Sunday, July 1, 2012

Rock Band Vid: Lithium & XLR -> USB Mic Buzz

I finally got around to recording a video! Yay!

I have been sick forever (going on over a month now) with bronchitis. I still haven't got rid of it, but I have decided I need to just learn to work around it because I am tired of waiting to recover. I think I will have to talk to my doctor about chronic bronchitis next time I see her, we will see what happens.

So this week is Lithium by Evanescence. As much as I'm not crazy about the band (or I guess I should say Amy Lee, since she started over) anymore (nor the direction), there was a time I did like the band (first 2 albums). It was also previous to discovering harder music and European metal which includes symphonic metal bands with classically trained female singers... so I have kind of "grown out of" Evanescence. However, this was a song I used to quite like and it is fun to sing.


Vocally I think I don't manage to transpose the same "anger" or "frustration" that Amy does. It's almost as if she is shouting, and I'm just not able to have that kind of "harshness" with my voice. So I think some of the parts lose a lot of their flavor when I sing them, but hopefully I didn't butcher the song too much. Being that it IS an Evanescence video I think more non-Rock Band players will stumble upon it and probably give me crap, we will see xD

Moving on, this video also contains the famous "Mic Buzz" that many of us Team Cena vocalists complained about after receiving the XLR to USB mic cable given to us by our sponsor when we were sponsored by Rock Band Parts. The cable is actually made by OSP from Roadie Music Game Gear, so it isn't really a fault of RBP.  Here is the cable:
http://www.musicgamegear.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=90&idcategory=5

Overall I quite like the cable. It allows me to use a REAL professional level microphone with the game. It helps me a lot when it comes to lyrical singing and the high notes of Amberian Dawn and Pythia (the included usb mic craps out on high notes).

The cable seems to have some sort of flaw however and this is my second cable. Basically it is some sort of electrical overload that makes this weird computerized buzz that can often cost you a phrase. That buzz is random and sporadic. It can happen several times in one song or once in a couple of months. My first cable was shot; it happened multiple times in one song frequently, so I was sent a second one to replace it. My second cable has started acting up (I had it twice in 3 songs today) and that makes me sad, because I really do love it.

You can observe this abnormality in my video. I decided to still upload the video despite the flaw for multiple reasons:

1) Overall, I was satisfied with my singing on that particular run
2) I somehow managed to still FC the song DESPITE the occurrence
3) It demonstrated my SOLE complaint with this cable.

You will find the "buzz" in the final phrase of my video (trust me, you will know when you see/hear it). Looking back at it, I still don't know how I managed to FC the song seeing how the arrow jumped all over the place.

Here's the video:

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