Rock Band

Rock Band

50 Achievements

1,000

80-100h

Xbox 360
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Virtuoso

Virtuoso

Finished Vocal Solo Tour on Expert

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How to unlock the Virtuoso achievement in Rock Band - Definitive Guide

This achievement is much easier than it sounds. Starting expert, I didn't expect to make it past the first tier of songs, but ended up completing the whole tour within a day.
First of all, don't sing, hum the songs. It's easier to stabilize your voice, it saves air, and you'll be able to hear the track better. You're probably going to fail a few times in the beginning, but don't get discouraged. Once you learn the pitch range for each song, it's easier to control your voice and your needle won't move around as much.

Some tips while you're humming the songs:
Turn your mic sensitivity to the max and if you already know the songs go to the main menu and turn off all the extra noise (instruments, crowd, etc,). This will make it easier to focus on what you need to sing.
If you're planning on playing more than 5 songs at once, have a bottle of room temperature water nearby to keep your throat from drying out.
If the line you're supposed to sing is broken up into a lot of parts or it quickly goes up and down, just hum the pitch that most of the lines line up with and don't worry about hitting each individual pitch or pausing between each word. As long as you hit most of them, you should still get a full rating.
Remember to breathe in after every measure, or whenever there is a chance.
If you find yourself running out of breath and missing notes, just pause the game and give yourself a couple minutes to catch up.
If you start failing, remember that getting an "Awesome" rating with Overdrive deployed will instantly max your crowd meter.
Don't guess at high/low notes, but instead 'slide' your voice in the right direction to hit them so you don't overshoot your mark.

Problem songs:

Reptilia

Probably the hardest song to sing in my opinion. I had to restart about 20 times before passing it. It goes from very low pitches to very high in a short period, and there are very few opportunities to catch your breath during the chorus. I would suggest using practice mode and memorize what pitches you need to hum for the high/low parts first. Making sure you have Overdrive ready before the tambourine part will make this song MUCH easier to pass. I would also recommend pausing after every verse/chorus to catch your breath. I found the hardest part wasn't hitting the notes, but rather having enough air to make it through the chorus. If you can pass this song, you can complete the whole tour.

Gimme Shelter

This song has very high notes that are hard to hit, specifically the 'rape/murder' part. My suggestion is to SING not hum these parts in a falsetto and try to have full Overdrive ready. The second hard part is the 'Its just a X away' pattern before the end, which is very hard to hit, so be sure to save some overdrive for that.

Foreplay/Longtime

In case you didn't notice, they cut off the first 3 minutes of instrumental and jump right into the vocal part, which is nice if you fail and have to restart. This song is pretty straightforward until the end. Then the singer gets a little crazy and decides to do some improve stuff with a lot of high pitches. Be sure to have full overdrive ready for this and save it until you need it. You'll know when you hit it because it tends to catch you off guard by being much more difficult than the rest of the song.

Good luck!
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09 Aug 2009 12:09

10 Comments
Excellent guide! I would recommend warming up the vocal chords before and keeping some hot tea or warm water with lemon/lime nearby.
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By CSARdiver on 18 Jan 2010 14:57
To add on to 'Reptilia': I just beat it on the first try sounding like a dying cat by pausing for a quick two seconds after each measure to catch a quick breath and then unpause. Just make sure the needle catches most of the notes. I was blinking red the entire time but am so pumped to have beaten it!

Also, I cannot sing to save my life so if I can beat this song, so can you.
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By RVM on 13 Jul 2010 23:14
I just did hard vocals, and I am gonna give this a shot sometime. I have to agree that when I did hard, Reptilia was one I had to redo, and the ending on Foreplay/Long Time was hard, I finished the song so close to failing. Gimme Shelter seemed ok, but as you mention, the ending is pretty hard. Another song I had trouble with, which maybe a surprise or not, was Suffragette City.

Great detailed guide though, I find this more useful than the others.
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By on 19 Feb 2011 19:24
thanck you very much! mostly for telling us that this isn't as hard as it sounds, because I wouldn't have even started trying if you hadn't!
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By MaDDaWQ on 08 Nov 2011 23:57
Here I am, over a year later and I finally got around to doing this. I had to redo Foreplay/Long Time, I really lost the plot when he starts improvising, but went through again with some Overdrive saved for that part and it got me through. The biggest problem of all (and IMO the hardest song over all 3 RB games) is Reptilia. I couldn't do it for the life of me, in the end a good friend of mine recorded himself passing the song so I could download it to play into my mic. I feel pretty lame for doing it but I really saw no way past the horror that is Reptilia. Aside from that though the other songs aren't too bad.
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By on 03 May 2012 21:36
i think i may give you a negative because you saidif you beat reptila you beat tour.. FALSE Foreplay/longtime is much harder
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By A 0 UB3RLOZ3R on 02 Jun 2012 21:02
Got through Reptilia second try today. There’s hope!
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By SchiZoPHreNiikz on 05 Jun 2021 02:08
I can't get past tier 2, dreading thinking about expert endless setlist with just myself haha
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By NoWorkGrato on 27 Jun 2021 19:52
Im struggling with the early songs even doing this. Cant complete "Here it goes again". This game was poorly done IMO in terms of tutorial. They do absolutely nothing to help people understand pitch. Even the vocal tutorial assumes you know pitch. I have no idea what I am doing right or wrong when Im singing or humming so obviously I cant adjust and fix it.
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By on 14 Jun 2022 20:09
I struggled on Reptillia and Welcome Home suprisingly i hit all the last part to Forplay/Longtime (Brad Delp was the singer Btw) and yeah he goes crazily high in practicly every boston song lol
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By on 05 Jan 2011 17:29
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Just hum the songs. A lot of people get confused about the pitches and sing either too high or too low. Just practice a lot. Listening to the songs isnt as important as everyone thinks though. Once you have the pitching down it should be no problem. Good luck!
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14 Mar 2009 03:35

1 Comment
I didn't have too much trouble singing most of the songs but humming definitely helped for some of the songs in the last couple of tiers.
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By Kirkless on 02 Oct 2010 21:15

Ok, I am not a singer and therefore have not unlocked this. I would feel bad if I attempted to write a guide for something I had no idea about. So here are some tips from others on the forum to help you out:

From Dfraz: The only tips I can really provide is to listen to the songs. If you know them you'll obvioulsy do much better. One problem I notice most people have is they don't understand the octaves, so they go from really low singing to really high when they don't have to.

Also if you want to make it really easy you can just hum the melody and you can pass it. Just say "ahhhh" and imitate the singer. Here is an example:



From ShftLeft: Beating the solo tour on easy/medium vocals is pretty much a no-brainer, just don't butcher the pitch/lyrics and you'll be fine. Once you get into the hard/expert difficulties things get a little tricky. I recommend these steps to get your voice (at least for Rock Band) into shape:

- Listen to the songs outside of the game. If you go into a song not knowing the melody to the lyrics, you'll fail out quickly. "Run to the Hills" and "Highway Star" for example, are songs I'd never heard (not a big Maiden or Deep Purple fan) before playing this game. After listening to the songs 2 or 3 times I was able to pass the songs on hard pretty easily.

- Just match the pitch of the game. You don't have to be Geddy Lee to pass expert. One of the posts said you need "perfect pitch" when you get to expert, that's not true at all. Listening to me sing Run to the Hills or Tom Sawyer you'd assume a cat was getting it's tail removed. You just need to match the pitch that the game expects you to hit. A good way to perfect this is to practice matching your voice to certain notes on a piano, keyboard software/hardware, or in practice mode.

The most important thing in my opinion is knowing how the song goes. Before attempting the longer setlists make sure you get to know the shoddy harmonix songs and how they go because they will kill you if you're the singer in World Tour. I've found that the songs I've listened to the most over the years are the easiest for me to do well on expert (Say It Ain't So, Black Hole Sun, Epic as I grew up in the early/mid 90s). So just get to know the lyrics and the melody of the song, match what the game expects and you should do fine.

I've also toyed with the idea of playing with my surround mix to isolate the vocals and just stick the mic up to one of the speakers. It would be cheating but an easier way to get through the platinum endless setlist by yourself without having to sing/play expert at the same time.

From ASTROBL4ACK/Fr133701ays: It is difficult to try to sing songs you don't know. They suggest maybe putting the song on an iPod or another MP3 player and just practicing in the car on the way to work/school.

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