system in Rock Band 1, which was the most frustrating part about their vocals engine. And while they don't look terribly nice in GH5, I've actually never had a problem distinguishing them with regular pitched sections.

I, too, would love to see a system that allows for sight-singing more. Maybe it is a matter of attaching colors or note names (A, Bb, etc.) somehow, but honestly, even a standard staff with clearly noted ledger lines would be helpful. Sometimes half-steps are so freaking close together you can't even tell they're different notes.

Finally, I have a suggestion that no one mentioned. I have theory that the reason why many people are off-put by GH vocals compared to RB vocals is that in RB, the game doesn't show you all the tiny places you failed to nail pitch-wise. It's kind of irritating to some that they put their heart into their singing and the game shows them all the spots they didn't hit. In RB, the arrow just kind of breezes along, and the lines don't change color or anything based on what you hit. Now, I know that this makes it more difficult to tell when you're accurate, but maybe there's a temporary trail that shows if you're staying on pitch without leaving a lasting stamp of where you've fucked up. At least in a party setting, no one wants to see how much of a phrase they missed.

In general, though, I must stress again my personal satisfaction with GH5 vocals. It improved upon the previous engine in virtually every way. This leaves me very optimistic that they will continue to innovate and perfect.
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Dentata  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

- I don't have a problem with the font or differentiating talkies, but that's because I sit maybe 4 feet from a 50'' TV. I'm not saying this is OK as is, but I think it shows that the reason things are the way they are is that they have bigger screens or are sitting closer to them, so they don't notice this problem.

- Fireball precision/lines/pitch relative indicators are a must. See my deranged rant from last week to see how much this is needed. I think The Beatles:Rock Band got this close to right. They took the arrow from RB2, added a background and lines that contrast well, and they shift the whole thing up or down if the range of the song dictates it.

- I think colors for every note would be bizarre, and likely some color among the 12 chosen would blend in with the background, but a line indicating C or even maybe the song's tonic might help.

- I think it would be helpful to be able to calibrate vocals separate from the other instruments. I use a wireless headset on the Wii which takes the feed straight from the Wii before it gets to the TV, so my lag there is 0, yet I use 20ms setting for it and probably could move that higher. That wouldn't work so well on guitar. If I decide to voxtar, I'm going to have trouble finding a single setting that works.

- I don't trust them to get stricter talkies to work. I stopped trying to FGFC RB2 because of One Way or Another, and stopped chasing the leaderboards as well because of it.

- I really like the fact that tapping (from RB) isn't in the game and that talkies are gimmees (they aren't even scored in TB:RB). I'd be fine with a change there if it worked, but I agree with the OP in not trusting the devs/testers to get it right.

- A complaint I've seen from some was having to use a button to activate SP. Personally, I love this, as shouting in RB2 wasn't good at all for the voice, and getting the sensititivity right for tapping the mic to activate would have likely made me sad. Why on earth haven't they created a mic with the activate button on it? How about a foot pedal?

- Slowing down the vocals and retaining their pitch might sound odd, or be difficult to program. TB:RB included an optional pitch tone that you could use in practice to hear what note they wanted. This definitely helped when they accurately charted Paul's off-key singing.

In general, I love the system in GH much more than I did in RB. The only serious problem for me is the feedback you get when you are off-pitch. I hope they do something for the folks with smaller TVs or an aversion to sitting so close to the screen. Beyond that, I like the level of difficulty and the fact that better singing yields better points, instead of a contest to see who can scream closest to an invisible line (RB2 system).
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tidus  





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PostPosted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Being able to see whether I'm singing too flat or too sharp is pretty much the only thing I'd need.

As I mentioned, I prefer GH5 over the others by a long shot because of the black highway. I have lost a lot of potential FC opportunities on GHWT/GHM/GHSH (more especially World Tour and Smash Hits) because of the Star Power itself, which camouflates the blue pitch indicators on the also blue vocal highway, and it's pretty much a pseudo Karaoke mode for me. And extremely frustrating, of course.
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But yeah, lol @ the fact that you can say "she" in this thread and not be sure which person is being talked about. Now we know whose milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.
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boss1592  





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PostPosted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 5:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

if i wasnt typing this from a PC in the airport i would give more suggestions, but the main one for me is the slowing vocals down in practice mode, i cant see how this would help. the idea is good in theory, but try and think what the hell a song would sound like slowed down to 50%, it would probably make the pitches even harder to hear. some good suggestions, il add some myself when i have time
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Taozack  





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PostPosted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We should be able to choose the size of the lyrics.

And a lot of the points described earlier, especially "Black Highway" and Pitch show, NOTE BY NOTE in training.
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Cam-H  





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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Likewise, I believe most of the points have been well covered already (my pet gripe being the 'yellow on yellow' / 'blue on blue', but others such as connecting line between pitches, a more meaningful 'comet' and so on, I concur with).

Low pitched phrases are still not being picked up for low octave singers. Loads of examples such as; "Down with me" in 'Everlong', or "the bottom of the sea" in 'A-Punk' require a very unnatural octave shift or singing the song in a higher if not falsetto voice outside of (my) most natural range.

Freeforms: Should, imho, give a small amount of star power for doing something 'right', something other than making a random noise or singing scales. Exactly how this might be implemented, I'm not really sure, but I'd like to see them kept in and be of value without being the score-breakers that they were in World Tour.

Starpower should be giving points through a phrase rather than at the end of it. Firing off the multiplier at the end of a long held note (especially when you know you haven't 'fluffed' it) to score big points rather than while singing the note doesn't make sense.

A point I've raised before, but I don't find practice mode terribly useful, but have since discovered that many of you guys and gals do. I'd like to see better feedback within it on 'flat' / 'sharp' / 'too quiet' / 'wavering' or whatever. I would also like to see a limited recording feature, so I can playback my own vocals and compare my performance against the charted song (acknowledging that this could be very memory hungry).

Volume controls on instruments should go all the way up or down - at least in practice mode, so if I just want to hear the vocal track I can. This could also include removing the harmonies (refer. end of 'Why Bother?').

The whole rapping thing in my view is bizarre. I'm aware that pitching rap is viewed by some as "stupid", but something needs to be done to make these songs meaningful to the game for vocalists. Don't link career challenges to rap songs (i.e. 'Bring the Noise 20XX') while rap is so poorly implemented.

Measures to stop the hum-fest. I mentioned in another thread that voice recognition software has surely got to a point where a computer should be able to pick up hard noises and discern whether the vocalist is humming/mumbling or actually trying to articulate the lyrics.

Personally, because they trip me up, I'd like a lot of the "woo hoo" type phrases that are not integral to the song to be treated as a new class so they don't break your multiplier.
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tidus  





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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cam-H wrote:
Measures to stop the hum-fest. I mentioned in another thread that voice recognition software has surely got to a point where a computer should be able to pick up hard noises and discern whether the vocalist is humming/mumbling or actually trying to articulate the lyrics.

While this would be a great anti-humfest idea, this would increase gigantically the difficulty of the game IMO, especially when you still need to hit the right notes. Also, it could literally expel foreign players who can't articulate really fast lyrics like on Play With Me, Stone Cold Crazy, The Rock Show, Brianstorm, etc., simply for not having English as their 1st language.

On a plus side, how could I forget about the volume control you just mentioned? That would reduce to zero every kind of problem with harmonies/overlayed vocals! Things would be so much better on songs like Sweating Bullets, Disconnected, The Rock Show (ohh look, I mentioned this one again), both Alice in Chains songs, and so on...
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sentimentalgeek wrote:
But yeah, lol @ the fact that you can say "she" in this thread and not be sure which person is being talked about. Now we know whose milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.
<3 this.

| 57 RB1 on-disk FC's, plus 4 RB Vox FGFC's. No way I don't feel accomplished! =)
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Icemage  





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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cam-H wrote:
Low pitched phrases are still not being picked up for low octave singers. Loads of examples such as; "Down with me" in 'Everlong', or "the bottom of the sea" in 'A-Punk' require a very unnatural octave shift or singing the song in a higher if not falsetto voice outside of (my) most natural range.

Incorrect.

See my Du Hast video. I can't consistently hit that natural B1(?) consistently since I'm not basso profondo but when I do it does correctly score it.

Quote:
Measures to stop the hum-fest. I mentioned in another thread that voice recognition software has surely got to a point where a computer should be able to pick up hard noises and discern whether the vocalist is humming/mumbling or actually trying to articulate the lyrics.

Voice recognition is getting up there in accuracy. My copy of SingStar for PlayStation 3 now features pretty accurate voice recognition to let me find a specific song or artist just by saying the name.

Then again, the rap detection in SingStar is horrible beyond words when you're actually singing, so take that as you may. I don't understand how SingStar correctly identifies when I say "Queen" in the song/artist selection page, but can't tell that I'm rapping Feel Good Inc. perfectly on time and scores me poorly nonetheless.
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Cam-H  





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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Icemage wrote:
Incorrect.

It could be a Wii thing, as this is a problem for me whereas it doesn't seem to be for you.

I went back and tried A-Punk on Easy, and the effect is that the comet just slides back to the 'middle' vertical position when I go for those very low pitched phrases. 'think13' and 'yksi-kaksi-kolme' have respectively got good scores on A-Punk and In My Place (another one that slides into low pitches that I can't seem to get the game to recognise until I change the way I sing it) using the Wii.

I'd be curious if they or others using the Wii and singing in a deep octave range have struck this.
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Icemage  





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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cam-H wrote:
Icemage wrote:
Incorrect.

It could be a Wii thing, as this is a problem for me whereas it doesn't seem to be for you.

I went back and tried A-Punk on Easy, and the effect is that the comet just slides back to the 'middle' vertical position when I go for those very low pitched phrases. 'think13' and 'yksi-kaksi-kolme' have respectively got good scores on A-Punk and In My Place (another one that slides into low pitches that I can't seem to get the game to recognise until I change the way I sing it) using the Wii.

I'd be curious if they or others using the Wii and singing in a deep octave range have struck this.

Are you using the stock microphone? That might be your problem. The stock mics that come with Rock Band and Guitar Hero games both have pretty lousy low frequency detection.
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