Rock Band
50 Achievements
1,000
80-100h
Virtuoso
Finished Vocal Solo Tour on Expert
50
How to unlock the Virtuoso achievement in Rock Band - Definitive Guide
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!
Also, I cannot sing to save my life so if I can beat this song, so can you.
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.